Anyone have one packed away they would part with?

Tailgate88 said:

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You should have hit me up in 1983. I can still feel that sweet smooth keyboard and the power of all 16k of RAM.

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Don't forget that blazing fast 300 baud acoustic coupler modem.

TI is a great company, but really hosed the personal PC market entry. They could have owned it all.

Commodore, still bitter about being ousted by TI from the personal calculator market, came back with a vengeance and sunk their battleship.....the flagship C64 was the nail in the coffin.

Yikes! My first job in semiconductors was working for TI when they were making the 99-4A. I thought it cost $2k to expand the memory to 16k. My inspiration to go EE. Decent money and easy (for a math/science nerd) degree.

Texas Instruments
Quazon Corp
Institute of Solid State Electronics TEES
Motorola Inc
Trimedia Technologies Inc
Freescale Semiconductors
Intel
AMD

A long strange 42 year trip it has been. I would never have imagined anyone would want a 99-4A 40 years into the future. Must really like TI Invaders.

HECUBUS said:

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Yikes! My first job in semiconductors was working for TI when they were making the 99-4A. I thought it cost $2k to expand the memory to 16k. My inspiration to go EE. Decent money and easy (for a math/science nerd) degree.

Texas Instruments
Quazon Corp
Institute of Solid State Electronics TEES
Motorola Inc
Trimedia Technologies Inc
Freescale Semiconductors
Intel
AMD

A long strange 42 year trip it has been. I would never have imagined anyone would want a 99-4A 40 years into the future. Must really like TI Invaders.

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Nostalgia...had one as a kid..played some games, did some programming, prank called people with the speech synthesizer and modem.

This is all one needs.. .Tunnels Of Doom - Remake!

http://www.dreamcodex.com/todr.php

92Ag95 said:

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Commodore, still bitter about being ousted by TI from the personal calculator market, came back with a vengeance and sunk their battleship.....the flagship C64 was the nail in the coffin.

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We had a C64. I don't recall the details, but it died early on. My dad replaced it with the Commodore Plus/4 which he thought was going to be an upgrade because it had some pre installed business apps. I think there was a basic word processor, spreadsheet, and maybe even a rudimentary database. As is so often the situation, the disk drive we used with the C64 was not compatible with the Plus/4, and my dad didn't want to spend another $400 (a lot of money in 1984) on another floppy disk drive. So we had no way to save any of the stuff we did. Consequently the Plus/4 went unused, and then a year later I went off to A&M.

The Plus/4 was so anemic that one reviewer said is should have been called the "C64 Minus 60"

My mom cleaned out some stuff a few years ago and gave me the box that had all the Commodore stuff in it. I think it is still in my garage. It may even still have the Montgomery Ward pricetag on it.

Free to a computer collector if anyone wants it.

Burdizzo said:

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92Ag95 said:

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Commodore, still bitter about being ousted by TI from the personal calculator market, came back with a vengeance and sunk their battleship.....the flagship C64 was the nail in the coffin.

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We had a C64. I don't recall the details, but it died early on. My dad replaced it with the Commodore Plus/4 which he thought was going to be an upgrade because it had some pre installed business apps. I think there was a basic word processor, spreadsheet, and maybe even a rudimentary database. As is so often the situation, the disk drive we used with the C64 was not compatible with the Plus/4, and my dad didn't want to spend another $400 (a lot of money in 1984) on another floppy disk drive. So we had no way to save any of the stuff we did. Consequently the Plus/4 went unused, and then a year later I went off to A&M.

The Plus/4 was so anemic that one reviewer said is should have been called the "C64 Minus 60"

My mom cleaned out some stuff a few years ago and gave me the box that had all the Commodore stuff in it. I think it is still in my garage. It may even still have the Montgomery Ward pricetag on it.

Free to a computer collector if anyone wants it.

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I'll take it in exchange for your favorite libation. Did he pitch the C64 or is it still with everything?

92Ag95 said:

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Anyone have one packed away they would part with?

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There's an extra one over here. Would need to test it out to make sure it still works though. How urgently are you talking?

I say extra because my kids actually like using the one that's already plugged in with a bunch of educational carts left over from when my mom was a teacher. She was the only one who used any of it when she retired, so she ended up with everything.

The Fife said:

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92Ag95 said:

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Anyone have one packed away they would part with?

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There's an extra one over here. Would need to test it out to make sure it still works though. How urgently are you talking?

I say extra because my kids actually like using the one that's already plugged in with a bunch of educational carts left over from when my mom was a teacher. She was the only one who used any of it when she retired, so she ended up with everything.

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Not urgent.....not concerned with testing and/or repair...I can do that.

