Comment by McGlockenshire

Sorry I'm going to have to softly call bullshit on the TI 99/4 section.

> Texas Instruments intended to have total control over the software for its computers, and to reap all of the profits from selling ROM cartridges. Grown arrogant from their long string of consumer products successes (including 1978’s Speak and Spell), TI evidently felt they could dictate the terms for a new category without consideration for the existing, highly-competitive market for personal computers.

They're talking about GROMs here. The 99/4 firmware contains a virtual machine that implements what they call Graphics Programming Language, or GPL. What a search nightmare today!

The idea was that most programmers would be using GPL almost exclusively, and GPL was highly opinionated. The original designers wanted TI to actually build a custom processor just for it, but this was back when it was just a specification and not a design. Cartridges ended up with a non-standard ROM design for technical reasons first.

But ultimately the guy in charge of designing the damn thing intended the GROM requirement to be solving that technical problem first and offering a simplification to devs second. No need to find someone to build your own ROMs, just send us the data and some money!

Source: A five hour interview with Doctor Granville Ott. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keWwxWHGKtw

The guy's a good geek.

What the business did, though, is utterly incomprehensible. The company sounds like a complete disaster. No, there was no arrogant strategy. There was no strategy.

I'm currently working on an interview with the other guy on that stage (no, not the youtuber ... he's later) and writing an essay on the 99000.

The slant the article gives the 99/4 is really awful and doesn't seem planted in current knowledge.