Also... something that's been bugging me for decades.
This is WELL before most companies figured out the importance of third-party software developers. In the IBM world, you leased some big iron and got IBM to write custom software for you. If you were a larger firm, you hired a third party firm to write custom software for your business. And if you even larger, you had the funds to keep the coders on staff.
By around the mid 70s, DEC was innovating by releasing detailed specs of various PDP's and what we might call open source software through DECUS (DEC Users Group.) But I remember Harris being freaked out when we asked them for anything more than the absolute basics of VOS (their operating system.)
Tandy, Apple and Commodore were innovative in that they were happy to publish details of how to write software for their platforms. I guess the new microcomputer upstarts had to innovate.
TI seemed to be frightened third parties might make money by writing software for their platform. I remember when I wanted to sell a stupid (by today's standards) game for the 99/4 in the 79-80 time frame they send me a 20 page NDA and a price list for TI-990 systems. My uncle (who worked at TI) got me a flyer for an internal program where you (as a TI employee) could get a bonus for writing 99/4 software, but no royalties. Later versions of the 99/4A had features in ROM to explicitly crash third-party modules.
I mention it because there were many, many reasons the 99/4(A) fell into obscurity, but I don't think it was solely based on the 9900 family of chips. The system design of the 99/4 was a bit ham-fisted, but other systems using 9900s seemed to operate fine.
This is WELL before most companies figured out the importance of third-party software developers. In the IBM world, you leased some big iron and got IBM to write custom software for you. If you were a larger firm, you hired a third party firm to write custom software for your business. And if you even larger, you had the funds to keep the coders on staff.
By around the mid 70s, DEC was innovating by releasing detailed specs of various PDP's and what we might call open source software through DECUS (DEC Users Group.) But I remember Harris being freaked out when we asked them for anything more than the absolute basics of VOS (their operating system.)
Tandy, Apple and Commodore were innovative in that they were happy to publish details of how to write software for their platforms. I guess the new microcomputer upstarts had to innovate.
TI seemed to be frightened third parties might make money by writing software for their platform. I remember when I wanted to sell a stupid (by today's standards) game for the 99/4 in the 79-80 time frame they send me a 20 page NDA and a price list for TI-990 systems. My uncle (who worked at TI) got me a flyer for an internal program where you (as a TI employee) could get a bonus for writing 99/4 software, but no royalties. Later versions of the 99/4A had features in ROM to explicitly crash third-party modules.
I mention it because there were many, many reasons the 99/4(A) fell into obscurity, but I don't think it was solely based on the 9900 family of chips. The system design of the 99/4 was a bit ham-fisted, but other systems using 9900s seemed to operate fine.