[rescue] TI99/4A in box, no bids

[Richard]

In article <8e7afd970601061324g62891a35mb51ba91466114bd6 at mail.gmail.com>,
    Aaron Finley <aaronfinley at gmail.com>  writes:

> > TI-99/4As are incredibly common.  It seems to be the one computer that
> > everyone had and wants to sell on e-bay :-). [...]
> >
> Well, I knew that, but the original box seems rare.

I see them on ebay with the original box all the time.  Its the
accessories that are more rare, IMO.

> hope in the future is to create a mini computer museum with all the
> computers i used/wanted throughout the years.

This is what I've been doing, starting with those computers that I
used to drool over in BYTE magazine every month, circa 1978-1980.

That's mostly S-100 bus based stuff and other early micros.

> Rather short list, but it
> would be somewhat interesting -- TI 99/4a, IBM PC/XT, IBM 286, SGI Indy, SGI
> Indigo2, Sun Sparc 1, Sun Sparc 20, Sun Ultra 80, and now -- a Dell laptop
> :-).

Several pallets of SGI machines just went through government
liquidation's web site, with *no* bids (minimum bid was $50 per
pallet).  Of course, they rip the hard drives out and you don't get
manuals or keyboards or mice or anything, so its a kinda iffy
proposition.

> The 99/4A that I had was given to me by my grandfather, who found it in the
> closet of his church. It had the full expansion case, a bunch of cards, two
> floppies, a modem, the speech box, a whole bunch of manuals, and all the
> cartridges - 20 some games and the advanced basic, from what I can remember.
> I got this when I was 5 or 6 or so, and learned BASIC out of the manual.

Sounds pretty sweet!

> Unfortunately, due to my habit as a kid of taking everything apart to see
> how it worked, all of the 99/4A was utterly disassembled about 3 or 4 years
> after I got it.

There's nothing wrong with disassembling, as long as you don't do it
destructively! :-)
-- 
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline"-- code samples, sample chapter, FAQ:
          <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/>
             Pilgrimage: Utah's annual demoparty
                <http://pilgrimage.scene.org>