I'll never forget the TI-99/4A. I was 8 years old, in second grade in Southern California. We had a "computer lab" which was a mobile building with 13 or 15 TI-99/4A's, and about half of them had color TV's and the rest, B+W. Nobody really knew anything, but we did have books to copy BASIC programs out of.
One kid entered a program that flashed colors and patterns on the color TV. Our teacher was epileptic, and this sent her into a seizure. Myself and another kid ran to get the 5th grade teacher who'd been a doctor at some point (don't ask, I dont know, I was 8) and he came running and attended to her. She was fine.
I'd always been interested in how things work, taking things apart, playing with my 30-in-1 electronics lab from Radio Shack. But this new computer thing... this was something. That experience flipped a bit in my 8 year old brain. All because of a TI-99/4A.
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