Great job as always, Matt, I don't think you could have done any better describing ToD. I have several modules for ToD, but I'm not sure if any of the Star Trek or Doctor Who creations are among them.
The TI-99/4a was very interesting, and I think if TI did THREE things sooner, it might have lasted, particularly given TI's company strength and financial resources, and especially considering that TI lasted into PC clones and did particularly well with PC laptops for a while before pulling out completely. Anyway, the first thing would have been to release the TI-99/4a FIRST, which didn't come out until 1981, and not the TI-99/4, which came out in 1979. They were essentially the same machine, but the TI-99/4a featured a full stroke keyboard, additional graphics modes, and lower case characters, all of which were much needed to be long-term competitive. The second thing TI could have done, would have been lower the price much sooner. The TI-99/4 came out at over $1100, and that's NOT in today's dollars, and, while the TI-99/4a was released for much less (partially because it didn't need a monitor bundled with it, something the previous model did to avoid FCC RF issues), but it still should have been lower. Third, and perhaps most egregiously, TI was NOT friendly to third parties creating and releasing products for their platform. If two or more of those things had not been the case, the TI-99/4a might have lasted through the crash, and we might have even seen the TI-99/8 released, which would have been particularly impressive.
In any case, for a very short time, the TI-99/4a was I believe the best selling personal computer, but that's only after TI dropped the price ridiculously low (I believe at one point you could get the system for as low as $50) when they were clearing them out. This was of course in the face of stiff competition from Commodore with their Commodore 64, where Commodore was in complete control of the supply chain and were able to price all the competition out of business or to also-ran status. Of course the C-64 was nothing technically to sniff at either, offering 64K standard, when other systems were at 48K or, like the TI-99/4a, 16K.
Probably after I do my AA TV episodes on the TRS-80 - whenever that happens (been dealing with house stuff of late that has sucked up all my time) - I'm going to do the TI-99/4a next, since that's also out and about from when I was doing the Infocom captures with Rick Thornquist. Interestingly, I found the Infocom games looked quite pleasing font-wise on the TI-99/4a, though of course it required a Peripheral Expansion Box (PEB) with 32K memory and a disk drive, which was by no means a common configuration at the time (perhaps another factor against the TI-99/4a's ultimate success was the lack of an easy-to-set up disk-based system). Really, there are a bounty of interesting things created for the system, some right on the cusp of its unexpected death, like being the primary personal computer platform for the home PLATO system and for Milton Bradley's MBX, which greatly expanded the TI's game playing abilities and featured things like analog joysticks and speech recognition. I'll try to cover all that in the AA TV episodes.
*************************** Bill Loguidice, Managing Director
Armchair Arcade, Inc.
Great job as always, Matt, I don't think you could have done any better describing ToD. I have several modules for ToD, but I'm not sure if any of the Star Trek or Doctor Who creations are among them.
The TI-99/4a was very interesting, and I think if TI did THREE things sooner, it might have lasted, particularly given TI's company strength and financial resources, and especially considering that TI lasted into PC clones and did particularly well with PC laptops for a while before pulling out completely. Anyway, the first thing would have been to release the TI-99/4a FIRST, which didn't come out until 1981, and not the TI-99/4, which came out in 1979. They were essentially the same machine, but the TI-99/4a featured a full stroke keyboard, additional graphics modes, and lower case characters, all of which were much needed to be long-term competitive. The second thing TI could have done, would have been lower the price much sooner. The TI-99/4 came out at over $1100, and that's NOT in today's dollars, and, while the TI-99/4a was released for much less (partially because it didn't need a monitor bundled with it, something the previous model did to avoid FCC RF issues), but it still should have been lower. Third, and perhaps most egregiously, TI was NOT friendly to third parties creating and releasing products for their platform. If two or more of those things had not been the case, the TI-99/4a might have lasted through the crash, and we might have even seen the TI-99/8 released, which would have been particularly impressive.
In any case, for a very short time, the TI-99/4a was I believe the best selling personal computer, but that's only after TI dropped the price ridiculously low (I believe at one point you could get the system for as low as $50) when they were clearing them out. This was of course in the face of stiff competition from Commodore with their Commodore 64, where Commodore was in complete control of the supply chain and were able to price all the competition out of business or to also-ran status. Of course the C-64 was nothing technically to sniff at either, offering 64K standard, when other systems were at 48K or, like the TI-99/4a, 16K.
Probably after I do my AA TV episodes on the TRS-80 - whenever that happens (been dealing with house stuff of late that has sucked up all my time) - I'm going to do the TI-99/4a next, since that's also out and about from when I was doing the Infocom captures with Rick Thornquist. Interestingly, I found the Infocom games looked quite pleasing font-wise on the TI-99/4a, though of course it required a Peripheral Expansion Box (PEB) with 32K memory and a disk drive, which was by no means a common configuration at the time (perhaps another factor against the TI-99/4a's ultimate success was the lack of an easy-to-set up disk-based system). Really, there are a bounty of interesting things created for the system, some right on the cusp of its unexpected death, like being the primary personal computer platform for the home PLATO system and for Milton Bradley's MBX, which greatly expanded the TI's game playing abilities and featured things like analog joysticks and speech recognition. I'll try to cover all that in the AA TV episodes.
***************************
Bill Loguidice, Managing Director
Armchair Arcade, Inc.