Is your TI a siphon for money? (In a nice way of course) ;)

[Omega-TI]

Okay! It's time for... another poll.

 

This one may be hard for some of you guys living in denial, or who have wives that you're keeping secrets from, so to protect the guilty, this poll is going to remain anonymous. However if you break secrecy in a message below, that's all on you.

 

 

[Shift838]

Over the past years to build my main TI system up I have spent probably at least $1500. This takes in account my:

 

• A new never opened TI Black and Silver console
• F18A upgrade
• PEB with
  • SCSI REV F
  • Myarc FDC with 80 track
  • 1024mb SAMS
  • RS232 with HDX
  • CorComp Triple-Tech card
  • 2 x 3.5 floppy (80 track)
  • 1 x 3.5 floppy (40 track)
  • 1 x 5.25 floppy 40 track
  • Two external power supplies
  • 2 x Western Digital 250mb SCSI
  • 2 x EZ 135 SyQuest removable media hard drives
  • 12 x EZ135 cartridges
  • 2 x SCSI2SD cards
  • UDS10
  • Raspberry Pi3 (to support the 99/4a for serial connections if needed)
  • Various carts (XB 2.7, FR99, etc).
  • 2 x NanoPEBs (V1 and V2)
  • Latest USB Keyboard modification.

Its probably more than what I stated for funds, but somewhere around that mark. I find it easier to ask for forgiveness than permission!

[PeBo]

Last month marked the point where I've spent more on my 2016 TI and software than I did back in 1983 when I bought my first one.

 

But the be fair WAY more than 3/4 of that is shipping.

 

If I was an Atari or Commodore enthusiast, that wouldn't be an issue, as their 8-bit computers were wildly popular North of the 49th, but the 4A - not so much. I was lucky enough to find my Extended Basic cartridge and PEB (w/RS232/32K/dual drives/controller) up here, and a few items in Germany and the UK, where shipping is considerably cheaper, but the vast majority has comes from the US, where it is a rare occasion when shipping doesn't double the price (triple or more under the eBay Global Shipping rip-off, where brokerage fees are calculated by final selling price, not on actual trade treaty duty/tax values).

 

I estimate that I've spent about $1500 purchasing, and probably an additional $3000-$4000 just getting stuff here. (and I haven't even factored in the exchange rate, which has been all over the map over the past 3 years, dropping at one point to 65¢ on the US $ (today it sits at 78¢))

 

A Heroin addiction would have been cheaper, but much less fun.

[oracle_jedi]

I'm assuming you mean since we got our first TI.

 

In that time I have owned 4 consoles, a PEB with 32K and disk drive, the 10" TI Color Monitor, a CC9900 Mini-Expansion, an MBX, 2 CF7s and an SVD.

 

I have also owned over 200 cartridges including new releases such as Pitfall, Scramble and Jet Set Willy. I still have most of those, but I am down to a single console with the 9900 Mini-Expansion and the CF7s. The PEB, Monitor, MBX and spare consoles are all gone.

 

So over 22 years (got my first PAL TI-99/4A at a car boot sale in Milton Keynes in 1994) I reckon I've spent about $1700 with tax and shipping. So about $77/yr. If I take out the prices I got when I sold stuff the amount is even lower.

 

Much cheaper than my Scotch habit.

 

However I will admit that the $400 or so I spent on the CC9900 and SVD was entirely motivated by the desire to play Thorn EMI's Submarine Commander on the TI.

 

That remains the most expensive single "price to play" for a game, second only to the $300 I spent to acquire the parts to build Atari Jaguar carts so I could play Battlesphere, or the more-than-$200 I spent to get an ACA500 for my Amiga so I could play Frontier at a decent frame rate.

 

I still play Submarine Commander. It still rocks.

[+Ksarul]

I dare not contemplate what I've spent on my TI hobby over the last three decades. . .just the cost for the two 99/8s and the 99/2 that I own puts me into the multiple thousands range. Add all of the PEB cards I've bought over the years, the rare cartridges I've tracked down, and the stuff only available in other parts of the world and it easily tops 30K, and that's before I include shipping. . .

