MOS Technology, Inc. ("MOS" being short for Metal Oxide Semiconductor), later known as CSG (Commodore Semiconductor Group) and GMT Microelectronics, was a semiconductor design and fabrication company based in Audubon, Pennsylvania. It is most famous for its 6502 microprocessor and various designs for Commodore International's range of home computers.
Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American information technology company headquartered in Dallas, Texas that designs and manufactures semiconductors and various integrated circuits. It is one of the top 10 semiconductor companies worldwide based on sales volume. The company's focus is on developing analog chips and embedded processors, which account for more than 80% of its revenue. TI also produces TI digital light processing technology and education technology products including calculators, microcontrollers, and multi-core processors. The company holds 45,000 patents worldwide as of 2016.
The Atari 8-bit family is a series of 8-bit home computers introduced by Atari, Inc. in 1979 with the Atari 400 and Atari 800. As the first home computer architecture with coprocessors, it has graphics and sound more advanced than most of its contemporaries. Video games were a major appeal, and first-person space combat simulator Star Raiders is considered the platform's killer app. The "Atari 8-bit family" label was not contemporaneous. Atari, Inc., used the term "Atari 800 [or 400] home computer system", often combining the model names into "Atari 400/800" or "Atari home computers".
The VIC-20 is an 8-bit home computer that was sold by Commodore Business Machines. The VIC-20 was announced in 1980, roughly three years after Commodore's first personal computer, the PET. The VIC-20 was the first computer of any description to sell one million units. It was described as "one of the first anti-spectatorial, non-esoteric computers by design...no longer relegated to hobbyist/enthusiasts or those with money, the computer Commodore developed was the computer of the future."
The Commodore PET is a line of personal computers produced starting in 1977 by Commodore International. A single all-in-one case combines a MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor, Commodore BASIC in read-only memory, keyboard, monochrome monitor, and, in early models, a cassette deck.
The TI-99/4 and TI-99/4A are home computers released by Texas Instruments in 1979 and 1981, respectively. The TI-99 series competed against home computers such as the Apple II, TRS-80, Atari 400/800, and VIC-20.
The TI-85 is a graphing calculator made by Texas Instruments based on the Zilog Z80 microprocessor. Designed in 1992 as TI's second graphing calculator, it was replaced by the TI-86, which has also been discontinued.
TI BASIC is an ANSI-compliant interpreter for the BASIC programming language built into the 1979 Texas Instruments TI-99/4 home computer and its improved 1981 version, the TI-99/4A.
The Texas Instruments TI-74 Basicalc is a type of programmable calculator, which was released in 1985 to replace the Compact Computer 40.
The Texas Instruments LPC Speech Chips are a series of speech synthesizer digital signal processor integrated circuits created by Texas Instruments beginning in 1978. They continued to be developed and marketed for many years, though the speech department moved around several times within TI until finally dissolving in late 2001. The rights to the speech-specific subset of the MSP line, the last remaining line of TI speech products as of 2001, were sold to Sensory, Inc. in October 2001.
The TMS9900 was one of the first commercially available, single-chip 16-bit microprocessors. Introduced in June 1976, it implemented Texas Instruments' TI-990 minicomputer architecture in a single-chip format, and was initially used for low-end models of that lineup.
Programmable calculators are calculators that can automatically carry out a sequence of operations under control of a stored program. Most are Turing complete, and, as such, are theoretically general-purpose computers. However, their user interfaces and programming environments are specifically tailored to make performing small-scale numerical computations convenient, rather than general-purpose use.
The TI-Nspire is a graphing calculator line made by Texas Instruments, with the first version released on 25 September 2007. The calculators feature a non-QWERTY keyboard and a different key-by-key layout than Texas Instruments's previous flagship calculators such as the TI-89 series.
The Geneve 9640 is an enhanced TI-99/4A clone. It was sold by the company Myarc as a card to fit into the Texas Instruments TI Peripheral Expansion System. Released in 1987, it is in many ways similar to the earlier TI-99/8, which was in prototype form in early 1983. The Geneve 9640 was designed by Paul Charlton, and the graphical swan on the boot up screen was designed by Mi-Kyung Kim.
The DAI personal computer is an early home computer from the Belgian company Data Applications International. The DAI came to market in 1980. It provided many pioneering features such as high resolution color graphics, a maths co-processor, and a pre-compiling BASIC interpreter. However, it never became a commercial success.
A ROM cartridge, usually referred to in context simply as a cartridge, cart, or card, is a replaceable part designed to be connected to a consumer electronics device such as a home computer, video game console or, to a lesser extent, electronic musical instruments.
The Tomy Tutor, originally sold in Japan as the Pyūta (ぴゅう太) and in the UK as the Grandstand Tutor, is a home computer produced by the Japanese toymaker Tomy. It is architecturally similar, but not identical, to the TI-99/4A, and uses a similar Texas Instruments TMS9900 16-bit CPU. The computer was launched in Japan in 1982, and in the UK and the United States in the next year.
The Texas Instruments Hex-Bus interface was designed in 1982 and intended for commercial release in late 1983. It connects the console to peripherals via a high-speed serial link. Though it was prototypical to today's USB, it was never released, with only a small number of prototypes appearing in the hands of collectors after TI pulled out of the market.
The Serial Input/Output system, universally known as SIO, was a proprietary peripheral bus and related software protocol stacks used on the Atari 8-bit family to provide most input/output duties for those computers. Unlike most I/O systems of the era, such as RS-232, SIO included a lightweight protocol that allowed multiple devices to be attached to a single daisy-chained port that supported dozens of devices. It also supported plug-and-play operations. SIO's designer, Joe Decuir, credits his work on the system as the basis of USB.
The Atari joystick port is a computer port used to connect various gaming controllers to game console and home computer systems in the 1970s to the 1990s. It was originally introduced on the Atari 2600 in 1977 and then used on the Atari 400 and 800 in 1979. It went cross-platform with the VIC-20 in 1981, and was then used on many following machines from both companies, as well as a growing list of 3rd party machines like the MSX platform and various Sega consoles.
