The SouthWest Ninety Niners User Group's
Fest West '98 - Lubbock

PREPARATION FOR FEST WEST '98 - LUBBOCK


TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1998
The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, the Lubbock daily newspaper, carried a full page article in their Neighbors Section about the upcoming Fest West '98 - Lubbock. The article, written by Ray Westbrook, was entitled Computer Memories. It featured a large picture of  keynote speaker Lee Kitchens . Lee, who was the Manufacturing Engineering Manager of the Consumer Products Division at the Lubbock facility is currently retired from TI. However, he is the Mayor of Ransom Canyon, Texas, about 6 miles from Lubbock. This article gave Fest West '98 - Lubbock excellent advance publicity. To view the article, click here .

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1998
The day started off a bit on the cool side, but the sunshine was warm. At 10:00 M, Tom Wills , Mike Doane , Al Armstrong, and Rod Stallard arrived at Texas Instruments' Lubbock manufacturing facility to start the set up of the TImeline. For about two hours the four members of the SouthWest Ninety Niners User Group worked on setting up TI-99/4A related hardware. Items included a TI-99/4A, a CC40 computer, Hex Bus accessories, modules, a Rave 99 PE/2c expansion box, a Geneve 9640, a Hard and Floppy Disk Controller, a double density TI Disk Controller, box car/side car accessories, an acoustical modem (complete with an old dial phone), and many more items too numerous to mention.

During the TImeline setup, some Texas Instruments employees looked in to see what was going on. Their faces lit up as they exclaimed "I remember making that! I thought they were dead a long time ago!" and another stated "Yes, and I remember repairing lots of those." Whatever "those" were. In any case, they thought the display was great as it brought back old memories.

After completing the TImeline, it was back to the Sheraton Four Points Hotel to get the Pre-Registration started. As the day wore on to evening, TI99ers started coming in to get registered. TI99ers from Oklahoma, Texas, California, Tennessee, Germany, Holland, Wales, Arizona, California, and other states were registered. during the pre-registration


TI99ers lining up to register for Fest West '98 - Lubbock

At the end of the day, all those who wanted to attend the TI Experience at the Texas Instruments ' facility headed for a good nights sleep

ntation area of the cafeteria, they were greeted by the TImeline. Prior to the actual event start, everyone looked over the array of TI-99/4A related hardware.

Finally, it was time to start. The TI Experience was opened by Rodney Cates of Texas Instruments. Rodney was the initial contact person for Tom Wills. Rodney later turned the chore of being the contact person over to Gabriel Flores, who was also present.

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