To delete a character, move the cursor back (fctn key and S key) on top of the character, then press fctn 1 (DEL). Easy when you know how 😅 still not as complex as the spectrum keyboard 😊
The TI-99/4a was my first computer. I have many of them now and still use them. It really is a strange computer that you either love like me, or hate. lol
Of all the computers I own, I have to say that the TI 99/4a has the best video signal of them all in unmodified form. I use a CoolNovelties component cable via an OSSC to HDMI and the image quality is unmatched other than by machines like my 65XE and 800XL that have VBXE's fitted. Weird machine though.
Seems so, yes. I've been reminded of the RGB mod for this machine, which is apparently sublime, but not having even seen component first hand, I'm sure it's excellent given the quality of RF out of the box.
My first computer was a TI-99/4A. I loved it. The packaging, manuals and documentation were excellent. And I did use a tape recorder to store programs, but I never got a voice synth.
On the speech synthesizer, the door does nothing. It was meant to accept new speech ROMS but that never happened. And as for the joysticks...they are quite awful as you will soon discover. LOL
The RF signal on mine is superb too, actually better than the component using coolnovelties cable (not a dig at coolnovelties, i think the machine is just built that way)
The door on the speech synth doesn't serve any function. The original intention was to produce different voice ROMs with male/female voices and different vocabularies etc. but it never came to fruition.
This was a capable and interesting machine, but unfortunately it was never going to work in the UK. We used tape for games in the early days, and typically never bothered to expand our machines. Out of the box, the TI was completely unsuited to games thanks to the machine's inability to run machine code from BASIC, which immediately prevented good quality cassette based games from being available. I thought at first that this might have been my friend's machine from back in the day - as there can't have been many of these in the North East (friend lived, still does, in Sunderland). His dad was a massive Sanyo fan so it surprised me even at the time that he ended up with one of these rather than an MSX!
Stuff comes in from all over the country (and world, in fact), although I do get the odd local client coming down to the house in a car. This one was posted in last year from somewhere in the UK, but I suppose you never know where this machine's been during its long history.
I had a TI-99/4A in the day and those joysticks are terrible. There were third-party outfits that made adapters that allowed Atari-compatible joysticks to be used on the TI. My father bought an adapter by WICO in 1984 because we went through three or four pairs of TI joysticks that kept breaking, not to mention the awful feel and the clumsy position of the fire button. Using a quality Atari-compatible joystick sure made a big difference.
The speech synth module has all the required electronics in it to make it work. The flap door does not serve any specific function, probably an extra feature that was lately dropped :-). You can test the speech module with the game cart PARSEC.
