ScuzzBlog: Diaries February 2021 Entry 10th February 2021: Post 1: Texas Instruments TI99/4a - Business is war. Texas Instruments TI99/4a - Business is war. Jack Tramiel at Commodore had a philosophy of business being like war and nothing demonstrated this ruthless view more than what happened between Commodore and Texas Instruments. Sadly for Texas Jack never forgave them for the way they pushed him out of the calculator business. Texas Instruments had already had a failure with their first venture into the computer business with the 99/4. The cost alone was enough to put buyers off. However in late 1983 Commodore recognised the threat if Texas Instruments with the release of the TI99/4A. Sadly the computer ran into immediate problems with the transformer and was taken off the market for six months. During this time Jack instructed his sales to offer users to turn in their old machines and they would get a C64 at a discounted price. Suffice to say a lot of the computers handed over to Commodore were the TI99/4A. Texas Instruments used the TMS9900 processor. Like Commodore the company produced all its own chips and the 16bit processor was the weapon of choice. Sadly the chip was not supported by many and to make it work with the machine had to slow the processes down. Texas also had a policy of only using their own software and games. Jack Tramiel discovered that Texas were losing money on the processor and so in a bold move immediately cut their software and peripheral costs. Texas could not compete with Commodore on price for these items and because of losses in excess of $450,000,000 pulled out of the computer industry. This cute little computer was not the last in the line, there was a later model in grey plastic which failed even worse. Both of the machines have the single expansion port with the idea of daisy chaining peripherals to one side... literally like a train. What was really bonkers was Texas Instruments unwillingness to use and entertain third party software and games. And so the TI99/4A was a short lived little computer that nobody really wanted. I believe that over a million were sold so not rare. I have a couple in boxes and this one that sits there on top of my Win 95 machine. The most frustrating thing with all these machines is the way they all used different power connectors. The one on this computer is particularly troublesome. Don't buy one if it doesn't come with a power supply. I will finish on a positive note. I have to give credit where credit is due and so any computer that provides a place for me to sit my tea cup gets a thumbs up from me. It's not the worst of its generation I think that honour goes to the Aquarius. Texas Instruments TI99/4a - Business is war. My shelf with three of these silver things on My SONY in the store always gives way better images than the big Toshiba The computer was working when I first discovered her so looking good so far Also found a goodly amount of docs First thing to connect is the modulator or TV connector. The DIN connects to the one rear port on the back of the machine A TV PAL Encoder Next up you need the special power supply With the very strange connector Then you are good to go Maybe should have stuck to calculators.

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Last updated 10th February 2021

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