 

and then there are the TI projects. I've got at least 10K in parts so that I can have fun building things.

 

It is a lot of fun though--and that's one of those things that makes it a good hobby--the other is the good people I run into along the way.

[+InsaneMultitasker]

Oh dear.... if we consider the phrase "time is money", your spending numbers would be woefully inadequate

[sparkdrummer]

Time and money well spent.

[+Schmitzi]

this is not hobby only, this is love, too

[+jedimatt42]

I agree with Karsul, about not daring to quantify the money. I can't cast a vote on this poll, because I cannot separate the main-machine from the rest. The secondaries are in support of the main. I haven't even started 'collecting'

 

When I started this I kept a spread sheet so I could watch if I was getting out of hand or not. I deleted that spread sheet. I could game it anyway... do the electronics, tools, eprom programmers, and all count? or are they part of a separate hobby? Is it a retro-computing hobby, or a TI hobby? How much am I willing to spend on a hard-drive interface for my Geneve (can you put a price on love - thank you Schmitzi)? What about furniture? I just received permission to turn the kid's play room ( they are both off in college ) into my play room... It is all just lifestyle and entertainment budget...

 

I like to think of the time as entertainment.

 

And, oracle_jedi's comment about Scotch really puts some perspective on this. Next time you think you don't want to by a PEB cause of the shipping cost, just skip the good Scotch for half a year, and it'll seem like nothing.

 

-M@

[PeBo]

Gee and I thought I was the only one that started (then deserted) a spending spreadsheet when I started TI collecting 3 years ago.

[Omega-TI]

Gee and I thought I was the only one that started (then deserted) a spending spreadsheet when I started TI collecting 3 years ago.

 

Denial & avoidance... common in a hobby... ...but not really necessary for most* of us TI'ers.

Besides, it's not so bad when it's INCREMENTAL spending.

 

From the results (so far) in the poll, people, for the most part* are being quite reasonable.

I mean really, if you break it down by month, say $1,100 over three years, that's only about $30.00 a month.

There are others here who have been into the TI a lot longer than that, so their over all monthly expense is lower.

 

When you figure in all the FREEBIES, the TI is truly an inexpensive hobby.

[Tursi]

I'm sure there's a lot of denial on my side - I didn't count in the cost of parts for experimentation either

[Arnuphis]

Probably dropped around $500 all told for my system,PEB, Lotharek, AMS etc. Money well spent and a drop in the ocean compared to what other retro platforms cost to get into (Looking at you, Amiga!).

[Sinphaltimus]

I'm fortunate to have needed able to acquire my current ti build relatively inexpensively. I'm probably looking at about 3 beans myself.

 

I'm also lucky to have preserved my Amiga 500 repurchase many years ago. For both the ti and Amiga I see about 500 more dollars each to be where I want to be. This includes add-ons and peripherals that don't exist (currently in development) yet as well as some that do.

[Omega-TI]

... PEB, Lotharek, AMS etc. Money well spent and a drop in the ocean compared to what other retro platforms cost to get into.

 

Agreed, some of those other systems can cost a small fortune. I even considered an Amiga once for it's video capabilities, but technology has gone digital and marched on, so I gave up that idea.

 

F18A - Without it, I doubt I would have stayed with the TI.

Lotharek HxC - Awesome device, I could never go back to old style diskettes as my main storage method.

S AMS - Still hoping that this investment will someday be justified.

PS/2 Keyboard - Tursi's invention makes everything better... except Micro Pinball. Love that thing!

FlashROM 99 - While technically a cartridge, it never seems come out, so I consider it an add on!

Expansion Box - A "must have" if you plan to do anything other than the basics.

 

At the present time, I only envision one more card for my P-Box if and when it's ever released. Right now, I'm sort of toying with the idea of a secondary "small footprint system".

 

I'm thinking of a TI with an F18A and a VGA to HDMI converter internally, with Matt's 32K RAM device once it's finished. Those two items with a FlashROM would make a nice little gaming machine. I also plan to add a couple of other things that may be in the pipeline for it.

