ftp.whtech.com/ftp.whtech.com.tar/ftp.whtech.com/articles/limanews/COMGONE4.TXT

Text File | 2006-10-19 | 12KB | 203 lines

     ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN LIMA NEWSLETTER SEPTEMBER 1994

                          THINGS THAT HAVE COME AND GONE
                             AND SOME THAT NEVER WERE
                               Trivia collected by
                                   Bill Gaskill
                                    July 1994

      14 STEPS TO MAXIMIZE TI HOME COMPUTER PROFITS:
     The following information comes from a 3.5" x 8" laminated marketing
     aid (which I will call a card) that TI produced for their retail
     dealers. The "card" has no part number on it and no copyright date, but
     it does bear the TI logo and is clearly a Texas Instruments product.
     Note item number 4 in the list below. It is certainly consistent with
     the William J. Turner strategy of 1981-1983 of "dumping" the consoles
     at fire sale prices in order to hook customers so they will buy the
     expensive peripherals and the high profit margin software.

     As an aside, a TI-99/4A retailer typically paid Texas Instruments $26
     for a cartridge that sold for $39.95 retail. Whenever a dealer gave a
     discount on software, the discount always came from the dealer's margin
     not TI's. There were of course exceptions to this statement, namely
     those times when TI had a sale, or when they did a promotional to
     bolster the sales of another product like the Speech Synthesizer.

     ^1. Carry complete line of TI Home Computers to make major statement to
     consumer and to fully leverage advertising dollars spent.
     ^2. Carry minimum of 150 software SKU's by June 1983.
     ^3. Carry minimum of 20 peripheral SKU's by June 1983.
     ^4. Compete aggressively in price of console. Maximize profit on
     aftermarket by providing full availability and convenient display.
     ^5. Emphasize software in advertising (15 to 20 packages per ad) --
     target ads at home purchaser.
     ^6. Use TI point of purchase display  with self-demonstrating
     cartridges on a chain.
     ^7. Use TI demonstrators for store personnel training and in-store
     demonstration in conjunction with ads. Note demonstrator will be in
     your store.
     ^8. Devote 25 running shelf feet to TI Home Computer line to make a
     major statement in home computers.
     ^9. Display computer consoles and software so consumer can
     self-demonstrate.
     10. Display software in a "series" format, separating each application
     segment.
     11. Display software and peripherals adjacent to computer demonstration
     location.
     12. Place consumer demonstration guide in a convenient location so
     sonsumers can browse through the book on their own.
     13. Display consumer aftermarket roadmap in visible location.
     14. Maintain image of full-time aftermarket (software plus peripherals)
     through a continuous advertising campaign.

      ALTMAN FAIRWARE LIST:
     Fooled you! This one's still very much alive and kicking, compliments
     of BJ Mathis and Richard Baron of the Southwest 99ers in Tucson,
     Arizona. I picked up a copy at Fest-West '94 and you can too, by
     sending $2.00 to the Southwest 99ers Box 17831 Tucson, AZ 85731. You'll
     find that it is a great investment. The "List" is 33 pages long and has
     entries organized by software title (over 500 of them), includes a list
     of authors and their addresses, as well an index to what software
     programs they wrote, and finally the "List" is organized by category so
     you can quickly determine what is available in the Educational
     category, Bank and Finance category et cetera.

     Not all of the software found in the "List" is available through the SW
     99ers library, but a lot of it is. The Altman Fairware List tells you
     which titles may be obtained through the Southwest 99ers and which
     cannot. A very reasonable $2.00/disk copy fee is charged for programs
     from the "List". While the Altman Fairware List may not be the perfect
     resource to what is available in the public domain and shareware arena
     for software, it is impossible to find fault with such dedication and
     commitment to keeping things like this alive in the TI Community. My
     hat is off to BJ Mathis, Richard Baron, the late Ida McCarger who used
     to manage the "List" until her death on August 8, 1992, and to the
     Southwest 99ers in Tucson for keeping this important icon in TI-99/4A
     history alive and well.

      AMERICAN SOFTWARE DESIGN and DISTRIBUTION:
     Although cartridge producers and cartridge vendors stole the software
     spotlight in the days before Black Friday, there were also many disk
     and cassette software producers who supported the TI-99/4A. Tom
     Johnson, dba American Software Design and Distribution was one such
     producer, giving us entertainment and education titles such as; 3-D
     Maze, Bardyard Fun, Bomb Squad, Land on Mars, Laser Shield, Meteor
     Shower, Mr.  Frog, Ski, Space Battle 2056, and Wizard's Dominion.
     Johnson also created Entrapment, a game that TI had licensed to sell
     for use with the Mini-Memory module prior to October 1983. I'm sorry to
     report that I have no further information on Mr. Johnson and would
     welcome any that 99ers reading this article can provide. As an amatuer
     historian of "things TI", I am always looking for details. My name and
     address are found at the end of this article if you have any
     information on Tom Johnson or American Software Design and
     Distribution.

       GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN:
     This was the title of a Deborah Asbrand article written for the
     December 1988, Volume 1, Number 5 issue of PC Computing magazine. It
     covered "orphaned" computers including the TI-99/4A, IBM PCjr., and
     computers from Columbia, Eagle, Osborne and others. The following text
     is excerpted from a portion of the article entitled "Keeping the
     Faith".

