S1500 Posted February 8, 2013 Share Posted February 8, 2013 Fascinating... http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57567167-1/this-lovely-10mhz-home-computer-yours-for-only-$3240/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title This computer could have won the war! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sometimes99er Posted February 8, 2013 Share Posted February 8, 2013 Nice. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+save2600 Posted February 8, 2013 Share Posted February 8, 2013 Always thought that was one sexy machine. A shame TI decided to exit the home computer business when they did. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+mizapf Posted February 8, 2013 Share Posted February 8, 2013 In hindsight I'm quite happy that TI did not try to market that one. The Geneve, later to come, was in almost all respects superior to the 99/8, except for the larger address space of the 99/8. However, it only got that by a memory mapper (like the Geneve). From my works in MESS (and if you are interested to see it running, just get yourself a copy for free instead of $3240) I learned a lot about it, and frankly speaking, I was pretty disappointed by many weird technical decisions in that machine. For instance, you still got the 9918A VDP with all restrictions we know from the TI-99/4A console. This console could address up to 16 MiB of RAM, but still no 80 column display?! The TMS9995 (same as in the Geneve) was used with a disabled on-chip RAM, probably because they could not get it working with the memory mapper. If you know the Geneve you can imagine what it means to have on-chip RAM. They decided to hardwire PASCAL into it. OMG. That is, with PASCAL in GROMs there was no chance of update, and imagine you wanted a different programming language. We could not know in those times that PASCAL would lose against C, but hardwiring was pretty much the wrong direction. Also, speech ROM on the console board. Why? Most speech output was by direct output, and the vocabulary had the strange charm of "I...AM...A...COMPUTER". A complete break with the traditional peripheral devices.The built-in Extended Basic II cannot run with the standard floppy controller, as it immediately locks up (assumes the PAB would be located in CPU RAM, which is not what all our controllers expect); you needed the new Hexbus system. BTW, the Editor/Assembler, in turn, works with the 99/8 and TI floppy controller. (There may be different versions of the console, maybe one of them had a fix for Extended Basic II, who knows.) And by the way, why did they not include Editor/Assembler on-board? And finally, imagine what this decent thing would have cost. With a lot on RAM, built-in PASCAL, Speech synthesizer and more ... I'm quite sure that in 1984 this machine would have failed miserably on the market. Michael 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matthew180 Posted February 8, 2013 Share Posted February 8, 2013 (edited) Does anyone know who the seller was and who bought it? Edit: I never looked in to the 99/8 specifics, but based on Michael's description is sounds like it was designed by the marketing dept. and not engineering. Edited February 8, 2013 by matthew180 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ti99iuc Posted February 8, 2013 Share Posted February 8, 2013 (edited) me instead the seller is: brad R merrick, NY Edited February 8, 2013 by ti99userclub Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+adamantyr Posted February 8, 2013 Share Posted February 8, 2013 I agree about the TMS9918A, it was an odd choice to put into their new console... to be fair, though, it WAS a prototype. They were probably just putting what they had available in it. The V9938 chips were made by Yamaha and introduced three years after TI left the home computer market. I'd be curious to know if TI had been planning to make such a chip eventually, or if was all Yamaha's ideas... Wikipedia offers no insight. Adamantyr Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+hloberg Posted February 8, 2013 Share Posted February 8, 2013 In hindsight I'm quite happy that TI did not try to market that one. The Geneve, later to come, was in almost all respects superior to the 99/8, except for the larger address space of the 99/8. However, it only got that by a memory mapper (like the Geneve). Also by then machines like the Atari ST and Amiga were just a few months away. So, even if TI would have came out with the 99/8 it would been quickly supplanted by machines far superior and probably at the same price. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+adamantyr Posted February 8, 2013 Share Posted February 8, 2013 Not that either the Amiga or the Atari ST had much time in the limelight... That was the era when computers got super-expensive again, computer magazines got smaller and stopped listing programs, and everybody not involved with computers decided the fad was over. Even schools stopped teaching programming and even got rid of computer labs. A horrible time. Adamantyr Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
