alt Hacker NewsI still have my TI-99/4A! I received it Christmas morning of 1983, although a Timex/Sinclair had been on my wish list. Sears had them marked down to $50 during the 8-bit wars. Mom had been up all night hand-typing in a BASIC demo so it would be running in the morning. Many Wumpuses were hunted that day.
Today, it has a F17A video processor that enables VGA output: https://dnotq.io/f18a/intro.html
And a FinalGROM99 cartridge, so I can have an SD card with all the program cartridges loaded. https://endlos99.github.io/finalgrom99/
There's still a community of fairly active development for retrogames, and some of them are quite good given capabilities of the hardware. My niece particularly enjoys a marble game called Skyway, try it on the online emulator at https://ti99ers.com
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>Many Wumpuses were hunted that day
Oh man! I remember playing 'Hunt the Wumpus'[0] with my cousins on my grandfathers TI-99 in the mid 80's. Probably the first computer I ever touched!
In the spirit of HN pedantry, should the plural be Wumpi? I will concede that wumpuses is way more fun to say..
> Today, it has a F17A video processor that enables VGA output: https://dnotq.io/f18a/intro.html
This is awesome. I don't have a TI-99, but I do have an MSX that would hugely benefit from this.
I've been buying and restoring older stuff (2013 Mac Pro most recently, recapped a Mac SE before that) and I think you just gave my 99 4/a new life. Thanks for that!
> Mom had been up all night hand-typing in a BASIC demo so it would be running in the morning. Many Wumpuses were hunted that day.
Hah, that’s a bit of special effort into making Christmas a little bit more magic. Was she a tech person of some kind?