     .LM 5;RM 50
     "The 99/4A and PCjr were early experiments in the home
     computer market.  They weren't nearly as fast or powerful
     as other computers of their time, yet in many homes they
     continue to fulfill the role that visionaries once predicted
     for them: they've evolved from somber, cold pieces of
     machinery to tools that are useful and fun. In Tucson, the
     Mathis family owns three TI-99/4a's. BJ Mathis, a church
     clerk, uses one of the machines to generate financial reports
     and meeting minutes, while her husband, an Air Force Sergeant,
     often programs in assembly language. Their two sons write
     reports for school and play games on the TI set up in the den.
     "It gives them some background so that when they go to school
     and come across an Apple (computer), they'll at least know how
     to get started," says Mrs.  Mathis.

     TI computer owners are "a real community," says BJ Mathis.
     "I don't know what makes us hang on, except that we get to
     caring about each other, and it's difficult to walk away
     from friends." She adds, "When someone upgrades to an IBM,
     it's known throughout the community."
     .LM 0;RM 60

      PRK BASIC:
     Remember all the excitement when we discovered the hidden secrets of
     programming in TI BASIC with a Personal Record Keeping or Statistics
     cartridge plugged in? I do. It was great fun to be able to have DISPLAY
     AT and ACCEPT AT capabilities in a console BASIC program in my early
     days as a 99er. It was even more fun to show others how to do it
     though, because it made me look like I actually knew something about
     computers and programming. Guess I fooled them?

     Credit for "discovering" this hidden TI technique appears to belong to
     Paul Karis, a Dutch 99er who wrote about it in the Fall of 1981 in TI
     Home Tidings, an English User Group newsletter. 99er Magazine followed
     Karis' article with a limited one of their own on the DISPLAY AT and
     ACCEPT AT routines on page 72 of the Volume 1, Number 4 issue. The same
     article made it into the Best of 99er on page 76.

     Others wrote about PRK BASIC too. I seem to recall seeing articles by
     Art Byers, Jim Swedlow, Newt Armstrong and Stephen Tuorto along the
     way, just to name a few. There doesn't seem to be much interest in PRK
     BASIC anymore, though. Perhaps we have just become more sophisticated
     in our needs and in our programming to use it?

      JIM LOHMEYER:
     Once upon a time, like around February 1988, at the time of TIXPO '88
     in Las Vegas, I ran into a young programmer from Illinois named Jim
     Lohmeyer. He showed up on the TI scene with loads of talent, tons of
     enthusiasm and a vision of what he was going to do with his life after
     having left home for the West Coast. Lohmeyer moved to southern
     California and I think actually roomed or rented with Tom Freeman and
     family while Tom and Jim formed T and J Software. Jim moved out some
     months later and seems to have disappeared from the TI-99 Community
     since that time. Anyone have the latest scoop on what Jim is doing
     these days? All that talent seems to have gone to waste as far as the
     TI Community is concerned, 'cause I can't point to much that Mr.
     Lohmeyer left behind after his apparent departure. What a shame!

       J. PETER HODDIE:
     Who in the TI Community can forget this talented young assembly
     language programming guru. He gave us so much in the form of tutorials
     for MICROpendium, commerical and shareware software such as My-word for
     the Geneve, Sort Experiement, Pre-Scan It, the Font Writer programs and
     others, articles for the Boston Computer Society while he was a member
     there and so much more. After a move to California's Silicon Valley and
     an attempt at creating his own business, named Blue Streak Software
     (with Paul Charlton I am told), word is he now works for Microsoft in
     the Redmond, Washington area. He still owes me a copy of FirstBase 1.1
     that I paid him for in Anaheim at Fest-West '91. Maybe Mr. Hoddie will
     see this article and remember to send me the software?

       SILVER WOLF SOFTWARE:
     This P.O. Box 4242 Santa Rosa, California 95402 software firm was owned
     by Galen A. Read and Charles R. Burley. The two men started out in the
     TI Community by providing assembly language Fairware programs, but
     somewhere along the way Burley seems to have dropped out of sight.
     Galen Read of course became a programmer for CorComp and DataBiotics,
     and gave us Writerease, Console Calc, Desktop Publisher, Pro-Typer and
     a couple other commercial pieces of software before leaving the TI
     Community.

     In July 1987 Mr. Read opened Innovative Programming, a Rohnert Park,
     California firm which was advertised in MICROpendium and which touted
     support for its customers through a new 4A/Talk Bulletin Board. By
     December 1987 though, Read was apparently having financial problems
     with the new business and announced to the TI world that his company
     was changing focus and would be moving out of the 99/4A market. In
     early 1988 word began to circulate around the TI Community that Read
     was not delivering on orders. In June 1988 the Lima, Ohio User Group
     newsletter reported that he had apparently taken in $10,000 in Grand
     Ram orders, but left town without delivering the products. I have not
     seen anything written about Galen Read since that time, nor have I
     heard anything about him. Did he get away with it?

     Bill Gaskill
     2310 Cypress Court
     Grand Junction, CO 81506
     .PL 1