2 Warps to Neptune

5 Responses to “Christmas Morning, 1982: Texas Instruments TI-99/4A”

1. 1 thistledownjohn (@ThistledownJohn) December 3, 2014 at 1:17 pm

   I believe I also see a package of rightfully ignored blue-striped tube socks on the left. 🙂

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   • 2 2W2N December 3, 2014 at 4:47 pm

     Clothes. Bah!

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2. 3 Tom Beiter December 4, 2014 at 4:12 am

   The TI-99/4A was my first computer, although I bought it second hand. I spent hours and hours typing programs into it only to play them for a little bit and lose everything when I turned it off (initially I didn’t have the optional tape recorder to save the programs although I did finally get one about a year later). Being a bit (okay a lot) of a loner with few friends and even fewer who came to my house, I would write my own games to occupy my time. One of my favorites was a D&D style game I named Rahn-Doom (I know, lame) that would generate a random dungeon (although I still had to graph it on paper), monsters and roll the dice for you. It was very primitive, but I enjoyed it a lot and it paved the way for my career as a computer programmer.

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   • 4 2W2N December 4, 2014 at 9:40 pm

     I did the same thing with BASIC on my Atari 800. No storage, so I’d leave it on all day, type some code, eat lunch, watch cartoons, type more code, run the program a few times, then turn everything off and dream of how I was going to break into the KGB’s computer system as soon as my parents got me an IBM PC XT with all the fixings.

     Too bad we can’t play Rahn-Doom today!

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     • 5 Tom Beiter December 5, 2014 at 12:37 am

       >Too bad we can’t play Rahn-Doom today!

       Well, I do still have that cassette tape laying around somewhere…

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