Of all the publications produced for the TI-99 and Geneve this was and is still my favorite. Lot's of
good information, instructions, and hardware projects. If you want a good history lesson of people,
places, and things you can't do much better than this publication.
This publication had the longest publication run of any 99/4A/Geneve
magazine, from Feb 1984 through June 1999.
Each volume starts with
the month of February. For example, vol 1 goes from Feb 84 through
Jan 85. Most years publication was monthly.
Explicit permission
has been giving by the publisher to post Micropendium on the internet
and make it available for free, in effect placing Micropendium and
all software published therein in the public domain.
All scanned copies of micropendium can be found at: whtech.com
I have recently finished the index for this publication and created a search site where you can type in a word,
and bring up all the indexes that word appears in, nothing fancy but it does work.
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In May of 1981 the first 99'er magazine was released as a bimonthly publication.
It stated that it was "For Users of the Texas
Instruments TI-99/4 and other 16-Bit TMS9900-Based Personal Computer Systems".
The first 6 issues of the 99'er were presented as Vol.1 No.1 through Vol.1 No.6 Sometimes they showed dates and the
volume and number, while other times they showed only the volume and number. Starting in November of 1982
the 99'er when monthly. This started Volume 2. The February 1983 edition was the first issue to be renamed. The
99'er was now known as the 99'er Home Computer Magazine.
The last issue of the 99'er Home Computer Magazine was released in November 1983 which was Vol.2 No.13.
They then
just disappeared for a while, and re-emerged sometime in the spring of 1984 with Volume 4 No .1 The biggest change here was
that they now were known as the Home Computer Magazine (CM), dropping the 99'beer, and catering to most of the
popular home computers of the time. They actually did keep publishing several programs and articles for the TI in each issue.
The CM was published like this through November 1985. Then they disappeared again for awhile, or so we thought.
In April 1986 Gary Kaplan, publisher of 99er/Home Computer Magazine, informed
subscribers that his company would not honor its obligations to subscribers and deliver
the number of issues paid for by long term subscriptions. He did it this way:
Customers were notified that the “old” magazine, Home Computer Magazine, had ceased
publication to be replaced with a “new” magazine called Home Computer
Journal. The value of the “new” magazine was designated as $25 per issue! Thus, one
issue of the “new” magazine wiped out the monitary value of everybody’s long term 99er
subscription.
Many complained to the US Post Office and the local Oregon authorities. Only a very
few, including myself, were able to obtain a full cash refund for the unfulfilled portion of
our 99er/Home Computer Magazine subscriptions.
-- Charles Good
What emerged, sometime in 1986, was a new format and a new name. The "Home Computing Journal" was released as
a 30 page or so, quarterly publication and came with a disk of software.
Four volumes were released before it also
disappeared again, this time forever!.
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