Reminiscing

October 13, 2007 in Digital Technology by stepheng | 2 comments

CNET run a series of photos of microcomputers from the 1970s bringing back a flood of memories. I remember I desperately wanted an Atari 400 or 800 (images 19 & 20 respectively), but instead my folks bought a Texas Instruments TI-99/4a (the successor to image 21). The almost complete lack of software and support in NZ for the TI (along with not many programme listings in computer magazines) meant we actually had to learn to programme it! Some nice hardware marred by the world’s slowest ANSI (not Microsoft) BASIC interpreter.

See Photos: Dinosaur Sightings: 1970s computers | CNET News.com

There’s several TI-99/4a emulator floating around the internet. More information on this ‘classic’ at Texas Instruments TI-99/4A - Wikipedia.

  1. fernando’s avatar

    fernando on October 13, 2007 at 9:48 pm

    Hey I had one of those - in fact I still have it (in storage). I was lucky that the local computer store in Sydney (about 10 minutes walk away from my home) stocked them and had a small users group.

  2. Stephen’s avatar

    Stephen on October 14, 2007 at 3:31 pm

    I held on to the TI-99 until the mid-90s when I handed it over to a fellow computer science postgrad. I think I only ever found one shop in NZ that sold them (up Willis St in Wellington) though every now and then I saw one in a second hand shop (including one with the full Plato learning system!)

    Of all the different early-mid 80s systems I used the one I’d really like to get my hands on now is an old BBC micro (with the co-processor) for reliving the glory days of Elite as it was meant to be played.