Texas Instruments | 1981 | TMS9900 @ 3MHz | 16KB VRAM + 256bytes Scratchpad RAM | Color Composite via DIN5
Ya wanna know the real reason I went to the Oct. '23 VCF Swap Meet? Okay, it actually was to see friends, but the initial kicker for me to do it was to buy my friend Colantia some sort of '70s or '80s micro. We assumed there had to be tons there, after all that would be the place for 'em, and she just wanted something nice and western for her collection. Turns out we were wrong, there wasn't much of what she was looking for, but there were a lot of cheapo TI99s and I couldn't walk away with nothing! $15 changed hands, I got this system and its power supply, and I was set.
I do love the 99/4A, it's a neat little system. They're affordable, they're simple to get up and running, there are all sorts of cool loaders and SD cartridges, and did i mention the homebrew scene? It might not be the most exciting, I won't deny that we were looking for an Atari 8-bit (and couldn't find one at a reasonable price that hadn't sold by the time I got to walk away from the truck to check 'em out, the last 800XL left was like $200), but I think she'll love it once we've got it going.
You may notice in this initial image set that the screen looks screwed up and yep, it is! Not only is it rolling but the color looks a little screwy. I'm going to test this on a good 'ol CRT soon enough and see if that solves the issue, if not then I assume the 10.whateverMHz crystal is dead and there may be something else to address? I was told that this crashes on loading software so after that video output issue is fixed we'll look into that. The goal's to have this ready for her by Christmas, it's November 5th as I write this, so we'll see what we can do!
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