Texas Instruments made much better computers than Commodore.
The Ti 99/4A is faster, has better sound and much better graphics.
Forget the C64 and get a TI 99/4A, fast !
"Rick Balkins" <rickbalkins.nospam@nospam.wavestarinteractive.com> wrote...
[snip]your
Why reply to such an obvious troll? (use my excuse... you were out of
mind for 5 minutes!)
--
Best regards,
Sam Gillett
Out of my mind. Back in 5 minutes!
I support TMS9900 based systems and 65xx systems. (If you know what Imean -
I support TI and Commodore comps.)
I like them both.
Texas Instruments made much better computers than Commodore.
The Ti 99/4A is faster, has better sound and much better graphics.
Forget the C64 and get a TI 99/4A, fast !
The Ti 99/4A is faster, has better sound and much better graphics.
"Pablo Rena" <celt_sites@yahoo.com.mx> wrote in message news:50a97d4f.0405302009.53fdd224@posting.google.com...
Texas Instruments made much better computers than Commodore.
The Ti 99/4A is faster, has better sound and much better graphics.
Forget the C64 and get a TI 99/4A, fast !
Pablo - don't start a flame WAR. I do have 4 TI-99/4A
and I may agree with technical factors but I don't
think there is a need to incite flame. Thank You.
Most of the time, when ever there are different selections that can
be made in the computer world, each selection has features that are
not shared by the others. This is the case when you can choose
between either a TI 99/4A or a C64. When they were in the department
stores, TI BASIC was said to be even more sluggish than C= BASIC.
I tested their computational precision by evaluating 4*atn(1) (pi)
on each. IIRC, the TI's result was correct to more decimal digits.
The Ti 99/4A is faster, has better sound and much better graphics.
Yep, too bad that there were only 15 or so programs for it. But these all surpassed any C64 programs. For instance, TI Invaders was MUCH MORE like the original arcade game of 1978 than any Space Invaders clone on the C64.
PeterV
Too bad the things ended up as door stops.... :)
Yep. Too bad that JEB and PeterV are both complete gits!
Both stupid enough to reply to a troll. Perhaps they are
troll-assistants? Considering their slanted, uneducated opinion of the
TI, which had 100's of programs and still is used by hundreds.
"JEB" <j.bielak(AT)comcast.net> wrote in news:QKadnUPvfdQAmCHdRVn- ig@comcast.com:
Too bad the things ended up as door stops.... :)
I don't know about that. When I bought one as a kid, I had my dad take it back to K-mart for a refund and then I got my C-64 instead. I found that there wasn't all that much going on in the TI-99 scene back in those days. At the same time my childhood pal living a few houses over would be doing all sorts of stuff on his c64, and everyone in school was talking of C64, not the TI99. The only thing I ever did on that TI when I had it, was to type in a long program from the pages of some computer magazine, so I could play a cheezy game. From my perspective, the C64 was a way better system than the TI 99/4A ever was.
Well the commodore has had THOUSANDS of programs, and is still used by thousands...
"Ben Yates" <anoneds@netscape.net> wrote in message news:8c160850.0406020622.74a4499a@posting.google.com...
Yep. Too bad that JEB and PeterV are both complete gits!
Both stupid enough to reply to a troll. Perhaps they are
troll-assistants? Considering their slanted, uneducated opinion of the
TI, which had 100's of programs and still is used by hundreds.
Yep. Too bad that JEB and PeterV are both complete gits!
I tested their computational precision by evaluating 4*atn(1) (pi)
on each. IIRC, the TI's result was correct to more decimal digits.
I tested their computational precision by evaluating 4*atn(1) (pi)
on each. IIRC, the TI's result was correct to more decimal digits.
That's all very nice for when the computer is used by scientists.
I tested their computational precision by evaluating 4*atn(1) (pi)
on each. IIRC, the TI's result was correct to more decimal digits.
That's all very nice for when the computer is used by scientists.
At the time, I was under the mistaken impression that computers were
intended for computation. With 20 / 20 hindsite, the assignment of
computers as the name of these devices was also a mistake. I lacked imagination when I got out of grad school with research that required counting blocks under the bell shaped curve in the complex plane.
The TI99/4a was a beatiful machine, and it had an even more beautiful expansion rack. But people who would have bought the TI99/4a didn't have the money for the expansion rack.<snip>
Had TI made a much cheaper expansion pack for the TI99/4a, or simply a plug-in memory pack upping the memory to 48Kb, then it could well have blown the C64 away.
Yep. Too bad that JEB and PeterV are both complete gits!
You should not take words so seriously, I was around when the TI was in the shops.
But the TI99/4a did have a lot of flaws. Here's a nice page:
http://perso.club-internet.fr/pytheas/english/TI99_history.html
I'm Dutch. Maybe some 250 TI99/4a's have reached us overhere, while there were thousands and thousands of C64's.
Look, the C64 made it because it had loads of memory and was easy to proram.
The TI99/4a had 256 bytes! Ok, it also had 16Kb of video memory, which you could partly use for your own program. But that was SLOW because it had to
be shared between the VDP and the CPU. And then... The VDP is 8-bits wide,
so the nice and fast 16-bit processor had to share the video memory AND have to access it 8-bits at a time! Come on, what were the TI people thinking? 'The computer L@@KS nice, so people will buy it anyway'???
The thing was unprogrammable, you allmost needed a computer-degree to
program the TI99/4a. You needed to plan your program, which is Ok for computer buffs, but not for hobbyists who want to go just that little
further than BASIC.
Every half-wit could program the C64. And that's why the C64 made it and the TI99/4a didn't, even while the C64's BASIC was trash.
The TI99/4a computer was meant to be an entertainment machine by their marketing. Look at the ads, they allmost all show the TI99/4a running
a game or educational software, and some business graphs. Scientists
and mathematicians still used CP/M machines, Apple II's or were
buying the new IBM PC (1978) because that came with Microsoft's
"Peter de Vroomen" <peterv@ditweghaluh.jaytown.com> wrote in messagenews:<40bf58b8$0$566$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl>...
TI's marketing department and problems with video/power have something
to do with this. Their distribution outside the country was always
poor.
The computer was designed prior to 1979, when it appeared. The 16k was
large back in this era of 1-4k computers. The Apple had 16k or 48k at
the time, and the TI was designed with 32k mapped as expansion RAM.
The 256 bytes was enough for the GPL Interpreter, which was in a 6k
GROM.
No, it was easy. You didn't need to poke/peek addresses to write a
program. It had nice editing facilities, TRACE, BREAK, line number/renumbering
I don't follow this argument. I think it was because the uP was more familiar. And hobbyists love familiarity (the 990 is a strange CPU).
And the home market, the 99/4 was targeted for, wasn't quite ready.
TI's main mistake was going into the ultra-low market with the C= because
the main cost was mainly this - the TI has more chip components than the VIC-20. MORE Chip components = MORE cost.
I think their main mistake was the "upgrade" that only allowed TI-licensed cartridges to run.expansion,
That GRU mod (if I remember what it was called correctly) was in the beige models rather
than the black/silver ones. We developers decided to write for other
systems because we
either couldn't afford TI's royalties or were just unwilling to pay to run our software on
arrogant TI's machines.
Another factor was that, to develop assembly language programs, you could
use a stock
C64 with tape drive. To do so on the TI, you had to have memory
a disk drive
and the PEB to hold the cards. Sure there was the Mini-Memory cart but it was so limited
as to be useless for developers.
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