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BOXED RARITY
Photo: Joshua Grimm
SOMETIMES, YOU CAN BE LUCKY
B
usiness is war. That was what Jack Tramiel said back in the day when he was at the helm of Commodore. During the home computer wars which he started, many companies took a financial hit. It even damaged Commodore itself, as would turn out in 1985, because the company was thriving on a razor-thin margin. However, it worked. And it forced several companies out of the market. Like Texas Instruments, who were busy keeping up with the price cuttings
of Commodore for their Model TI 99/4a. In early 1983, Texas Instruments were showing their new entry model 99/2 at the Winter-CES, but production was cancelled before it even came to market. Or was it? Every once in a while, this machine appears here and there, only few are known to exist. And if you saw one, you would probably never suspect it to be a pre-production model. It does not look like a prototype at all, and if you got one in a nice box with accompanying ads, what
