jaf@wucs1.wustl.edu (Andy Fingerhut) (09/28/90)
Hello. I am trying to find out some information for some friends of mine who own a plain old vanilla TI-99/4A. The only add-on that they have above the basic unit is a speech synthesizer module. They also own a cassette recorder which should work with the machine. No disk drive, no printer, no extra memory, nothing fancy at all. They want their daughter to be able to use the machine for writing school reports and printing them out, and also to make things like birthday cards, signs, and newsletter type of things with graphics included. They want to do this as cheaply as possible. From what I have been able to determine, this is what they need/want: A dot-matrix printer capable of near letter quality print Parallel interface module to plug into the TI (for the printer) A program capable of some amount of word-processing and insertion of graphics into documents (Possibly something like Newsroom, for those familiar with that program, although hopefully a program a little stronger in the word-processing area.) Some method for storing papers/reports. They'd like to use the cassette for this, but I want to ask those who have used this method about how long this takes, and how much a disk drive system would cost if they chose that instead. Possible memory expansion, but only if the program they get requires it. They'd like to do all of this as CHEAPLY as possible. I am asking for the benefit of your experience and advice in this, as I'm not familiar with what is available for the TI. If you were advising someone with these rather limited requirements and budget, what would you tell them? I'd also like to hear about what they could get by spending a little more than the bare minimum, just so I can tell them some of the alternatives. Please E-mail your response to me if you can, and include in your response whether you would mind my reposting your message in a summary here. I will summarize in 1-2 weeks, or whenever replies trickle off. Thanks for your help in this matter. Andy Fingerhut | Look towards tomorrow, jaf@wucs1.wustl.edu | 'cause the past is gone Washington University, St. Louis MO | -- Randy Stonehill