Timeline:1979

1979.

$$

The Texas Instruments TI-99/4 for $1150, which is almost five-thousand dollars today. It featured a custom designed TI TMS9900 CPU; which Texas Instruments introduced in June of 1976 as the very first 16 bit microprocessor; which ran 3Mhz, making it one of the fastest home CPUs of that time. It had 16k of ram, 26k of rom; which contained TI Basic. Programs could be loaded from a built in Cartridge port, or optionally tape or disk drive, with support for RS232 Serial and serial modem. It displayed in 32 columns by 24 row text mode, or graphics could be produced in 256 x 192 pixels mode, in 16 colours. Many TI-99s came with a 13" Zenith colour TV; which was slightly modified to appear like a monitor, and everything else had to be bought as extras; including a disk drive controller for $300, an actual disk drive to use with the disk drive controller for another $500. A thermal printer seen on most modern busses to print tickets cost $400, and 32k of memory cost another $400, so that by the time the user had upgraded to the maximum of six sidecar peripherals, they had spent the equivalent of $12,000 in todays currency. Texas Instruments had introduced the Texas Instruments Speak and Spell in 1978, which used a TMC oh-two-eighty speech synthesiser. TI hoped that by combining this technology with the 9900 CPU, they could fill the gap between the second generation consoles, and the emerging home computer market. Unfortunately, production problems delay the release until November, and despite re-releasing the machine in 1981, and spending 1 million on an ad campaign with Bill Cosby, they never sold more than a thousand units a month, forcing the 5th largest semiconductor company in the world to drop its line of home computers by March 1984.

Oct:The TRS-80 model 2 is released by Radio Shack. The TRS-80 model 2 carries its display in the same case unit as the floppy drive and the motherboard itself, with a separate keyboard with moulded corners similar to the Vic-20.:0