What other retro computers are you into?

[LoadWB]

TI-99/4A (my first computer, 1984)
Commodore 64/128 (second and third computers, 1987 and 1990)
Amiga (my fourth computer, 1992)

Additionally, I had a brief flirtation with Apple ][s and Atari (due to school,) the later of which I am delving more into with a long-ago acquisition of an Atari 800XL with 1050 floppy drive, which I am not sure but may be Happy.  There was period during which my 64 was dead and I was relegated to using a Vic-20, which, as neat as it may have been, I am likely not to enshrine in my collection.  My grandfather had a 520ST, and I would love to assemble a beefed up ST system.

I have also in my time turned up an SX-64, of which I now have two.  My family also had a Color Computer 3 for a very short while.  I think we focused more on the 99/4A than on the CoCo3 so it had to go.  A lot of other people have mentioned consoles, so I will mention that we only ever had an Atari 2600.  Personally I have now garnered a 5200, 7800, NES, Genesis CD, Nomad, PlayStation, and an X-Box.

For now, I am content with my active 128D, 99/4A with peripheral expansion box (PEB,) several Amigas, and building up the Atari 800XL system.  I will most likely also set up a 64C system once I get my room organized.

[LoadWB]

And, I just trimmed my Amiga collection down to a reasonable size.  Which is to say it's still nice, just not completely overpowering, anymore.

It is not a system until the lights dim when you turn it on!

[LoadWB]

TI-99/4

You know, those 99/4 systems do not seem to circulate much, but recently I have seen three show up on eBay in the US as well as a couple on Craigslist.  I always wanted to use the Equation Calculator, but cannot think of any other use for the 99/4 that I cannot get from my 4A.

[LoadWB]

I'm surprised that the Atari 8 bit doesn't get more love here.  256 colours, hardware scrolling, 4 channel sound and the ability to mix screen modes and palettes on different scanlines was pretty cool for 1979 and in some respects superior to the C64 three years later (although the latter has much better sprite hardware).  The design is very reminiscent of the Amiga with Pokey, Antic and GTIA having similar functions to Paula, Agnus and Denise.  It even boots up in a Workbench 1.3 shade of blue.  Eastern European coders have done some astonishing stuff with it.  Yes, Atari flogged the original hardware for far too long, but so did Commodore with the Amiga.

I will second on this one, more so knowing what I know now.  I began programming on Atari 1200XLs about a year before I got my 99/4A and well before my first C64.  I was somewhat surprised that the newer machines had only 16 colors versus the 256 colors of the Atari, though the sound of the C64 and the multi-memory map of the 99/4A impressed me technically.  The only thing I did not wrap my head around before moving on was player/missile graphics.  Pity I never owned an Atari at home, my history might have been a little different.  Buddy of mine during my 64 years had one of the flip-top 1200s, and I had to admit it was a pretty neat system.

(Interesting side note, the teacher who ran the Atari lab at the junior high school was also involved in the local 99/4A user group.)

[LoadWB]

My first was the TI 99/4A, like many others here.

I was fortunate as I just found one with the tape recorder both in the box and with all manuals at a thrift store this morning.   What a cool find.   Looks like all the manuals are like new!  

Now to see if I can hook it up to a TV or monitor....

If you are getting back involved, check out 99er.net and 99ers.org.  There is a Yahoo! Groups list as well related to 99ers.org.  In one of the recent posts (Oct 5,) someone was flogging a "Mini-PEB", with 19,200 RS-232, CF interface for DSK1-DSK3 emulation, and I think 32k memory expansion for $50.

I recently blew the dust off one of my old TI BASIC games and sampled the tape recording, then used Tape994a to convert the sample to TIFiles format to load into Classic 99.  Now I am reprogramming a game I wrote 22 years ago using my laptop with a TI emulator.  Then with CS1er or Tape994a I can convert the TIFiles into a wav that can then be played back into the real hardware.  I could also drag my PEB out and do it disk-to-disk if I dared spend the time setting all that up right now; there is a program I believe called PC99 which will read and write TI 5.25" disks using a PC.