I used TI99/4As at school in the Isle of Man at age 16 or so. I thought they were sad, rather crippled things then. Horribly slow, limited BASIC, and the school didn't have Extended BASIC cartridges.
I still wonder... Could TI have made a non-crippled TI99 at the time that wouldn't have been vastly more expensive?
I know there was the planned, prototyped, and cancelled TI99/8:
http://www.99er.net/998art.html
http://www.99er.net/998.html
64kB RAM, Extended BASIC as standard, expandable to 15MB.
But that would have cost a fortune at the time.
I'm just wondering if a TI99/4 with 32kB of RAM attached directly to the CPU and maybe a better BASIC would have been achievable for not much more?
The 99/8 never shipped but the Geneve 9640 shows what the architecture could do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneve_9640
I still wonder... Could TI have made a non-crippled TI99 at the time that wouldn't have been vastly more expensive?
I know there was the planned, prototyped, and cancelled TI99/8:
http://www.99er.net/998art.html
http://www.99er.net/998.html
64kB RAM, Extended BASIC as standard, expandable to 15MB.
But that would have cost a fortune at the time.
I'm just wondering if a TI99/4 with 32kB of RAM attached directly to the CPU and maybe a better BASIC would have been achievable for not much more?
The 99/8 never shipped but the Geneve 9640 shows what the architecture could do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneve_9640