Tue 8 May 2007
Thank you TI-99/4A
Posted by Scott Hackett under Programming
[24] Comments
My parents recently found this photo, taken when I was 10. This is me…
It’s the morning of December 25, 1981, and I’d just gotten my first computer, a TI 99/4A. It was fresh out of the box when this picture was taken. Soon after, I hooked up my black and white TV to it, and later that afternoon I connected a cassette recorder to save my work to tapes. Of all the defining moments in my life, the one captured in this photo easily ranks in the top ten… I wrote my first program that day.
Back then things were pretty simple. I had TI BASIC and that was the only language I was ever going to have on that machine. It didn’t take me too long to get through the samples in the programming guide. Then there was the subscription to Compute! magazine, where I found lots of game source code listings by other hobbyists. Hunt the Wumpus, Hammurabi, Towers of Hannoi… I tried them all. You had to type them in by hand, and that’s how I learned programming. After one year with the TI, I knew it in a very deep way. It was followed a few years later by an 8088 PC and then up the chain of x86′s, but the TI was the one that started it all for me. I guess I’m lucky, I’ve always known what I wanted to be when I grew up.
24 Responses to “ Thank you TI-99/4A ”
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May 10th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
I had a similar experience; I guess many of us programmers did.
When I was about 12 (this is in 1980, I must be older than you), before I had ever touched a computer, my mother brought home a book about programming BASIC and gave it to me and my two brothers. I read it from cover to cover. I don’t think my brothers read much of it. Shortly after, we got the TRS-80 clone with the monochrome monitor and cassette storage. I remember Towers of Hanoi too, and still enjoy programming puzzles like that best of all.
I still have that first book in a box somewhere. I’ve also got a really dog-eared Zaks Z80 assembler book from those days.
John Hurst
May 11th, 2007 at 9:20 am
Scott, I had similar a similar experience except it was my Amma (grandma) who had won a Tandy CoCo 2 through some draw. She gave it to me. At first, all I was concerned with was the Canyon Jumper game it came with. However, sooner or later I opened the BASIC book it came with and started typing away.
That ended my brief flirt with Programming. You see, the computer didn’t come with a tape drive, I had absolutely no way of saving my work. So my programming adventures would last about an hour and a half only to find out “SYNTAX ERROR” was the only fruit of my labour.
I still loved computers for their games, I took every opportunity to play games on my Uncle’s PET and my friend’s C64. In Grade/Jr. high school we had an Apple lab, however the teacher was worthless, he was so used to kids being idiots he just gave up on the kids who wanted to learn.
So it wasn’t until Highschool, grade 10 that I actually started to like programming. This was due to the great teacher I had. I started in BASIC on a 8088, then to Fortran then to Pascal. I really loved Pascal and fortunately it was the language we used in University as well.
So although not as early as you, I too knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. It wasn’t until grade 10 though. In grade 11 my Dad agreed to split the cost of a 386 sx, 2mb ram, 30meg HDD. It took all of my savings from a summer job I had as a grounds keeper, a whopping $2K! But it really opened my eyes, and I wrote lots of cool utilities and spent my waking hours all over the BBS’s, playing Wolf 3D and Wing Commander.
Anyway, thanks for bringing up fond memories!
September 15th, 2007 at 1:14 am
Well i guess that i’ve been in almost the same situation, but i unpacker my TI 99-4A in dec 25 ’82, when i was 17. Soon i started programming and saving my progs in tape, later in april ’83 i got TI Extended Basic and it was the glory playng around with upper and lower case chars and sprites (do U remember those commands?) I remember that all of my progs allways started with: 100 call clear hehe. actually i’m still programing in ms visual basic and visual fox, but also i can say, thanks ti 99-4/a.
October 23rd, 2007 at 10:46 am
Oh! Similar story here! I began learning Basic with a book then my father found someone selling a used TI and man… that was the beginning I was 13, from day 0 I began programming that thing I am 36 now and still enjoying programming
October 23rd, 2007 at 1:05 pm
You’ve got a few years on me (I was 6 I think, when I got my TI in 83), but otherwise the story is pretty much identical. Many days playing games on that little console went by before I decided the games were cheating, so I taught myself extended BASIC so I could reprogram the games so I could win. People don’t believe me when I tell them that.
October 23rd, 2007 at 2:15 pm
Again.. similar story here. But I went the route of the commodore vic 20 then the 64 and got taken by the 128. Still.. learned so much. Now I kind of wish I had become a plumber instead… can you believe it costs me 4500 to get basement drain fixed!!!! OMG
October 23rd, 2007 at 2:54 pm
Ahh the memories. I remember buying my Vic 20 on layway. Anyone remember layway? The it was on to bigger and better things — a Commodore 64. I loved that system and spent countless hours playing Fahrenheit 451 and Rendezvous with Rama. Good times….
I only regret that I have no pictures of myself at that time wearing a sweet smoking jacket.
October 23rd, 2007 at 3:39 pm
Wow. The 99/4A was my first computer, too (in the sense that it was really mine, set up in my room). My dad picked one up for me just after Texas Instruments had pulled out of the market. I think it was US$99.00.
The foremost thing I remember about it was programming it to play songs I’d “transcribed” from sheet music (remember CALL SOUND?). Three voices max, all going “boop boop boop”. Great fun.
It was a good-looking machine, too, and solid: all black plastic and polished aluminum.
