Next meeting: Saturday, December 5th at 1pm cst

Tell me about the TI-99/4A Home Computer

The Texas Instruments TI-99/4A is widely known as the first 16-bit home computer. It hit the market in 1981 and sold nearly three million units before TI discontinued it after a massive price war. Here's what made the hardware unique: TMS9900 CPU 16-bit processor running at 3.0 MHz. The dedicated video chip that handles 32 moving sprites and 16 colors. A separate sound chip that plays three musical voices and one noise channel. Memory structure: It packs 16 KB of RAM with the ability to add 32k. Owners didn't open the case to add upgrades. Instead, they plugged modules right into a side port including a Peripheral Expansion Box (PEB) which held a floppy drive, a 32 KB memory expansion, RS232 Card and more. Software came on audio cassettes, floppy disks or Solid State Software cartridges. These command modules plugged in next to the keyboard for instant loading.