S1500 Posted February 8, 2013 Author Share Posted February 8, 2013 Also by then machines like the Atari ST and Amiga were just a few months away. So, even if TI would have came out with the 99/8 it would been quickly supplanted by machines far superior and probably at the same price. You know you did something wrong when Atari releases a home computer post-82 that's more popular than yours(Geneve). Then again, the Geneve had zero marketing, and you had to get the PEB. Not exactly a winning combination. Guess the Geneve was made for hobbyists. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tursi Posted February 8, 2013 Share Posted February 8, 2013 I think a number of the criticisms listed there look better when viewed at the time. I know I was drooling over the 99/8 when I first heard about it. But specifically: 9918A - yes, this disappointed me even at the time. But we've since seen datasheets that show TI was working on better VDPs. We've no way to know if one would have ended up in there. Pascal - Pascal was /huge/ back then. That's why they went to all the trouble of building a pCode card. Pascal was the Java of the 80s and for a long while it looked like it might actually take off, what really ended up slowing it down was that a lot of popular systems used a hardware card of some sort to support it (I know the Apple used a CP/M card to get Pascal). TI's own pCode card, as I understand it, sold comparably well amongst university computer science students. The published specs promised both XB2 and Pascal, so you had your choice. Having BASIC in ROM has never stopped TI users from loading other languages, neither would Pascal have limited options on the 99/8. You can always load software. Locking it down in ROM - that was what you did. RAM was too expensive to have enough onboard to load your OS into. Speech ROM onboard - for compatibility with the 99/4 speech synthesizer. Yes, not much TI software used it, and it sucked, but LOTS of Extended BASIC software used that speech and if it didn't work, people would bitch. It was a relatively cheap addition for compatibility's sake. XB2 incompatibility with the disk controller - hard to say what direction they would have taken this. I would call it a bug and expect some form of compatibility code would have come sooner. The 99/8 only barely made it to prototype 1 stage -- there was a lot of work left to do. EA on board would be nice for the power users, but not matter to the average user or to business users, and TI was trying to cross-market to them. With XB2 you'd have the ability to load and run assembly without any additional modules, so it would be a lot less important. I remember reading estimates of cost, but not what the numbers were. It wasn't predicted to be too scary, but then, TI's machines did have a habit of coming to market for a lot more than planned. Onboard RAM was only 64k, and the C64 had already showed that could be cheap. TI was giving away the speech synthesizers, and just the chips on a MB is far cheaper than the finished product. PASCAL is just a few more GROMs. I don't think it would have had to be much over $500 once the price stabilized. Mind you, that price couldn't compete with the C64, who it was aimed directly at. It's all pretty hypothetical, but ultimately as much as I'd have loved to see that machine finished, TI probably made the right business decision. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CantStopClicking Posted February 8, 2013 Share Posted February 8, 2013 Just think, If TI did go the other direction, with their business decision, the story would be different, and we may well have never met nor had this conversation. They could have built a blazing fast Cray computer in the case of a TI-99/4A and they would have still sunk. The marketing tactics and software stranglehold decisions ran them into the ground. I don't think TI ever disappointed in the hardware arena, if anything understated and underutilized. Which, eventually led to undeveloped or cut in TI's case. And even if TI would have won the Home Computer wars, would they have survived the fallout over the PC domination? Probably not. The (hi)story would certainly not be as interesting! -Dano Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Vorticon Posted February 8, 2013 Share Posted February 8, 2013 I kind of remember reading somewhere (here?) about someone in Europe working on a 99/8 or Geneve clone. I wonder what happened to that... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jens-eike Posted February 8, 2013 Share Posted February 8, 2013 I agree about the TMS9918A, it was an odd choice to put into their new console... to be fair, though, it WAS a prototype. They were probably just putting what they had available in it. The V9938 chips were made by Yamaha and introduced three years after TI left the home computer market. I'd be curious to know if TI had been planning to make such a chip eventually, or if was all Yamaha's ideas... Wikipedia offers no insight. Adamantyr Look for the TMS9228, it is the missing link with many features of the 9938 designed by TI. Most video modes like 80*24, 512 color palette, 256*210 bitmap etc were planned for this chip. I read a full preliminary data book once, this link shows only an excerpt: http://www.datasheetarchive.com/TMS9228-datasheet.html The 99/8 has a TMS 9118 VDP, the newer design with only two TMS4416 RAM chips (16k*4bit each). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CantStopClicking Posted February 8, 2013 Share Posted February 8, 2013 You're probably thinking this one: Geneve 2: www.ti99ug.co.uk/g2.htm And a thread here: http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/204509-geneve-2-phoenix/ Sounds cool! -Dano Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesD Posted February 8, 2013 Share Posted February 8, 2013 I think the 99/8 might have kept TI in the market a couple more years. The increased memory certainly would have been welcome. I can see including a PCode interpreter in ROM but not the entire compiler. Without improved graphics, improved sound and an 80 column mode it would definitely have been limited to the mid to low end market though. I think it's closer to what TI should have introduced in the first place. