Nice machine and overview, thanks for sharing! It looks brand new. A beige 4/A just like this was my family's first machine when I was about 5 or 6. Loved Parsec, Tunnels of Doom, Hunt the Wumpus, TI Logo, Moon Patrol, Popeye... The AtariSoft games were generally better than the official TI ones. Now that I think about it, we must have had the 1981 ROM since the unlicensed carts worked. 25:17 It is possible to "hot swap" carts without power cycling the machine, but in practice I never did it because it feels wrong. 26:16 The black and silver models had a sliding trap door but the cost reduced versions did not so far as I know. 29:38 Yea, the keyboard is a bit of a mess, but you get used to it pretty quickly and at least it HAS key modifiers unlike e.g. the TRS-80 CoCos. 32:34 You can use your TEII cart with a speech synthesizer, it adds allophone-based text-to-speech to TI Basic! 35:08 As you've discovered, playing Parsec with the keyboard is nearly impossible because you can't fire and move at the same time :( Looking forward to the next episode!
Love this comment so much! Great info and now pinned for everyone to see. Can't wait to try some of the games you mention. I believe I heard you could hot swap carts, but like you, just seems wrong and fraught with disaster. Probably the Commodore guy coming out.
Mislav, Just noticed your support on this video! You are sneaking those supports in all over the place! 😄 As always, much appreciated. I'm working on a supporter page for the blog and determining a way to share in videos. You have definitely earned your place!
Thank you for not trashing the TI. I started on the TI, and was very proficient with it. I was expecting a commie guy to talk bad about the quirks, but you were fair. Thanks. Great video.
I have a beige model 99/4A I bought in 2007 with a Vic 20 and accessories I think I remember paying like $30 or less for the lot. It’s crazy how it’s it has shot up in price since 2007. I found the TTS synthesizer box in 2021 for around a dollar? The last time I turned mine on it had issues with the display where it would be fine as I turned it on but the screen would be garbled up all over the place…wonder if something needs to be re-soldered?
Prices for all retro-computers have shot up! I'm embarrassed to admit what I recently paid for an AMIGA 600, but it was on the list! Your TI display issue is common. I don't have a lot of experience troubleshooting the TI 99/4A, but there's lots of great info online.
Looking at the specs on the companion blog post, I can't help but wonder why the expandability of this machine was only to 56k. Is the 16 bit CPU not able to address more by design or oversight?
From the research, the motherboard was designed for an 8-bit processor. TI slammed their 16 bit on board despite the limitations. Others may have a different story to share but that's what I understood.
Great find! Might if I ask how much you paid? The only TI I saw for sale at the show was a bundle that included the expansion box and floppy drive. That one was listed for $450, which was a little too much for a new hobby machine.
Emulators are hit and miss for me. I like the real hardware and keyboards so there is no trying to figure out what PC keys emulate retro keys. Still, emulators can be a convenient and inexpensive way to experience these machines. For me, the 80s nostalgia is still important. Thanks for watching!
I have an emulator on my laptop. Not only does it include lots of software from popular cartridges but it also captures the unique programming architecture I remember so well from 1981. It was a great foundation for playing with 286s and 386s in high school. Every time I ran into “DOS block” I could think around the corner.
Thanks for subscribing and joining us from the land down under. The TI has been fun to play with. More content coming but I do have some additional Commodore video coming. Have you checked out the MEGA65?
@@retroCombs In the first half of the '80s - C64, ZX Spectrum, very, vrey few Orics... Later Amiga and Atari ST, and then, at the turn of the decade PCs
@@retroCombs And we (Yugoslavia then, but in Croatia really), ee had our own computer - "Orao" (Eagle). If I remember correctly, it was Z80 with 16K of RAM. The government was so protective of it that the import taxes on foreign computers were more expensive than computers. It had a very good basic, but very few games ...
I still need to find a speech synthesizer. They are very hard to find. I'm kind of surprised that the TIPI folks haven't found some way to integrate this feature into that device.
