wetcw@pyuxa.UUCP (11/22/83)
My goodness, there are a lot of us closet TI owners out there. I have received a great deal of mail concerning where to find TI stuff so I thought I would answer all of the inquiries for information in one article (mostly because I'm not too sure how to answer using mail). PLACES TO BUY PERIPHS AND SOFTWARE Sears has had a recent sale in the NJ area featuring the exp chas, disk drive, disk cont, 32k mem, and TI writer, TI logo I, or multiplan for 449.97. J. C. Pennny has had the same thing for about 20 bucks more. Child's World and Toys-R-Us are selling at about 479.00 without the software, when they have them ( not too often). There is a place called Software 'n Such in Hightstown, NJ that has everything in stock but Logo II. Their package runs 499.00, but I think you can bargin. Some places have dropped their software prices quite a bit. K-mart was selling stuff as low as 9.99 that had been around 25 or 30 bucks. WHAT TO DO WITH THE TI I've had several inquiries as to what to do with a TI. I won't be using it as a spooler, but perhaps someone else would know how to use it that way. I plan mainly to teach my kids the basics of computers and too use it as a tool for their education. Then 5 or 6 years from now, when all of the current machines are passe, I can upgrade to one of those umpty-ump k machines that will be a dime a dozen by then. WHERE TO READ TI STUFF I have been told that there is a magazine for the TI called 99er or something like that. It sounds like a good place to get information, but I haven't located a copy yet. Further information can be gleaned from the pages of Creative Computing. There are very good articles about TI Logo II, the hardware, educational software, games, etc in this magazine. There is even a diagram on how to convert your Atari game joysticks for use with the TI (it works, I did it in about 15 minutes). REVIEWS Since I have only had the machine for about 2 and a half weeks, I haven't had much opportunity to get into it. However, I did buy TIs Early Learning Logo for my 6 year old and he has found it great fun. Any kid from 3 up should like this one. They can do quite a number of basic Logo instructions in 6 different modes. It even uses the sprite feature which is a mind boggler to us older types. EDITORIAL SECTION Thanks to all of you out there who responded to my pleas for information. Perhaps, since there are so many of us new (and old) TIers now, someone could talk the powers that be into just one more category net.micro.ti. Then we could all talk about our new toys without cluttering up the files meant for bigger things. T. C. Wheeler pyuxa!wetcw