What are the favorite aspect(s) of your TI hobby?

[Omega-TI]

People get into the TI for many different reasons and many stayed or returned for various reasons as well. I'm sure most of us have a story to tell, or at the very least are able to describe their favorite aspects of the hobby.

 

For me the #1 reason : Nostalgia

Followed by #2 reason : Getting it to things I could not make it do BITD.

Basically I have fun acquiring as many new toys

possible to hang off the unit.

 

So I guess it all comes down to one thing... buying new stuff that is TI related. So thanks to those that have, and continue to support my hobby by designing and making new toys and programs!

 

So.... what is YOUR story or favorite aspect of the hobby?

[Retrospect]

The nostalgic aspect of it has to be my number 1. I still play Parsec every friday night just as I used to as a kid when it all seemed so magical.

 

Also satisfaction from programming (in basic) when things go right, having others appreciate my work and play some of my games gives a great feeling.

It was , and still is , my favourite machine.

[budz2355]

Nostalgia. I was hunting the wumpus before we even owned a VCR. Love the TI!

[Sinphaltimus]

Nostalgia brought me back, yooze guyz keep me here.

TLDR Full Story:

The TI was a huge disappointment to me at the time.
When all my friend's had C64 and were trading games, my step-father came home with a TI and a tape deck.

I picked up a few games as Christmas presents including Alpiner, Parsec, tunnels of doom, munchman and I think that was it. No XB or anything. When the games got played there wasn't much else to do with the machine. I had more fun with my Atari but those games looked and sounded crap when compared.

Then one day my SF showed me a lotto number generating program he wrote in basic from the manual or a book or something. I didn't find his program interesting but what i did find interesting was the fact he could make the computer do something that it did not come with or was not pre-programmed.

That's when i opened the BASIC instructions to find out what else we could make the TI do. That's when I discovered digital art, animation and music. So that's what I did. I made music and I made animations.

That's when I fell in love with the TI. I loved showing off what I was doing to my friends who had no concept of interest in programming the C64. And that's when I realized I was alone in this exciting new discovery so I buried myself in it.

I have memories of flow charts of paper taped together on my floor, notebooks full of codes and practice programs and notes. Graph paper everywhere with drawings and character codes, one frame at a time.

The only problem was, it wasn't really mine. It was the family computer. So my time on it was very limited. I don't recall how I faded from it. i think outdoor activities pulled me away from computing. Then my SF brought home an Apple IIe, so traded with some friends for games and such, never programmed on it. Again, it wasn't mine. Then i took computer classes in Jr. HS where I learned some programming on TRSW-80. No games, just math and code, and I loved it. I got good enough that my request to move to the back of the room with the Japanese exchange students who were far more advanced was accepted. But I was told I would be graded accordingly. And my grades dropped so I worked extra hard to learn what they knew to bring them back up again.

But JR HS brought with it sex, drugs and rock and roll in the form of puberty and girls, pot (and then some later on) and heavy metal. So besides some rare weekend gaming sessions, my computer and console use fell to the wayside.

Until I saw it. The Commodore Amiga. All that awesome sounding music, look at that art and those paint programs, ANIMATION!!!! Whoa! Those games!

It wasn't until I got married in 1991 that I purchase my A500 and jumped through a rabbit hole that would eventually become not only my hobby and passion, but also my career.

It was around that time when I discovered my TI in a box. Console, Keyboard Power supply, Books and all my notes. No tape drive or RF modulator. No place near me sold anything for this anymore.
I didn't even know where the carts and joysticks ended up. That was the day I regret today. The day I put it on the curbside.

About 8-10 years ago I got into emulation and purchased an A500 off eBay (after selling all my Amiga stuff (UHG - regret this too) mid to late 90s. That's when I discovered MESS and Atari Age. I never joined, I just lurked. I rebuilt the Amiga then started having issues with it so i packed it away. TI emulation in MESS wasn't doing it for me. My PC was my gaming rig since I sold my Amiga stuff and became an IBlaMer. I never got into console gaming but I did get a PS1, PS2, PS3 over the years for that lazy gaming time with friends the rare instances that happened.

Then about 2 years ago someone on facebook posted a complete TI system (Console, cords, RF modulator, books, and some carts for sale for a reasonable price. So I purchased it then went camping. I returned and the RF modulator didn't seems to work. Googling and I found the RF modulator MOD for RCA video. I did it, it worked. Along the way I found this place.

I don't think myself a particularly intelligent fellow but I know two things. There are people not as intelligent as i am and they tend to be an unsavory group I do not like to associate with. I can have lots of fun with folks at about my level, but I absolutely love being around folks a lot more intelligent about my passions than I am. I love learning from them especially when they are fun people to chat with, meet in person and learn from. I don't mind being the dumbass in the room, as long as I can make people smile, bonus if they laugh.

If not for this community (say everyone was in that yahoo group still and never moved here) - I wouldn't be enjoying myself as much as I do and my basic TI system would be boxed up someplace.

So that's ya'll. You keep me interested, my brain active and my hands from being idle. As much as i love "playing" with the hardware, it really is the community that keeps me interested.

And through the years I've come to appreciate my exposure to the TI, my first ever computer. So the nostalgia is strong with this one.

So that's my story in regards to the TI and this hobby. And I'm sticking to it.

[+OLD CS1]

Working with old technology keeps me sharp, and I am always learning something. I told the teens and younger who came through VCF-SE last year: anything you want to do with computers or technology has its roots on at least one of the tables in this hall, and if you understand from where it comes you will better understand how it got where it is now and where it can go from here.

[majestyx]

Like just about everyone else here, nostalgia is the number one reason, but a very close second reason is that it was the computer on which I first learned to program with the help of the excellent Beginner's BASIC book and the handy User Reference Guide.

 

Like Sinphaltimus, I too was a bit disappointed with my setup, not necessarily the computer itself. And as a teen with very little spending money, there wasn't much I could do with it other than type in programs or buy up the clearance priced software that was quickly disappearing in 1984, provided it was a cartridge or on cassette and didn't require Extended BASIC (yeah, couldn't even afford that, or Mini Memory or Terminal Emulator II, or even the Speech Synthesizer). I would have loved to have done so much more with it back in the day and now thanks to the different emulators/simulators that are available, I can do now what I couldn't do then. So those two reasons combine to make me one happy camper these days!

 

My only regret is having given away in 2010 a sweet physical setup I had acquired mostly from a huge ebay purchase I scored in the late 90s. Still, emulation takes care of my TI fix along with other systems I've owned over the years, as well as my Amiga fix (which is due to nostalgia once again, but that's mainly for the games, as I never did any programming on it), although I still have a number of those real systems today.

[Omega-TI]

 

My only regret is having given away in 2010 a sweet physical setup I had acquired mostly from a huge ebay purchase I scored in the late 90s.

 

It's never too late to start over! In some ways it could be argued you have an advantage now with so many new options to pick and choose from in your expansion path.

[+9640News]

For me, I love the programming and running a BBS (9640News.ddns.net:9640 shameless plug ). In the past 6 to 8 weeks, trying to remember what I forgot and left behind 20 years ago and trying to get up to speed with the new hardware developers have released.

 

Beery

[rickneff68]

Like just about everyone else here, nostalgia is the number one reason, but a very close second reason is that it was the computer on which I first learned to program with the help of the excellent Beginner's BASIC book and the handy User Reference Guide.

 

Describes my situation exactly! It was my first computer and the Beginner's Basic book taught me programming and concepts. This pretty much determined what I wanted to do for a living long before I went to college and my career.