Why is my TI-99/4A in Black and White?

Taking the time to isolate the problem and repair the crystal on a 30-year-old computer, when you could as easily have used an emulator or picked up another one on eBay, just because it's more fun to fix it yourself - that's pretty much the definition of a hacker, right there.

"I’m no expert but that looks like a horizontal sync pulse followed by a colorburst to me. But there was still no color on the TV."<p>You're an expert

Its funny seeing an article on the 99/4A here on HN :)<p>I'm too young to have had any experience with the home computer generation. A friend of mine, however, cut his teeth on the 99/4A, and he still has a soft spot for it. So much so that his first big project he ever did with an FPGA was to recreate and expand upon the TMS9918A video chip. He finished it a year or so ago and if anyone is interested in reading about it he documented the whole thing on his site <a href="http://codehackcreate.com/archives/30" rel="nofollow">http://codehackcreate.com/archives/30</a>

I have a TI-99/4A somewhere (perhaps in my in-law's basement) and I'm really tempted to dig it out. My first computer was a heavily modified ZX-81, but my first computer with a real keyboard was the TI. Both were amazing platforms for learning, and really the only downside was the use of a cassette recorder for storage. Anyway ... thanks for bringing back some great memories.<p>As an aside, the inductor isn't so much used to "tune" the frequency of the crystal as it is to make sure the crystal's impedance is matched properly. You can "pull" a crystal's frequency slightly, but you'll also notice the amplitude of the waveform drops significantly as you move away from it's natural resonance.

Wow this brings back some memories! My first computer was also a TI 99/4A. I got mine brand new in 1982 through a friend that worked at TI. For a while I suffered through the slowness of using a tape recorder for storage but eventually I bought the expansion box for it which added memory and a 160K, single-sided, 5.25" floppy disk. Compared to the tape drive it was a speed demon!<p>Ahhhh .. the "good old days" of buying a computer magazine with programs listed in Basic and typing them all in. Sometimes having to figure out how to convert them because the version of Basic wasn't the same one. I don't have the 99/4A anymore but I do still have a book that I bought back then to experiment with called, "Projects in Machine Intelligence for Your Home Computer".

Google cache: <a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Awww.pagetable.com%2F%3Fp%3D672&#38;oq=cache%3Awww.pagetable.com%2F%3Fp%3D672" rel="nofollow">http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Awww.p...</a>

I was in a demo the other day where the presenter mentioned "making Mr. Bojangles dance". Immediately I knew exactly where he got it. I asked anyway, he said, "well my first computer was a TI-99/4A". I was ecstatic! So was mine.

We had one of those at my high school with the floppy (huge friggin box) and the voice synthesizer. I programmed the thing to say Dakota Sioux (different than Lakota) words[1]. It was quite the toy. Got replaced with a lab of Apple IIe's, but no more speech.<p>1) trivia: Dakota also has different pronunciation / words depending if a male or female is speaking

This reminds me of a time when the 6.5536mhz crystal was perennially out of stock at radio shack because because of an easy tone dialer hack to make a redbox.

Anyone hazard a guess why crystals go "bad"? I thought they were completely solid-state devices.

My first computer was also a TI-99/4a which was bought for me in 1983 when I was 4. I have many fond memories of that computer.

TI finally launched a color version of the TI-84. It's called the TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition; it comes out in Spring 2013[1].<p>EDIT: This does seem to be off topic. I posted before I read the article (a cardinal sin, I admit) because I could not connect to the site. A second attempt to load the page took about 5 full minutes.<p>[1]<a href="http://education.ti.com/calculators/products/US/ti-84c/" rel="nofollow">http://education.ti.com/calculators/products/US/ti-84c/</a>

Site is: 10 Call Clear

Site down?<p>Edit: Up, for me now.

My question would be: If you have a computer capable of posting something on the internet, why are you thinking about your TI-99?