TIHOME TIdings - England

The first TI99/4 User Group was run by Paul Dicks -  with an undocumented input/encouragement from Texas Instruments in Bedford, England.

The name "Texas Instruments" and the initials "TI"  (better known in the UK as another company entirely...)  was a registered trademark and the use of the name by the user groups was permitted only if they included a specific wording that they were not affiliated etc etc. This was a requirement set by TI.

This archive has a complete run of 14 issues. The first couple of copies were extremely low in number produced- - - less than two dozen.
 
TI withdrew from the computer market just as subscriber numbers passed the point where one man could handle this and Texas Instruments instructed a Public Relations firm to take over the subscriptions, which they did as a very thin pamphlet as "Texas Instruments Home Computer Users Club" - see TIHCUC in Users Groups here- they are known to have produced five issues over a lengthy period.

The active subscriber base for TIdings transferred to a new group established in Brighton by Clive Scally as Texas Instruments Exchange, whose magazine quickly took over as the main product and was known as TIMES - see TIMES UK in User Groups in this archive.

When Clive Scally stepped back, the group became a normal membership group with the normal ups and downs - and continues in 2022.

These early user group magazine were almost entirely produced with manual typewriters and primitive black/white photocopiers (no shades of grey).  Some of the listings were made on the TI 32 column Thermal Printer.

Other UK groups included:
TILINES produced by Peter Brooks in Oxford, associated with user groups of varying names but the magazine name was stable.

East Anglia Region- a more local group associated with the US Air Force base in Lakenheath, but also  with UK citizens as members.
-----------------------------------
Other UK Magazines (see the archive section magazines for these):
TI User was produced by a retailer in Maidstone Kent, Galaxy, and editorial was probably associated with Lantern Software (never revealed).

A major TI retailer in Honiton, Devon, PARCO produced a magazine for a couple of years..
-----------------------------------------

In later years as users purchased computer printers, some problems emerged.

NOTE 1:  In the UK many dot matrix  printers used the ASCII for # to print a £ symbol.  If you see a £ in a listing it should be a #.  It was possible to have your printer use both but many people didn't bother...

NOTE 2:  Some people chose to print listings using TI Writer formatter- watch for articles that are right justified- and the formatter was capable of screwing up listings by replacing eg *256 by just 6, as some symbols common to listings were used by formatter for bold, underline, etc.