[RickyDean]

 

Agreed, some of those other systems can cost a small fortune. I even considered an Amiga once for it's video capabilities, but technology has gone digital and marched on, so I gave up that idea.

 

F18A - Without it, I doubt I would have stayed with the TI.

Lotharek HxC - Awesome device, I could never go back to old style diskettes as my main storage method.

S AMS - Still hoping that this investment will someday be justified.

PS/2 Keyboard - Tursi's invention makes everything better... except Micro Pinball. Love that thing!

FlashROM 99 - While technically a cartridge, it never seems come out, so I consider it an add on!

Expansion Box - A "must have" if you plan to do anything other than the basics.

 

At the present time, I only envision one more card for my P-Box if and when it's ever released. Right now, I'm sort of toying with the idea of a secondary "small footprint system".

 

I'm thinking of a TI with an F18A and a VGA to HDMI converter internally, with Matt's 32K RAM device once it's finished. Those two items with a FlashROM would make a nice little gaming machine. I also plan to add a couple of other things that may be in the pipeline for it.

Yes, One of my TI's is setting on the tv stand with xbox, xbox360,ps3 bluray, PC, etc. It will be sporting a flashrom 99 in the near future and it will have a CF7+ on its side for storage and will be tied into the PC, eventually. Gaming, teaching of grandchildren, so forth. All tied into my 42 inch RCA and possibly a 60 or 70 inch 4K in the future.

Edited September 9, 2016 by RickyDean

[Omega-TI]

... and possibly a 60 or 70 inch 4K in the future.

 

I sure hope there is an F18A in that console! I'd hate to see what a plain old composite output would look like on a 70" screen

[RickyDean]

 

I sure hope there is an F18A in that console! I'd hate to see what a plain old composite output would look like on a 70" screen

You would be right, there will be one of those in the near future, forgot to include that in the list

[BurritoBeans]

Nah, not really. I don't exactly own much TI-99/4 stuff - I got it all out of curiosity when I found it at a yard sale - but I do like the computer when I come around to dragging it out. Because it usually sits in a box in the back I don't pay a ton of attention to it, and I haven't bought anything for it in a while here.

 

(This is pretty much my entire collection of stuff)

• TI-99/4 Computer - $20
• Hookups and PSU - $10
• PEB - $40
• Software (Parsec, Tunnels of Doom, TI Invaders) - $10

I think eventually I'd like to get into the computer more - I lurk around this section of the forum now and then, and from the look of it some cool stuff comes out alongside some existing software which seems neat. Also, I just like the whole hardware side with the expansion modules, and I'd like to get a /4A with a full keyboard as a main unit instead of the one I have with the chiclet keyboard on it.

[Tursi]

 

 

I'd like to get a /4A with a full keyboard as a main unit instead of the one I have with the chiclet keyboard on it.

 

I'm sure anyone here would trade your 99/4 for a 4A, maybe even two.

 

Do you actually use the 4 as a main system? I didn't think anyone did... they're a little more rare and a little more limited (no bitmap mode, minor hardware and software differences under the hood (besides the keyboard)).

[+Ksarul]

@Burritobeans, next time I'm up in Erie I'll drag one of my spare /4A machines up with me for you. My wife will be happy that one of my extra parts actually leaves the house. . .if I'd known you needed one, I would have brought one with me when I was up that way at the beginning of August.

 

I do test some things against one of my /4s too @Tursi. Especially the PEB boards. Cartridges are pretty much a problem with the graphics differences, especially when it comes to games.

[Tursi]

The other difference in the software that I'm aware of involves loading the character set... on the 4 it's stored 6 bytes per character versus 7 on the 4A, so if you read the GROM directly you need to take that into account (I did that in the loader code I created for Jon's multicarts way back when, but that was really more of a curiosity to see if I could.) Also, of course, the 4 doesn't even have the vector to load 'lowercase'.

 

I wasn't sure, but does the 4 support loading ROM-only cartridges? At some point I told myself it doesn't.

 

Still, interesting to know about!

[LASooner]

I just spent 100 more after I ruined my disk controller trying to desolder to do the 80 track update.