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Beige Expansion Peripherals


Casey

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I have three beige consoles:

- My main "mod" computer. Currently with VGA a blue power LED, and soon to have internal speech. This one has a blue power switch.

- a beige QI with 1981 firmware. This one has a red power switch.

- a completely stock model (with blue power switch).

 

All three have good keyboards (ie, non-Mitsumi). If you are in the market for a beige unit, make sure you check out the under side. You don;t need a very good photo to see it

is not a Mitsumi keyboard. Those keyboards have a brown/reddish color to them. The good keyboards are green and you can see solder points all over it.

 

FWIW, I also have a black/silver model. I prefer the later versions of this.

 

I never ever saw a beige speech synth except prototype photos. I think I saw one here on this forum. I wish somebody would make a mold of it.

 

I came close to winning an auction of about twenty joysticks all thrown in a box, about six of them were beige joysticks. I wanted it so bad! I only wanted one beige set and I was going to sell the rest. But somebody beat me. Ebay can be a bitch sometimes! lol. It was probably mdude that won. So instead I got an Atari 400 joystick. It's beige and exactly the same as the CX40 Atari joystick. Look it up. It's awesome!

 

 

Darryl

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The unit I had as a child had the blue power switch (I didn't know they came in red until not too long ago). It also had the 1981 operating system, so no problem with the Atarisoft cartridges. As it aged, the keyboard started to repeat letters many times as you typed on it, to the point where it wasn't really usable. I remember back in the day Radio Shack used to sell replacement beige TI 99/4A keyboards by themselves but of course, I didn't need one when they were selling them and I no longer have the machine.

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I actually prefer the beige TI.

 

<ducks>

 

... especially the power switch. See my post on adding an LED to it.

 

I do too. It is less easy to damage (externally), the power switch is much better and I think it looks great personally. I recently scored one for $10 after foolishly selling my last one off about a year ago (that I found at a Goodwill no less) and this one is also a non-v2.2 model. I have never come across a v2.2 beige model but it seems people hate it mostly because of this. And, you have some that hate beige I suppose. I guess I like it because I come from beige computers (ie: Amiga) and the beige TI is the first I ever owned as well.

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Actually, it wasn't MDUDE that bought that mass of joysticks, it was me. . .but I only kept two pair of the Beige sticks--the other three were trading material, and long gone.

No hard feelings. But man, you broke my heart! Didn't even know they existed until that auction. And I thought I was the only person that noticed they were beige. They kind of looked like they were black and reflecting light to the untrained eye.

 

Darryl

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  • 1 year later...

i thought this was pretty funny timing.

 

i was reading through this thread, then i went to the ebay thread, then i got stuck trolling through ebay, and saw this pic that showed a beige Speech Synthesizer.

 

Was this something that actually came out? My dad had a set of the beige sticks I'm pretty sure, and we had a beige tape drive, but i don't think i've ever seen one of the beige Synthesizers in the wild.

 

What say you, wise TI gurus?

 

(edit to add- i mentioned this it looks like on the first page, lol, but that was a yeeeeaar agggggooo)

post-52262-0-81224300-1545572906_thumb.jpg

Edited by digdugnate
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This picture is funny, the guy is playing Parsec without any cartridge, power and video cords plugged... ^_^

 

Like many promotional photos showing prototypes which become vaporware, this picture demonstrated TI's proprietary wireless video and power technology previously only included in its military equipment. The side-car houses both Parsec and the wireless functionality. Management decided the power wire which would run from the side-car to the power port would be hidden and run through the expansion port for neatness. The design was intended to be incorporated into a single 99/4PW console which was not yet available in time for this shoot and even the side-car had been wire wrapped to meet the tight production schedule for the photo shoot.

 

The entire project had to be scrapped due to FCC compliance problems of the wireless power source. The only prototype side-car ever to be made was given as a birthday present to the photographer's assistant who spent time wandering around the TI offices, having impressed numerous people with his almost encyclopedic knowledge of the Home Computer line -- a fanboy before fanboys were a thing. He also managed to get hold of the only monitor rigged to receive the wireless video and began building a rather extensive collection of TI-99 Home Computer equipment both common and unique.

 

Shortly after TI announced its departure from the home computer arena the young photographer's assistant disappeared with his TI hoard. Though he was never to be seen again, it is rumored he lives in a lavishly refurbished bunker, the centerpiece of a magnificent water feature, in the bottom of a mountain with his vast trove of TI treasures which, it is said, he calls his "precious."

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More simply, adverts showing old computers playing without any cable were very common, not only for Texas Instruments but for many other brands (Atari, Commodore, ...) , the reason is that for some photographers, cables are not sexy. But it always makes me smile.

Edited by fabrice montupet
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There are at least a dozen of the Hex-Bus sidecars in circulation (I think I have three different builds in my set, one of which was from really early in the design process and does not function). I've never seen one of the Speech Synthesizers in the wild--other than a case that was from the collection of Dave Connery. He had several case tops and bottoms, most of which were for the Hex-Bus, but there was also at least one half for a Speech Synthesizer. I bought one of the cases back then--and my set has the Speech Synthesizer half, IIRC.

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