That’s my first computer on the bottom shelf, a Texas Instruments TI-99 4A (c. 1981). The key combination that produced “+” was “shift+equals.” The key combination that produced “System Reset” was “namelessbutton-right-next-to-shift + equals.” One day it started smoking, so we took it back to the store.
I didn’t see an Atari 800 (c. 1979) on Gibby’s page. An internal speaker was set to beep every time you pushed a key. The Atari 400 had a membrane keyboard, so I guess the beep was supposed to substitute for the click. But for the Atari 800, which had a real keyboard, the key beep was redundant. I opened up the case, snipped the speaker wire, and threaded both ends out through a gap between the keys. When I wanted sound, I twisted the wires together. What a geek.
Hm…. the TI really was our first computer, but “oldcomputers.net” says the Atari 800 came out earlier. Could we actually have gotten the TI 99 4 first? I remember we got a replacement at one point…. but I specifically remember the sound of the voice synthesizer saying “Texas Instruments TA 99 4A computer.”
I’ll appeal to my sister…. Rosemary, can you help me out on this?
There seemed to be better games for the Atari, and a summer computer course that I took as a middle schooler used HP terminals in one room and Atari 800s and 400s (check out that profile) in the other, so perhaps when we had enough of the Texas Instruments I convinced the rest of the family to go with the machine that I knew well.
On the top center, that’s a Commodore 64 (c. 1982) — the computer I took with me to college in 1986. (I used a tiny 4-inch TV screen as the monitor.)
If Gibby dies now, I think Gibby will win.
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Hi Lou, thanks for the greeting! Yes, I am the sister of Dr. Jerz and I lurk around here and the NMJ weblog and post comments from time to time.
Good point. I also remember things like the screen blanking out, since the speech generation was so resource-intensive. Maybe that was for the Atari, not the TI... but the voice pretty much sounds the same.
I too had a TI 99 4/A. I remember playing "Munch Man", a pac-man knockoff. There were other great games like "Alpiner" too. The speech synthesizer on that machine was pretty good. I wonder how far computerized speech has really come int he last 2 decades. It seems that true synthsization hasn't gotten any better, we've just gotten better at pre-recording the bits we need.
Sure, Lou. I'll pull it to the top of the stack.
It's an honour to meet someone as technically minded as Dr. Jerz. I look forward to reading your comments as the blog gets bigger.
The system I remember having the most fun before I built my own was an apple IIec or something along those lines. I was in second grade, and it was about that time that I decided to become an author.
Speaking of writing..Dr. Jerz, when and if you read this, is there anyway I could get my short story from you when I meet with you about my term paper?
I guess I should say Salutations to Rosemary as she is my professors sister (?) Tis a wonderful chance to meet you, at least electronically.
Ah, computers what a wonderful thing!
And yes Dr. Jerz, your book is wonderful and VERY helpful. I just dont know if I'll have my presubmission done--I'm on page 5, when we're only supposed to have 2-3!
Rosemary, I was quite dependent upon you and John, since I couldn't read music. But I did have fun creating the jukeboxk program around the music files. (It was just a simple text menu, but we had colored bars bouncing around the screen, too.)
Lou, I hope my book is useful.
Oh, I believe it Dr. Jerz.
BTW--Love your book!
I also remember how eagerly we awaited the month's new computer magazine so that we could type in the games and other cool utilities. This took hours with one person reading off the hex data statements and one person typing. We would trade off from time to time when our fingers got tired or our eyes started blurring. I remember the sense of satisfaction and joy when we finally got the typos out and the thing would actually compile and run and we could finally play the game. The games were very basic by today's standards, but I still remember a game where you jumped a biker over ramps of varying angles and another where your stick figure hopped over hurdles of varying heights from one side of the screen to the next. And remember the Basic jukebox program we wrote to play the Star Wars Cantina Band and other songs...
Lou, I remember programming with the Ataris. They actually had some pretty decent graphics, though of course the screen on my PDA is far superior.
Rosemary, I had forgotten about my C64 case mod. I think I mostly wanted to pull the keyboard out of the rest of the case. It had just enough ribbon wire that you could put the keyboard on the table in front of the big case, and I must have had some wire shelf to put the little TV on.
The first TI we kept in the family room, on the coffee table, since that's of course where the TV was. That's the machine that had the tape cassette drive.
I later learned that TI was very aware of problems with the TI units, so when we went to return the second TI, the employee didn't really ask us why -- he had obviously seen plenty of unhappy people returning that model. We lost a lot of time that we had put into the programming, though we hadn't bought too many game carts.