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OMG, the TI-99/4A was a WACKO machine. The TMS9900 CPU was a real gem,
Not a machine I have much experience with. The only one I ever used was in the early 90s at a friend's house. It was a souped-up system, hard drive and special video adapter. It was the family machine of a girl I was trying to date, but she has no interest. Both of us 15 I think. She was only interested in 20-somethings.
My vintage machine of choice is the TRS-80 Model III. My Dad bought one when I was 6, identical to the machines he used at work. Cassette only at first, then a single double density floppy and 48k RAM. Not a bad platform.
I learned BASIC, Z80 assembly, and FORTRAN on that box. Tandy's FORTRAN wasn't F77 compliant, especially with regard to string handling, so I mostly reverted to assembly. Lots of good emulators around for the Z80 now.
I just like "Hunt The Wumpus".
It is kind of like INTV AD&D - only more primitive. It is actually a blend of that and Minesweeper, I guess. You have to figure out what room the Wumpus is in - which is basically Minesweeper with 1 flag, in a maze like INTV AD&D.
This made me remember I had a dream where I was IN the Atari 2600 Adventure game recently. Realized the dragons aren't limited by walls because they can FLY. Woke up going, "epiphany".
45 years later.
Tue Mar 10 2026 18:14:48 UTC from IGnatius T FoobarOMG, the TI-99/4A was a WACKO machine. The TMS9900 CPU was a real gem, it could run a much bigger machine if you let it just sit on the bus and run at full speed. You could say it was a 16-bit CPU forced to breathe through a soda straw. Between the 8-bit DRAM, the 8-bit system bus, the bank switched ROMs and RAMs, video RAM being accessible only through two internal I/O ports instead of memory map ... it was the brain of a very capable multiuser machine trapped inside a toy computer.