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Vorticon Posted February 8, 2013 Share Posted February 8, 2013 You're probably thinking this one: Geneve 2: www.ti99ug.co.uk/g2.htm And a thread here: http://www.atariage....neve-2-phoenix/ Sounds cool! -Dano Ah yes, thanks. Too bad this project seems to be dead... And to think Commodore USA is (successfully ?) selling a Linux based low end computer in a replica C64 case for $1295 tells me that there is a decent market for something like that. Imagine placing the Phoenix in a replica TI 99/8 case and selling it for say $600-700, would there be buyers out there? I bet you there would be given the number of TI 99/4A's sold in the early 80's... But then I could also be completely delusional especially that it's Friday Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesD Posted February 8, 2013 Share Posted February 8, 2013 Pascal - Pascal was /huge/ back then. That's why they went to all the trouble of building a pCode card. Pascal was the Java of the 80s and for a long while it looked like it might actually take off, what really ended up slowing it down was that a lot of popular systems used a hardware card of some sort to support it (I know the Apple used a CP/M card to get Pascal). TI's own pCode card, as I understand it, sold comparably well amongst university computer science students. The published specs promised both XB2 and Pascal, so you had your choice. Having BASIC in ROM has never stopped TI users from loading other languages, neither would Pascal have limited options on the 99/8. You can always load software. Agreed, if you look at the old BYTE magazines from that time there were a lot of Pascal oriented articles. Pascal was the thing at the time. One thing though, Apple introduced their own UCSD compatible Pascal compiler in 1979 which I believe was before the Z80 Softcard. Apple Pascal was a pretty decent implementation. You could extend it with assembly and it could swap code in and out of memory so you could write programs larger than memory. It was very popular and is one of the reasons large RAM cards became popular on the apple. Part of the tools that came with Apple Pascal could be loaded into a RAM drive to reduce disk swapping and larger programs it generated could be kept in RAM without swapping to/from disk. If the PCode interpreter in the 99/8 had supported it's fully expanded memory, the machine might have been very popular with Pascal fans. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
apersson850 Posted February 8, 2013 Share Posted February 8, 2013 Pascal was what they taught us at school in the early 80's here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+hloberg Posted February 8, 2013 Share Posted February 8, 2013 Not that either the Amiga or the Atari ST had much time in the limelight... That was the era when computers got super-expensive again, computer magazines got smaller and stopped listing programs, and everybody not involved with computers decided the fad was over. Even schools stopped teaching programming and even got rid of computer labs. A horrible time. Adamantyr And programming got to be less fun. I never enjoyed programming my Atari ST as much as I did my Atari 8-bit or my TI99. There just wasn't the challenge like on the 8-bits. I guess that's why I (and a lot of other people) have gotten into retro computing. Ever bit counts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+adamantyr Posted February 9, 2013 Share Posted February 9, 2013 I think the 99/8 might have kept TI in the market a couple more years. The increased memory certainly would have been welcome. I can see including a PCode interpreter in ROM but not the entire compiler. Without improved graphics, improved sound and an 80 column mode it would definitely have been limited to the mid to low end market though. I think it's closer to what TI should have introduced in the first place. Unfortunately, even the hottest home computer ever probably wouldn't have plugged the massive loss in revenue that TI suffered in 1983. Keep in mind that the video game crash occured at the same time too... I don't think any hardware breakthroughs would have altered the state of the market enough to change history in that regard. Also, TI had one major flaw in their approach to the home computer market; they did not cultivate a strong third-party developer base. Their architecture was radically different from anything else on the market. They provided little to no documentation on programming in TMS9900 assembly, which meant most 3rd party software was BASIC or Extended BASIC. AND they discouraged third-party developer companies by putting lock-chips in the consoles. Adamantyr Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rocky007 Posted February 9, 2013 Share Posted February 9, 2013 me instead the seller is: brad R merrick, NY really ? wooooow congratulation ! i hope you'll offer us deep review of it... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ti99iuc Posted February 9, 2013 Share Posted February 9, 2013 (edited) thankyou rocky ... it was a dream to have... for me It's like having a beautiful and rare work of art ... just now i must pay the total amount for next 24 months... because I asked for a loan installments and bought the 8. i'm just hoping does not come out immediately a 2 .... I would first pay off this ...how much is expensive to be lovesick for ti99 ... Edited February 9, 2013 by ti99userclub Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rocky007 Posted February 9, 2013 Share Posted February 9, 2013 i understand you so much, it's a piece of history ... i didn't knew about this ebay auction, i would be also very interested in buying it. If one day you want to resell it, dont hesitate to contact me Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+hloberg Posted February 9, 2013 Share Posted February 9, 2013 (edited) Thing is even if TI would have come out with the 99/8 with all the specs and a great price things wouldn't have been any different, we would have had a PC world. People forget what a 300lb. gorilla IBM was at the time. The moment they released the PC it was game over for everyone else. Even Apple almost went under. I remember IBM 'gave' our school, and a lot of other schools, free PCs when the came out. Completely loaded with software. With marketing muscle like that who could have competed. Oh yes, and congratulations on your win! Edited February 9, 2013 by hloberg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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