I had some trouble seeing when your console was manufactured, but it looks like it was made in the 34th week of 1983. BTW, you can replace the ROM chip that makes a 99/4A a "QI" console, by replacing it with the ROM chip from a non-QI console... so you see the boot-up screen 27:52 you were looking for. This chip is socketed, so all you need is to be able to open up a console and put it back together again after the chip swap! NEVER turn away a dead 99/4A if you can get it cheap (or free). There are ALWAYS parts you can salvage from it (or if your console is flaky, put the good parts from your console on the other motherboard)!! If you see someone selling a "known" QI console, and it's priced low because people think it isn't desired... GET IT!!! It's still a good console, and knowing that a ROM chip swap will change it to non-QI status makes it a no-brainer (for the informed)! Regarding the expansion port on the 99/4A... the black & silver consoles have a door. I guess TI realized they were wasting money adding a door, that was almost ALWAYS open... as most people used the expansion port - even if your only expansion was the speech synthsizer (and it HAS a door you can close)! 😉
Thanks for the great tips and for taking a look at my purchase. Since this video, I've acquire (viewer sent to me) a silver model that is a "QI"; however, I still use my tan model. I also just received my TIPI and looking forward to getting that setup and running.
TI slit their own throat's on this machine though strange design and by blocking out 3rd party hardware and software developers. They got what they deserved in my opinion. TI BASIC was near useless and to use their extended BASIC you had to buy extra hardware and a cartridge. It even couldn't stack up against MS BASIC of the time. However, since then the retro market has stepped up. There is a lot out their available through dedicated fans that actually makes the platform almost what TI could have let it become back in the day if their executives weren't such a bunch of dicks. I got a pristine example of the 99/4A in the stainless and black 3 years ago for $25 (there is a story to that). Out of the box it's pretty useless, but with a few modern add-ons it's quite a pleasant pastime. Kudos to those that came after TI.
@@retroCombs I know very little about the TIPI, but don't you need a PEB to use one? The CF7 is simple and effective. I modified my FinalGROM to provide power to the CF7 in order to simplify the set-up a bit so you just need to one power brick.
Was unfamiliar with this computer my Myarc. Just did some research. Very interesting but looks like a very short shelf life and hard to find nowadays. Thanks for sharing. I learned something new!
@@retroCombs The TI 990 was a minicomputer line that shared the same instruction set with the TI-99. There were some later cost reduced 990's that were microprocessor based -- the 990/4 only had 56k, but the 990/10 could be up to a MB.
@@retroCombs The MEMOTECH MTX 512 which is can take the MEMOTECH HDX512 and MEMOTECH FDX512 actually has assembler and you can do... ASSEM 10 ENTER to start entering machine code CLS RETURN CLS RETURN to leave assembler but you can do LIST RET to look at the BASIC and machine code together the only other 8BIT PC with assembler was the BBC MODEL B then you would be able to mix assembler and BASIC in one program.
It was the NO LIKE FOR YOU that led me down the negative road. Apologies for misreading and I'll take a good leg pull any day! 😀 Your other post had great info about why you felt TI meet there own demise. I have it an email if you want me to share it.
Nice machine and overview, thanks for sharing! It looks brand new. A beige 4/A just like this was my family's first machine when I was about 5 or 6. Loved Parsec, Tunnels of Doom, Hunt the Wumpus, TI Logo, Moon Patrol, Popeye... The AtariSoft games were generally better than the official TI ones. Now that I think about it, we must have had the 1981 ROM since the unlicensed carts worked.
25:17 It is possible to "hot swap" carts without power cycling the machine, but in practice I never did it because it feels wrong.
26:16 The black and silver models had a sliding trap door but the cost reduced versions did not so far as I know.
29:38 Yea, the keyboard is a bit of a mess, but you get used to it pretty quickly and at least it HAS key modifiers unlike e.g. the TRS-80 CoCos.
32:34 You can use your TEII cart with a speech synthesizer, it adds allophone-based text-to-speech to TI Basic!
35:08 As you've discovered, playing Parsec with the keyboard is nearly impossible because you can't fire and move at the same time :(
Looking forward to the next episode!
Love this comment so much! Great info and now pinned for everyone to see. Can't wait to try some of the games you mention. I believe I heard you could hot swap carts, but like you, just seems wrong and fraught with disaster. Probably the Commodore guy coming out.
Hvala!
Mislav, Just noticed your support on this video! You are sneaking those supports in all over the place! 😄 As always, much appreciated. I'm working on a supporter page for the blog and determining a way to share in videos. You have definitely earned your place!