Ok cool, I should be back home from a work trip Thursday evening and can go check things out then. Mom had 3 that were still in the original box I'm pretty sure

Burdizzo said:

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My loss is your gain, plus I get some space back in the garage. I have no idea if this works. Been sitting in the hot garage for a few years. Pretty sure the FDD doesn't work with the Plus 4


Found the receipt too. It was on sale $100 off.





Purchased February 13, 1985

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Thanks. Will probably have to re-cap it but that's the part I like.

I'm back home and turns out there are four of these things complete/new in box.

The Fife said:

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I'm back home and turns out there are four of these things complete/new in box.

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Interested. Sent you a PM

92Ag95 said:

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Burdizzo said:

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My loss is your gain, plus I get some space back in the garage. I have no idea if this works. Been sitting in the hot garage for a few years. Pretty sure the FDD doesn't work with the Plus 4


Found the receipt too. It was on sale $100 off.





Purchased February 13, 1985

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Thanks. Will probably have to re-cap it but that's the part I like.

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Your post about N64 got me wondering if you got this thing running

Burdizzo said:

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92Ag95 said:

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Burdizzo said:

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My loss is your gain, plus I get some space back in the garage. I have no idea if this works. Been sitting in the hot garage for a few years. Pretty sure the FDD doesn't work with the Plus 4


Found the receipt too. It was on sale $100 off.





Purchased February 13, 1985

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Thanks. Will probably have to re-cap it but that's the part I like.

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Your post about N64 got me wondering if you got this thing running

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I did. The power supply was shot but I have a working power supply for a C64....only problem is that this has a square power plug whereas the C64 is round. I found an adapter pigtail online though so I was able to use the C64 power brick. Boots up to the intro screen, typed in and ran a few little basic programs but since I couldn't get the disk drive working with it (which it's supposed to be compatible) I couldn't save anything. That's about as far as I got. I'm buried under old gaming consoles and 8-bit computers to fix. Funny thing is that I only have a moderate level of interest in actually using these things. My main interest is diagnosing and repairing (well....practicing repairing at least). Some time when I've got a day or so I'm going to work on the floppy drive to try and get that working....not sure what the issue is. I'll probably still replace all the electrolytic capacitors on the plus/4 though. 40 year old capacitors are usually ticking time bombs.

If memory serves me correctly, there was a pretty common electro-mechanical failure associated with those drives. The Wikipedia page mentions head alignment issues and a "machine gun" sound when they start having problems. That all sounded vaguely familiar to me.


Also If memory serves me, that floppy drive is a 1541 and was a remnant of our C64 that died. It may not work with that Plus 4 because the C64 was a serial interface, and the Plus 4 was parallel.

everything I'm reading says any 1541 fdd that works with a C64 will work with plus/4. That being said I will probably troubleshoot the drive and get it working with a C64 before I see if it works with the plus/4. The 1541 drives are also notorious for getting hot so I may swap out for a modern power supply external to the drive. Heat problems with the original power supply being inside the case have caused problems with drive alignment and internal electronics.

You still looking for a TI-99/4A? We had one in 1980s and about 25 years ago I got nostalgic myself and bought one off eBay.

I haven't fooled with it in years and its been kept in mostly conditioned space. I'd be happy to part with it (assuming my wife didn't already unburden me by what has been).

If interested, I will dig it out and snap some pics.

flown-the-coop said:

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You still looking for a TI-99/4A? We had one in 1980s and about 25 years ago I got nostalgic myself and bought one off eBay.

I haven't fooled with it in years and its been kept in mostly conditioned space. I'd be happy to part with it (assuming my wife didn't already unburden me by what has been).

If interested, I will dig it out and snap some pics.

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Appreciate it. Got a few on ebay myself so I'm good to go for now.

Sweet. Have some games and the speech synthesizer. If you ever have interest, just post or send a message.

92Ag95 said:

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Tailgate88 said:

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You should have hit me up in 1983. I can still feel that sweet smooth keyboard and the power of all 16k of RAM.

---

Don't forget that blazing fast 300 baud acoustic coupler modem.

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I can hear that sweet screeching sound right now LOL!

We used to buy Computer Shopper magazine to get the latest list of dial-up bulletin boards to log-in to and download "stuff".

Col. Steve Austin said:

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92Ag95 said:

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Tailgate88 said:

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You should have hit me up in 1983. I can still feel that sweet smooth keyboard and the power of all 16k of RAM.

---

Don't forget that blazing fast 300 baud acoustic coupler modem.

---

I can hear that sweet screeching sound right now LOL!

We used to buy Computer Shopper magazine to get the latest list of dial-up bulletin boards to log-in to and download "stuff".

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Elite warez!