Comment by eesmith
8 hours ago
To save you either needed a cassette recorder, plugged into the machine with a special cable, then "SAVE CS1" and follow the instructions. (Start recording, the TI plays sound to the output port, which gets stored on tape. Use "LOAD CS1" to load from cassette, after rewinding to the start of the program.)
Or you needed an expansion box, with a floppy drive, in which case you could do "SAVE DSK1,PROGNAME" to save to "PROGNAME" on the first disk. I didn't have an expansion box.
Neither would have come with the base computer.
I believe it was also the Mini Memory cart where you could save programs, backed by a replaceable battery inside.
The command to load a program in TI BASIC was actually "OLD <DEVICE>". Probably because they already had "NEW".
https://www.ninerpedia.org/wiki/TI-99/4A_system_usage#Loadin...
My 40 year old memories are indeed faulty. Thanks for the correction!
FWIW, I probably confused it with Commodore Basic, since part of me wanted to put a ",1" at the end of the load command.