Between the earlier blog posts on BASIC programming, RobotWar and this article over at PC Advisor, I suppose I got nostalgic for my first home computer. The Texas Instruments 99/4A — what an awkward name that was.

At school, I had first experience a couple of different Apple ][+ computers (a Bell & Howell and a standard), and then Commodore Pet computers.

Initially, I didn’t have any storage device for the computer, so I had to key in programs as I needed them. Not long after the machine I got a cable that allowed a standard tape deck to work as a (manually controlled) storage unit. Eventually, I’d end up with sidecar expansions for: the speech synthesizer, 32KB memory, 5.25″ disk drives, and an Okidata printer.

There was a strict ANSI compliant BASIC included in ROM (TI BASIC) on the TI-99/4A, but it wasn’t too hard to work around most of the language differences. I remember keying in a text processing program from a magazine (pretty much a clone of roff), and saving my work to tape to print at school; only to find out that our school computers would read tapes made by my home computer. The most fundamental (to me at the time) missing functionality had to do with graphics. The TI came with neither sprites (included on the Commodore 64) or line drawing routines (on the Apple ][) built-in.

I eventually got the Extended BASIC cartridge which added sprites, much more powerful direct memory access routines (PEEK & POKE). The TI also became my gateway into assembly language as I used the Mini Memory Module Line-By-Line Assembler and eventually the Editor/Assembler to (attempt to) add line drawing facilities to the TI. That same project also taught me all about slope-intercept form.

Gaming on the TI-99/4A was a two-edged sword. One one hand there were a limited selection of nice games available (unlike the Apple or Commodore systems), and on the other that forced me into a lot more programming. There were a few really good games available for the TI, a couple stick out even to this day. Parsec was probably the most popular and best made title for the system with a really superb female synthesized voice. I also fondly remember a Star Trek cartridge, also Atarisoft ports of Defender and Pole Position. But it’s clear that I lusted after the large variety of games available on other systems. In the end I spent most of my time writing software. The last project for the TI was my attempt to port Konami Track & Field to the system (that time I learned a bunch about trigonometry). I even went so far as to build a 3-button controller specifically for the game.

That early experience with the TI-99/4A actually affected my computing experience for years to come. I’ve spent the majority of my time and energy working on alternative, “underdog” systems pretty much programming and porting software.

So what was your first home computer and did it impact your direction in life?