ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN NOVEMBER 1991 LIMA NEWSLETTER
 
 
 
     ^^^ A SOURCE FOR ALL OFFICIAL TI COMMAND MODULES  
     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^reported by Charles Good 
     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^Lima Ohio User Group 
     The following notice appears in the "99ER DIGEST"
portion of the September 1983 issue of 99ER HOME COMPUTER
MAGAZINE (p. 53): 
     "FAIRS AND AMUSEMENT PARKS GO COMPUTER. 
     "TI's Consumer Group will be represented nationwide at
14 state fairs this summer and fall.  Exhibits featuring the
99/4A will reach an expanded market with TI's Product
Service Representatives demonstrating educational,
entertainment, and information management applications in
Arizona, California, indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana,
Minnesota, New Mexico, New york, North Carolina, Ohio,
Oklahoma, Texas, washington, and Wisconsin.  In addition,
Six Flags Magic Mountain amusement park in Valencia CA will
feature a 3000 square foot Computer Discovery Center
sponsored by TI.  Forty 99/4A systems and a short
Cosby-narrted film will be exhibited." 
      
     It turns out that "Service Representatives" at all
these events were supplied by TI with a COMMAND MODULE
SIMULATOR.  This unique hardware was different than the PE
box.  It had a couple of disk drives and came equipped with
22 disks.  The disks were intitialized DSDD using the 8
sector per track format found on TI's never officially
released DSDD disk controller card for the PE box.  EVERY
COMMAND MODULE ever released or anticipated for future
release was on these disks, encoded in a format unique to
the COMMAND MODULE SIMULATOR.  The disks could only be run
using the sumulator.  TI "Service Representatives" could
call up ANY module for members of the public to play with. 
     Frank Bubenik, Lima UG member and secretary/editor of
the Long Island TI UG, reports that one of the LITI members
purchased one of these COMMAND MODULE SIMULATORs recently at
a flea market along with all 22 disks.  Software on the
disks apparently includes ALL cartridge software officially
released or under development directly by TI or under a TI
license (software copyrighted to others but manufactured and
distributed by TI).  All of the "never released official TI
modules" I have described in the past (such as Wing Wars,
Von Drake, Music SDA, Germ Patrol, etc.) are included on the
COMMAND MODULE SIMULATOR disks, as well as additional
unreleased education titles, and some officially released
in  very limited quantities educational software by Scott
Foresman and Addison-Wesley containing a 1983 copyright. 
     This rare or never released educational software
includes these titles: COMPUTER MATH GAMES 1 3 and 4; STAR
MAZE; NUMERATION 1 and 2; ADDITION & SUBTRACTION 3;
FANTASTIC FRACTIONS 1; DECIMAL DELI 2; READING CHEERS
WONDERS ADVENTURES RAINBOWS POWER FLIGHT and TRAIL; PYRAMID
PUZZLER; PICTURE PARTS; and SPACE JOURNEY.  This is really
high quality educational software by some of this country's
best names in public school publishing.  Most cartridges
make good use of the "bells and whistles" available on the
99/4A (sound, graphics, speech), much more so than PLATO
software designed to run from the /4A.  I will be describing
these education cartridges in a series of articles. 
     .PL 1