Texas Instruments TI-99/4a - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

30 Jun 2014

...
  Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2014 11:41:45 +1200
 From: Terry Stewart <terry at webweavers.co.nz>

 Hi Mark,

 You said that the computer was promoted by the
"late" Bill Cosby.
That must be news to him, as he is very much alive. ( 
 Yea.  LOL.  I actually meant "late-70's comedy icon" but it can be
 interpreted as "the late 1970s icon...".  You can't see the hyphen in
 audio.  Someone pointed this out when the video first went up.  If you run
 that part of the video now, you'll see I've got an annotation in the top
 right hand pointing out what I meant! 
I almost made the same mistake in understanding you, but since I knew
he was still alive, I thought for a second and realized that you were
using the (hidden) hyphen.

...

 There was absolutely no way to actually get into
the innards of the
machine as the BASIC had no peek or poke commands. 
 Indeed.  This is what confused me about the sprites.  I confused "no user
 generated sprites" (under standard BASIC) with no sprites at all.  I
 corrected this mistake via annotation in the video too. However I
 understand Peeks and Pokes were available via the Extended BASIC cartridge.

 I didn't now about the heating problem.  Interesting.

 Terry (Tez) 
Bill was pretty popular in the mid-to-late '60s too.  I remember
listening to a friend's parent's Bill Cosby LP with the "chocolate
cake for breakfast" routine on it back then.  It's still funny today,
like pretty much all of his stuff which didn't require crudity or
profanity to attract audiences.  I'm not against crudity/profanity in
general, but some so-called "entertainers" go a bit too far I think,
trying to out-cuss each other.

To get back on topic, I've got two (or one and a half TI-99/4As,
depending on how you count the parts machine).  Now I'll have to dig
them out and try to program/play with them using the TV set I saved
for the C-64 I've got.  I've got one other (physically) smaller
machine, maybe a Sinclair or similar that requires a TV set as a
display.

Everything else either required a "real" terminal (PDP-8 "Family",
PDP-11 [Q-Bus machines], VAX-4000/200 [I think]) or came with a
"CRT/monitor" of one type or another (B/W, Apple III display, CGA,
VGA, etc.).

<I'll duck now in case I've mistakenly misused any religious
terminology in the sentence above.>

Bob