Thank you for not trashing the TI. I started on the TI, and was very proficient with it. I was expecting a commie guy to talk bad about the quirks, but you were fair. Thanks. Great video.
You are welcome. There are many things to like about the TI and I now understand the appeal. Looking forward to more explorations with the computer.
I have a beige model 99/4A I bought in 2007 with a Vic 20 and accessories I think I remember paying like $30 or less for the lot. It’s crazy how it’s it has shot up in price since 2007. I found the TTS synthesizer box in 2021 for around a dollar? The last time I turned mine on it had issues with the display where it would be fine as I turned it on but the screen would be garbled up all over the place…wonder if something needs to be re-soldered?
Prices for all retro-computers have shot up! I'm embarrassed to admit what I recently paid for an AMIGA 600, but it was on the list! Your TI display issue is common. I don't have a lot of experience troubleshooting the TI 99/4A, but there's lots of great info online.
Looking at the specs on the companion blog post, I can't help but wonder why the expandability of this machine was only to 56k. Is the 16 bit CPU not able to address more by design or oversight?
From the research, the motherboard was designed for an 8-bit processor. TI slammed their 16 bit on board despite the limitations. Others may have a different story to share but that's what I understood.
Great find! Might if I ask how much you paid?
The only TI I saw for sale at the show was a bundle that included the expansion box and floppy drive. That one was listed for $450, which was a little too much for a new hobby machine.
You must have missed that part in the video. Hang on to your seat...$70! And three carts for 14!
And more info here: www.stevencombs.com/first-ti994a
There are loads of great TI99-4A emus for Windows. And they work.
Emulators are hit and miss for me. I like the real hardware and keyboards so there is no trying to figure out what PC keys emulate retro keys. Still, emulators can be a convenient and inexpensive way to experience these machines. For me, the 80s nostalgia is still important. Thanks for watching!
I have an emulator on my laptop. Not only does it include lots of software from popular cartridges but it also captures the unique programming architecture I remember so well from 1981. It was a great foundation for playing with 286s and 386s in high school. Every time I ran into “DOS block” I could think around the corner.
Great video.. new subscriber from me TI wasn't big in Australia have always wanted one but like yourself im a big Commodore fan
Thanks for subscribing and joining us from the land down under. The TI has been fun to play with. More content coming but I do have some additional Commodore video coming. Have you checked out the MEGA65?
@@retroCombs Haven't even heard of it eargly awaiting
Heres a video to get you started: th-cam.com/video/nAgkn2FpDg0/w-d-xo.html
The only TI ever owned was a pocket calculator... And it was great (for high school). ;-) TI 99s weren't so well known in my part of the world.
Curious, what were the prevailing retro computers in Croatia?
@@retroCombs In the first half of the '80s - C64, ZX Spectrum, very, vrey few Orics... Later Amiga and Atari ST, and then, at the turn of the decade PCs
@@retroCombs And we (Yugoslavia then, but in Croatia really), ee had our own computer - "Orao" (Eagle). If I remember correctly, it was Z80 with 16K of RAM. The government was so protective of it that the import taxes on foreign computers were more expensive than computers. It had a very good basic, but very few games ...
I'll need to research the Orao. I'd heard of Orics from your previous comment (thanks to Chris' Retro Corner), but the Eagle intrigues me.
@@retroCombs I was mistaken. It was 6502 not Z80... Guru meditation. Memory failure... I'm old.
Parsec with speech synthesizer is a huge plus.
I still need to find a speech synthesizer. They are very hard to find. I'm kind of surprised that the TIPI folks haven't found some way to integrate this feature into that device.
In South America the beige model came in PAL-N video standard
I'm not familiar with PAL-N. Have to look that one up. Thanks for watching.
What we need is a new retro mini 4A and VIC-20.
We have a TheC64mini but you are correct, minis in these other models would be very cool.
I had some trouble seeing when your console was manufactured, but it looks like it was made in the 34th week of 1983. BTW, you can replace the ROM chip that makes a 99/4A a "QI" console, by replacing it with the ROM chip from a non-QI console... so you see the boot-up screen 27:52 you were looking for. This chip is socketed, so all you need is to be able to open up a console and put it back together again after the chip swap!
