COMPUTER REFERENCE LINKS

Texas Instruments TI99/4A (1979-1983)
A 1983 book on the Texas Instruments TI99/4A Home Computer in both text and HTML formats by Stephen Shaw: Getting Started with the TI99/4A. A report on a TI99/4A emulator for the PC, PC99
Other TI resources on this site, with links to a publicity photo of the computer, some music in .MID format originally composed for a very early TI module, and a memorial sample of the monthly columns of the late Jim Peterson, a longtime supporter of the TI99/4a computer. also a review of PC99 and some programs for it.

Older Computers:
Emulations of very early computers can be FTP'd from Manchester Computer Conservation Society, including the first stored programmable computer, the SSEM, now rebuilt and working twice a week in Manchester. Another early British computer, Colossus (predating Eniac), was hard wired for one task- dealing with Enigma messages- lovely description of how Enigma worked and was deciphered.

Creative Computing was one of the computing magazines I first read and subscribed to. What a delight- at last glance 35 issues on the web plus the three books "The Best Of...". Read computing history in Creative Computing.

Modern PC: For good old fashioned fast text web browsing in Linux, w3m is excellent.

Search for computer software vulnerabilities by vendor (including open source) from Security Focus

I have some links to streaming audio sites | Our 1998 PC specification

Want a free Windows programming language? Goto MSW Logo - and program for anything from a Pentium with W95 to the latest NT, ME or XP. The Windows 3.1 for a 286 version may still be available on this link.
The Great Logo Adventure(here as a 3.6 megabyte zipped download), supporting MSW Logo.
I have discovered and now use sdlBasic which exists in a 2012 build for win32 and deb and in a 2007 build as an rpm. You can see some of my programs at Stephen's sdlBasic routines.
There remain some excellent programs for DOS which cannot be run in Windows XP, or for a smaller number, in Dosbox under Linux or Windows XP. To run in a native DOS operating system you may need to get a copy of FreeDOS or Balder, one flavour of which runs from a floppy with no hard disk install or partitioning.

Web Archive allows you to see web pages as they were from 1996 onwards. This site can be in heavy demand, expect delays or non availability. [site unavailable fairly often, keep trying] Use the form on their front page or use this form instead:

PC Support Links:
New to the web? Help with manually preparing your web page - which can be much more efficient than using any web tool,
can be found at w3schools.com Help with html, css, xml, and lots more. The site works well without inline frames and without javascript except the "try this" portion. Please don't create Flash websites- they are disabled unfriendly (images and javascript seem to rule), remarkably prone to security problems, almost invisible to search engines, have questionable privacy, and most browsers are deprecating Flash for HTML5 (except youtube connected Android).

Mirrorservice.org is a UK based ftp mirror site with files from many sites. The new hardware is now installed (2013) and the mirrors updated. Apart from Opera (browser) it seems to be almost entirely Linux / Unix software. The old dos / windows material has gone. There is no search facility. This is the mirror service offered by the University of Kent and will be very fast for Uni students connected via Janet.

Check the links and syntax on your web page and more at Addy and Associates site. They require that you do not turn off referrer logging.

                          3/11   11/11     2/12      7/12
Operating system: MS.....84%.....75%.......69%.......67%
                  Apple..10%.....14%.......11%.......14%
                  Linux.. 6%..... 8%.......13%.......11%
                  Other...0%..... 3%....... 7%....... 8%.

Browsers- Note that these can be spoofed:
                IE........36%......38%.......31%.....28%
                Firefox...36%......30%.......31%.....25%
                Chrome....20%......16%.......20%.....22%
                Safari.... 8%......10%.......10%.....12%
                Opera......0%.......4%........4%......5%
                Other......0%.......2%........4%......8%

Half of Opera users had enabled Opera Turbo mode. Half had not.

The most popular sections of the web site (page views out of a total of 924
 pages served) in July 2012 were:
  TI-99/4a section 388 views; Moomin 98 views, St Thomas 66 views,
  Poco a Poco 56 views, Magic Boy 28 views.
  The Moomin page received 11% of page views, the same as in February 2012.
  The church history pages had 66 visitors in July (same as in February).
  The Poco a Poco page has increased from 28 views in February to 56 views in July.
  The Japanese film Magic Boy increased views: 22 in February to 28 in July. 
  The Castle Lodge page fell from 30 views in February to 13 views in July.

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