akaggie05 said:
That's pretty good. It's also funny to me how most everyone I talk to about TI thinks that all they make is calculators. That part of the business is something like less than 5% of their total revenue, but the rest of their products aren't consumer-facing so they might as well not exist.
TI had (or maybe still has; the building is still there, I believe) a plant in Sherman near where I lived as a kid for a while, so I was familiar with the company. I didn't know everything they made, of course, but when I started using calculators in, I think, Jr. High (had that calc that you could spell words upside down!!), the TI brand was something I knew. The funny thing was, by the time we had moved to the DFW area, I was even more familiar with it because we passed at least 3 TI plants on any trip between DFW and Sherman on 75.
I don't recall where I came into contact with it, but I did at one time briefly use the TI-99 computer. When I was in late HS, a friend of my sister's worked at a small property management company in Oak Lawn and they bought a computer, which may have been the TI-99 -- but knew nothing about how to work it. I came in and set everything up though I really don't know if they ever used it much. They seemed impressed though I was faking my way through about half of it!!