NEVER turn away a dead 99/4A if you can get it cheap (or free). There are ALWAYS parts you can salvage from it (or if your console is flaky, put the good parts from your console on the other motherboard)!! If you see someone selling a "known" QI console, and it's priced low because people think it isn't desired... GET IT!!! It's still a good console, and knowing that a ROM chip swap will change it to non-QI status makes it a no-brainer (for the informed)!
Regarding the expansion port on the 99/4A... the black & silver consoles have a door. I guess TI realized they were wasting money adding a door, that was almost ALWAYS open... as most people used the expansion port - even if your only expansion was the speech synthsizer (and it HAS a door you can close)! 😉
Thanks for the great tips and for taking a look at my purchase. Since this video, I've acquire (viewer sent to me) a silver model that is a "QI"; however, I still use my tan model. I also just received my TIPI and looking forward to getting that setup and running.
TI slit their own throat's on this machine though strange design and by blocking out 3rd party hardware and software developers. They got what they deserved in my opinion. TI BASIC was near useless and to use their extended BASIC you had to buy extra hardware and a cartridge. It even couldn't stack up against MS BASIC of the time. However, since then the retro market has stepped up. There is a lot out their available through dedicated fans that actually makes the platform almost what TI could have let it become back in the day if their executives weren't such a bunch of dicks.
I got a pristine example of the 99/4A in the stainless and black 3 years ago for $25 (there is a story to that). Out of the box it's pretty useless, but with a few modern add-ons it's quite a pleasant pastime. Kudos to those that came after TI.
Curious to know which modern add-ons you use.
@@retroCombs I have a FinalGROM and a CF7.
I've been curious about the CF7, seems less involved than the TIPI.
@@retroCombs I know very little about the TIPI, but don't you need a PEB to use one? The CF7 is simple and effective. I modified my FinalGROM to provide power to the CF7 in order to simplify the set-up a bit so you just need to one power brick.
A PES is no longer required. I'm setting one up and will share in a future video.
The definitive TI-99/4a expert and TH-camr is PixelPendant. th-cam.com/users/PixelPedant
He produces some great TI videos.
Awesome suggestion. I'll check it out.
The Geneve 9640 is better that the TI99-4A and has much more memory.
Was unfamiliar with this computer my Myarc. Just did some research. Very interesting but looks like a very short shelf life and hard to find nowadays. Thanks for sharing. I learned something new!
Was actually a 16bit computer for the price of a 8bit computer but it should have had 512KB of RAM for the PC to work properly.
And had an actual 16 bit bus!
If it had that it would have been a TI 990 variant... Yes please.
A 990 variant? I'll have to look that one up.
@@retroCombs The TI 990 was a minicomputer line that shared the same instruction set with the TI-99.
There were some later cost reduced 990's that were microprocessor based -- the 990/4 only had 56k, but the 990/10 could be up to a MB.
Should have had a built in Assembler to allow people to write programs that run at a reasonable speed.
Many computers of that era didn't come with an assembler out of the box. Pointing at you Commodore.
@@retroCombs The MEMOTECH MTX 512 which is can take the MEMOTECH HDX512 and MEMOTECH FDX512 actually has assembler and you can do...
ASSEM 10 ENTER to start entering machine code
CLS RETURN
CLS RETURN
to leave assembler but you can do LIST RET to look at the BASIC and machine code together the only other 8BIT PC with assembler was the BBC MODEL B then you would be able to mix assembler and BASIC in one program.
Ah, much like the later Commodore Plus/4 and 128. Type MONITOR and you are ready for a long evening of assembler. Thanks for sharing!
Wow, so you lied. You didn't include a link to Noel's video series. Not cool. NO LIKE FOR YOU!
Just forgot. Will get that corrected. Thanks for the catch. And don't you think LIE is a bit strong? Why is the Internet so unforgiving? Sheesh. 🤦🏻
And curious why you deleted your last comment. Had some good info.
@@retroCombs LIE is terribly strong! So strong I thought i might be obvious I was pulling your leg.
@@retroCombs Actually, I'm not sure why I deleted it. I don't even remember the content in it.
It was the NO LIKE FOR YOU that led me down the negative road. Apologies for misreading and I'll take a good leg pull any day! 😀 Your other post had great info about why you felt TI meet there own demise. I have it an email if you want me to share it.