30.6.10

R.I.P TI99/4A

1981-2010

A poem composed by a Monroeville Music Center student about their beloved friend:


Life is Fleeting, Your Memory Deleting

How I miss your internal clock
Beating next to mine
Your machine code queries were ad-hoc
Dearest TI99

The right TI BASIC algorithms
Were always hard to find
Our time was too short
When TI you were mine all mine

And I know, I know you had no choice
But I how I miss your speech synthesized voice
Text to speech singing right with mine
About your birth on the assembly line

The warmth of your thermal printer
warmed my heart at night
The gentle sound of your cassette drive
with its comforting green light (emitting diode)

I'll take your gold plating
and smelt in a pot
a necklace I'll wear
so you're never forgot