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Comment by mm321 | Hacker News Reader

i think TI basic was much easier than comodore basic; (still it really needed that extension cartridge)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI_BASIC_(TI_99/4A)

Also it turns out that the interpreter was slow because it was written in an interpreted language, but it was good enough for simple games because they had built-in sprites.

Interesting that they have emulators/simulators for it.

http://www.99er.net/emul.shtml http://www.99er.net/win994a.shtml

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I too started on TI BASIC, which taught me a lot, including ASCII, hex, binary, function calls, debugging the lists from magazines and how to type. I think I could type 'Call CLear' faster than anyone I knew! It's a pity I didn't get into ASM until years later when I got a spectrum.

No idea if this is true, but the meme was that you could only write BASIC for the TI99, assembly was forbidden somehow. For the most part, hackers avoided this system like the plague, despite all the advertisements starring Bill Cosby.

100% not true. There was an editor/assembler cartridge that let you program in ASM.

It had very little adoption and mindshare, though. All the assembly hackers were on the C-64, Apple II, and a bit later the PC.

Your other option was the Mini Memory cartridge, which added a scaled down version of Editor/Assembler as well as 8K of RAM and a battery backup.

It was an economical way to dabble in assembly without springing for the 32K RAM expansion and disk system.

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