I got catalogs from a couple of different places, offering all sorts of software and peripherals. Summer job money got me game cartridges, tapes of various stuff, Scott Adams text adventures; and, of course, the Extended BASIC cartridge (a must). I wish I could remember what it would have cost to outfit it like the pictures in the catalogs, with an expansion interface bigger than my TV and a bank of floppy drives.
Thanks for sharing. Fun memories.
October 23rd, 2007 at 5:12 pm
Oh, I’ll join the nostalgia parade…
First computer was a Sinclair ZX81. Membrane keyboard and all, but I added the enhanced graphics card and the memory upgrade to a whopping 16K! My greatest joy was discovering how to hack the code to the Star Trek game to make Spock use profanity.
But, my second computer was the TI-99/4A. It wasn’t the brushed aluminum and black model, it was the blonde plastic job. I added the Basic Plus cart and had many other games and add-ons. And, yes, it was during that time that I decided to change careers. I switched majors to computer science, changed my job and changed my life. Still going strong in the tech field some 25 years later. The 16-bit beauty started a lust that has never cooled.
Thank you TI.
October 23rd, 2007 at 7:26 pm
TI 99-4/A All the way!
My fav was typing a program in all day, having a coding error, banging the keyboard and it reseting!!
Such fun,
J S
October 23rd, 2007 at 9:45 pm
@John
That’s a riot — my Dad gave me a basic programing book around 1980 also, and I didn’t get the computer until I had worked my way through it without a computer. I was 12. I always thought that was an ass-end-round way to do it. My first program generated sets of random numbers, mapped the first number to a memory address, and the second to a word value and POKEed it in. Of course it rendered the computer unusable within a minute or so, but it would die a different way every time. The concept has never ceased to fascinate me.
October 23rd, 2007 at 10:19 pm
Apple IIC here… ah the days…
October 24th, 2007 at 4:18 am
Very nice. I was hooked to computers at the age of 14 when I was introduced in school. But my kids 10,8,and 4 already have a love for computers. Its wonderful, and yet a little scary when your kids come home and know as much as they do about computers. We definatley have a group of online marketers coming up. Great article and picture
October 25th, 2007 at 11:22 am
I started with the “original” TI 99-4 with the “chicklet” keyboard. My dad drove me to a computer store 2 hours away to get it. I started learning on that, saving programs to tape. Then about a year later, the expansion box came out… more memory, OMG – a floppy drive!. So we got that. TI Basic, TI Extended Basic, Assembler. I remember that I wrote my first computer program for money at age 16. An inventory/invoice system for my Mom who had a craft mail order service that she ran out of our house. I made $60. Those were the days!
October 25th, 2007 at 6:57 pm
a few of my freinds had a ti.my dad wouldnt get me one,he thought they were a waste of time.the kids that did have them didnt appreciate them.so i wasted ages 6 to 19 skateboarding and making out with girls.maybe it wasnt such a waste lol
November 3rd, 2007 at 11:24 pm
The only difference between me and you guys is that I STILL program my TI 99/4A
I got mine in 1981 and programmed it in BASIC. I moved to an 8086 PC in 1986 then came back to the TI in 1995.
There is still a lot of activity around the little TI. Check my site tigameshelf.net for some insight.
April 28th, 2010 at 1:24 am
Fond memories.
Now, at 72, I still have TI99/4A and my two dells a laptop and a desktop for video editing and photography. As a user I knew where I was headed. My friend wanted me to get on of the first MACs as promoted in that famous half time ad “1984″ style. At that time, May of 1984 there was no color and so I got a 386 with color. About six months later MACs had color. Too late for me for I was committed to the PC.
May 5th, 2010 at 2:57 pm
I really didn’t get into computers until about 20 years ago, but was always liked anything electronic.
I took tv/radio repair in the 1960′s when everything was powered by vacuum tubes.
I’ll never forget our first RCA color tv my dad brought home in 1968.
Soon vacuum tubes disappeared and transistors replaced them…now we have flat screen tv’s with surface mount technology, the components just keep getting smaller every day.
June 28th, 2010 at 1:03 am
Wow. Like most of the posters, I have a similar story.
Commodore 64, TRS-80, Apple II in 1st+2nd grade.
I recently had the luck of picking up an NEC PC8300 at a yard sale.
Still works beautifully.
I’m going through all of my old piles of BASIC games and putting them in. FTP to pc via serial/parallel port makes saving a breeze, but is tricky to get working.
All in all…thank you for the trip down memory lane.
*dusts off the nec*
Been a few months.
4AA still working.
October 26th, 2010 at 1:45 pm
visit site for nice ti994a
http://www.computerbit.net/public/vendo/ANNUNCI/Computerbit74-09-00-35-20-08-2010.htm
March 23rd, 2011 at 4:20 pm
I have a somewhat similar story. I am 17 and still a senior in high school. I got a Ti-84 calculator freshman year of high school, and taught myself to program on it’s TI-BASIC. I love programming, and plan on majoring in Computer Science in college. Since my Ti-84 I took 1 formal CS class this year that taught java, and I am teaching myself C++.
April 27th, 2011 at 11:09 am
As most of the people above, I too have a similar memory. I was 8 when the ZX80 hit the UK market and I had one for Christmas. It was that day that led me to be sat where I am right now!
May 18th, 2011 at 10:35 pm
OMG OMG…my vic 20!
10 Print “Dave”
20 GOTO 10
and if you put the “;” at the end it went all the way across the screen!!!!. I loved that thing, I remember my programs kept running out of memory. I also remember typing in pages and pages of code to get a game running. Fun, Fun, Fun