The 8-Bit Era's Weird Uncle: The TI-99/4A

I have such mixed feelings about the TI-99/4A.

It was our family computer. We rented games for it, and that was fun. I learned BASIC. I tried to create things with it, as advertised, and sort of only semi-succeeded repeatedly.

My parents saw that I was running into the limits of the system, and got me both the Extended Basic and Terminal Emulator II cartridges. I dug into Extended Basic, and was able to write "games" with actual sprites that could be manipulated! There they were, flying around, those sprites. That being said, these games always ended up being quite bad, and there wasn't a clear path for them to being much better. We were part of a users group, and the Extended Basic games others were making were perhaps more refined but also honestly not much better.

At the same time, Atarisoft were releasing epic cartridges for the TI. A strangely OK Donkey Kong and Ms. Pac Man, as good or better than on the other home computers. It was clear there was no path at all from whatever was going on with the Extended Basic cartridge to whatever magic voodoo allowed for the TI ports of these arcade games. (To be honest, I still don't really understand it, other than something to do with... GROM? Assembly?)

On the other hand, Terminal Emulator II, which my parents bought me so I could fool around with the TI's speech synthesizer, taught me about the need to connect to online services via a modem. I asked my parents about getting a modem, and they were like... "no".

My pre-teen brain was like "I need to buy myself a modem as soon as I can!"

I bought a 1200 baud modem out of Computer Shopper for mere dollars when I was 16. It changed my life. I got on boards, and then the Internet, before most - and probably you. I learned networking and architecture. No regrets.

But I still have no idea whatsoever how those TI programmers bridged the gap between my horrifically bad Extended Basic programs, where I felt I had maxed out the capabilities of the computer, and the magnificent games and arcade ports available via cartridge. It sort of haunts me. What even?

The difference is definitely Assembly. You could dip into heavier memory management, and control every aspect from that low level.

I got on to my local public library (in the US) with an 800 baud modem on the Atari 8-bit. There was barely any security, which was all bypassed by "password". I could check out books for individuals, alter the amount they owed in late-fees, or erase that someone had a book and then erase that the book ever existed. I have always been more of a white/grey hacker, as far as I don't always report an exploit, but I don't abuse it either. Now that I'm older, I am happy to report exploits confidentially.

I quickly found the BBS in my area were not as usable at 800 baud, and moved to a 286 with a modem slightly higher baud. Until my family got a 386, it was a bit slow, but I was still sitting there like an addict consuming my digital fix! Even in the mid-90's I was amazed at the speed of modems coming out. I believe in 1997/early 1998 I had saved enough money to buy myself my own PC, and had a faster modem. I'm not sure what the speed was back then, but it was good enough to play Quake 1. I started to lose touch with the low-level of computers around that time, but also saw the value in higher-level programming. I think having understood lower-level computers in my early years helped me to understand things like memory management in current days, where a lot of my co-workers have no concept of running into memory problems until they hit a wall.