I believe the texas instruments ti 99/4a was my first computer. I've had several over the years and really enjoyed games like parsec, with the speech synthesizer hooked to it. There were also a few sidecart games, like miner 2049er and such.

The ti 99 was the first computer with a 16-bit processor, running at 3.3mhz. While most people used cartridges and tape drives, there was also a several disk drive choices, some which just daisy chained several devices, but I actually got the peripheral expansion box in on a trade, which cost around $1475 at the time, along with a boatload of diskettes and a few cartridges like extended basic, which more advanced diskettes needed (I suppose to utilize more ram.)

Unfortunately, we got rid of the expansion box many many years ago, but it was a very fun system while it lasted. I'd love to get a complete setup again, for nostalgic purposes.

Tunnels of doom also was probably the first rpg I played. They had both a tape drive and diskette version, or several versions for that matter, which all booted from a cartridge.

This is not to say I didn't enjoy other computer systems, because I've also owned vic-20s, commodore 64, atari 400, 600, 800, timex sinclair, adam, and many tandy computers as well.

I have one, but i haven't played it or any games for it. sorry.

My family had one many years ago, but of course we got rid of it. I recently got another one in a package deal. It has a bunch of carts and the voice module. I haven't bothered to hook it up or try it out. It wasn't why I bought the package so I just put it right in storage.

JY

Yeah, I've got 2 systems myself, the last cheaper plastic beige ones. Not sure if I have a speech synthesizer but I probably have a couple carts somewhere. No memory expansion or box or disk drive or tape drive or any thing though..

when i was a kid i had the Vic-20 then the commodore 64 and played them to death.

Yeah, who can forget the scott adams games on the vic-20? I've had several vic-20 systems, no disk drives only tape drives for them. I've also had several c64 systems, but only two times have had huge collections of the c64 system. I had pretty much all of the ad&d games for it, some speed loader cart, all of the ultima games, most of the other rpgs, and many other games. I don't know how many exactly, but my biggest collection was around 120 original/boxed games and probably 500+ copied games.

After trading that collection for a car amp (good deal at the time, bad deal now) I eventually got another collection, which was almost all originals but only about 40 or 50 games, 2 tape drives, several disk drives, commodore monitor, printer, etc. A lot of european imported stuff. I eventually sold that one on ebay.

The main reason I sold the 2nd collection is because I had virtually nowhere to store it all at the time. Pretty much the same reason I sold my adam computer. The adam computer was just way too bulky. They should have seperated the printer and made it a lot smaller, but I really loved some of the games on it. I also liked the auto-seek cassette players on it. I played buck rogers all the time on that and occasionally dragon's lair and donkey kong.

My last venture with the c64 was when I bought one of those pc to commodore cables on ebay and had a spare computer load in to a special program (not sure what it was called) that basically emulated disk and cassette drives, with content or images stored on the pc's hard drive. I don't think it worked well with multi-disk games but most of the other stuff, it worked fine with. It was pretty cool for awhile. I think some one actually installed a mini itx motherboard inside of a commodore's disk drive once as well.

My most fond memories, with the exception of the ti 99/4a, was with the atari 800xl computer. As kids, we never really could afford new computers, but we found several atari computers at yard sales and such pretty cheap. The first one we got had probably 800 games (most copied) with it. The graphics and fun factor on that system, with all of those games was awesome beyond belief at the time. There were a lot of space shooters I played on it, as well as ghostbusters, 3D PAC-Man, hey taxi, spy hunter, and a lot of the ones that were popular on the commodore 64 at the time, all of the classics.

I've had probably 3 or 4 different atari 800xl collections in my time, but that first one was the best. Unfortunately, it got burnt up when the house burnt down many years ago.

The atari 800xl could have rivaled the commodore 64 greatly, considering the games were pretty much the same, but I don't ever remember seeing large collections on store shelves. Toys r us had a huge commodore section and atari 2600 sections... Software I guess was just too hard to find for the atari computer..

Damn, all this talking about these classic systems is going to make me want to get another one... heh

There is actually a ti 99/4a emulator called classic 99 that has several games embedded in it, and I believe it also has the speech synthesizer embedded as well. If you ever want to check out tunnels of doom, parsec, munchman, alpiner, car wars, or several other games..