{"id":490,"date":"2008-08-18T17:19:09","date_gmt":"2008-08-18T22:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/?p=490"},"modified":"2008-08-18T20:30:28","modified_gmt":"2008-08-19T01:30:28","slug":"retro-scan-of-the-week-finally-the-ti-994","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/archives\/490\/retro-scan-of-the-week-finally-the-ti-994","title":{"rendered":"<span id=\"retro_color\">[ Retro Scan of the Week ]<\/span> Finally &#8212; The TI-99\/4"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"\/wp-content\/images\/retroscan\/ti99_finally_large.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/images\/retroscan\/ti99_finally_small.jpg\" alt=\"Texas Instruments TI-99\/4 Ad - BYTE 1979\" class=\"centered\" \/><\/a><span class=\"freecaption\"><em>Come in and &#8220;brouse&#8221; our wyde variatee of computur goodz.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Apparently, in 1979, the computer buying public could barely stand to wait any longer for Texas Instruments to ship their personal computer masterpiece, the TI-99\/4. (I mean, <em>finally<\/em>.  They <em>actually released it<\/em>.)  Lucky for us, we have this handy &#8220;The Computer Factory&#8221; group ad to serve as a <em>window through time<\/em>, if you will, to allow us to observe the public&#8217;s overwhelming demand for TI&#8217;s hot new PC as it was in 1979.  Apparently.<\/p>\n<p>The TI-99\/4 &#8212; which happened to posses the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pcworld.com\/article\/139100-5\/the_10_worst_pc_keyboards_of_all_time.html\" target=\"_blank\">7th worst PC keyboard of all time<\/a> &#8212; might have been the one of the first home computers to ship with a 16-bit CPU, but it hardly took off in the marketplace (read more about its failings <a href=\"http:\/\/oldcomputers.net\/ti994.html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/pytheas.club.fr\/english\/TI99_history.html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>).  TI slowly learned from its mistakes and released the <a href=\"http:\/\/oldcomputers.net\/ti994a.html\" target=\"_blank\">TI-99\/4A<\/a> a few years later to a more receptive audience.  The <em>Alpiner<\/em>-playing world rejoiced.  But it wasn&#8217;t long before the Commodore 64 crushed TI&#8217;s struggling machine (and the rest of the home computer market) in a fierce price war.<\/p>\n<p><center><em><small>[ From BYTE, December 1979 ]<\/small><\/em><\/center><\/p>\n<p><strong>Discussion topic of the week:<\/strong> Have you ever hotly anticipated the release of a certain computer model? Which one got you excited the most?<\/p>\n<p><small><em>If you use this image on your site, please support &#8220;Retro Scan of the Week&#8221; by giving us obvious credit for the original scan and entry.  Thanks.<\/em><\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Come in and &#8220;brouse&#8221; our wyde variatee of computur goodz. Apparently, in 1979, the computer buying public could barely stand to wait any longer for Texas Instruments to ship their personal computer masterpiece, the TI-99\/4. (I mean, finally. They actually released it.) Lucky for us, we have this handy &#8220;The Computer Factory&#8221; group ad to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,16,24,27,26,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer-info-and-history","category-computer-design","category-humor","category-regular_features","category-retro-scan-of-the-week","category-computers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}