TI-99/4A Comments

Hi, I should qualify myself as comming from when personal computer meant you owned a computer be it a minuteman-1 missle guidence computer(all transistor), mark-8 or a PDP-8! The TI99/4a was 81 technology and should be compared to that not a P1000000! This seems to occur often. It compared to the PCjr with the chicklet keyboard or COCO1 with same at a time when the osborne-1 totable was new and neat. Apple/III had bombed on the market. It compared to z80 based system at 4mhz and a few emerging at 6mhz or the other non-IBM-PC 8088/6 based s100 systems. There were even 68000 based system but 8mhz were fast ones. It was color! At a time when that capability was uncommon. It didn't require an engineer to hook it up or make it do something/anything. At that time S100 systems, apples, and the like were rarely packaged systems. The trs80 and others started something with ready to run boxes that were also slow and cranky. Can I say it better as...back then a lot of things were starting to shake out, emerge and outright happen. The TI99/4a was one of those and it was far cheaper than a PC even at it introduction price. 1980 to 1984 was an interesting time. Who knows, if IBM and intel didn't hook up we could be running unix on a fifth generation z8000. Allison