The whole gang is here!

[Opry99er]

Well, yesterday was a bittersweet day. I had to drive to Tennessee this weekend and pack up my ailing dad and my mom and move them up here to Wisconsin. Dads not his old self anymore, but he still knows who he is and who we are, and Im thankful for that. I brought them up here to live in the small cottage on my property so I can help monitor him and take care of him and hopefully give him some hope and a comfortable life.

 

So there is much good there.

 

Another good thing is that the second of our familys two original TI-99/4As has come here to live as well. I havent tested it yet, and it likely hasnt been plugged in since about 1990 or so. It has white key posts instead of green.

 

Anyway, hopefully it works... hopefully this computer can find new life here at my house. If it works out, it will become my primary machine.

 

And I am very glad to have my dad here with me at my house.

[Omega-TI]

Was this your Dad's machine originally? If so, maybe he might still harbor some good nostalgic feelings for it and you can get him involved with a two player Parsec game and work up from there. He may not be his old self, but sometimes having something to keep a one's interest level up, offer a challenge or just some daily excitement may slow any advancing decline.

 

I envy you, enjoy this time with your dad. My father used to be sharp as a tack and we used to do amateur radio, flying, computers and all sorts of other interests together, now the poor man is in a nursing home does not even know who I am and it breaks my heart.

[Rossman]

Good on ya. That's what families do. It isn't something to take for granted, and when it happens, it's worth acknowledgement, especially in an age when personal convenience triumphs over honor. You're a good man for that.

 

The TI console you acquired isn't a nostalgia thing, it's a means of honoring your dad's value system through the things he thought important. FWIW, as my dad has aged, I am trying to honor his values through the machine tools he had. I am getting a little bit better at both carpentry and lapidary because these things mattered to him. Not simply because I have access to the machines, but because he found what he could do with them valuable enough to invest his time in them. Today, reviving drills, saws, arbors and jointers to create things of wood or stone is no different from reviving things of silicon to create things of pixels. My dad was a maker in a multitude of different forms. I am also a maker.

 

As much as he wanted me to be good at computer science (which is why he bought me the TI), he also wanted me to be good at general engineering. "General engineering" is a hifalutin' term for "solve this problem." The TI was just another tool for the job. Right next to the arbor, the drill press, the table saw.

 

The best part about that was, modifying the tools to do what you wanted them to do. Use that TI in the most meaningful way would honor your dad, whether that's F18A and Finalgrom, or minimum classic capability of TI-Basic and Minimemory.

 

Whatever you do, you will not let your dad down.

 

Best regards,

 

 

R.

[+Vorticon]

Good man.

[FDOS]

I second all sentiments expressed here. Unfortunately, I never had the opportunity to know my dad very well as my parents were divorced when I was 4 years old. I did get to visit him a few times over the years, and it was his small Radio & TV Repair Shop that got me interested in electronics. He showed me how to test vacuum tubes! I was fascinated by just inserting them in the tube tester, and watching them glow warmly.

[Opry99er]

Thanks for all the replies, guys.

 

Today I got dad out to the car and drove him to a local butcher shop... bought him some garlic venison summer sausage and some fresh Wisconsin cheese curds. He cant climb steps, so I took him to a butcher shop with no shop steps. Barely enough clearance for his walker, but there was enough.

 

It has been a good day.