RAMCHARGED COMPUTERS: A relative latecomer to the TI Vendor scene, located at 6467 East Vancey Street in Brook Park, Ohio 44142 (216) 243-1244. Owned by Ron Markus.

RANGER: A prototype Z80A based computer that was proposed by TI Engineer Peter Bonfield as a replacement for the failed 99/4 Home Computer. The Ranger was never produced and development on it was killed by Mark Shepherd and Fred Bucy because it did not use a TI manufactured chip.

READING SKILLS COURSEWARE SERIES: A series of educational cartridge programs written by Thomas P. Hartsig for Scott, Foresman and Company between 1979 and 1983.

The Reading Skills Courseware Series (according to a listing found on the back of each box) consists of:

• Grade 1 Early Reading - Word Identification (1A), Reading Rainbows - Comprehension (1B),
• Grade 2 Reading Fun - Comprehension (2A), Reading Cheers - Word Identification (2B),
• Grade 3 Reading On - Study and Research (3A), Reading Adventures - Comprehension (4A),
• Grade 4 Reading Roundup - Comprehension (4A) Reading Trail - Literary Understanding and Appreciation (4B)
• Grade 5 Reading Rally - Comprehension (5A), Reading Power - Study and Research (5B),
• Grade 6 Reading Flight - Study and Research (6A), Reading Wonders - Literary Understanding and Appreciation (6B).

Title	Box	Module	Guide	Reader
Early Reading	30100	30112	30124	30148
Reading Rainbows	30101	30113	30125	30149
Reading Fun	30102	30114	30126	30150
Reading Cheers	30103	30115	30127	30151
Reading On	30104	30116	30128	30152
Reading Adventures	30105	30117	30129	30153
Reading Roundup	30106	30118	30130	30154
Reading Trail	30107	30119	30131	30155
Reading Rally	30108	30120	30132	30156
Reading Power	30109	30121	30133	30157
Reading Flight	30110	30122	30134	30158
Reading Wonders	30111	30123	30135	30159

REGENA: See Whitelaw, Cheryl Regena.

RENKO, HAL: Co-author of the book Terrific Games for the TI-99/4A with Sam Edwards, published in 1983 by Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.

REYNOLDS, ROBIN: General Manager of Unisource Electronics in 1986.

RIDGE SERVICES: 170 Broadway #201 New York, NY 10038 (718) 833-6335 firm that produced the Lotto Picker program for the TI-99/4A in 1985.

RITCHIE, DENNIS: Born September 9, 1941, in Mount Vernon, New York, developed the operating system Unix at Bell Telephone Laboratories with Ken Thompson. With Richard Kernighan, he developed the programming language C. Ritchie and Thompson received the IEEE Computer Society Pioneer Award in 1994 for their work on Unix. (J.A.N. Lee Dept. of Computer Science Virginia Tech. Blacksburg, VA 24061-0106)

RLE: An acronym for Run Length Encoded, a graphics format brought to the TI Community via CompuServe's TI Forum, and the programming expertise of Paul Gray and Travis Watford. (Computer Shopper, Mar87, p.119)

ROBINETT, WARREN: The author of Adventure for the Atari VCS in 1980.  Robinett became known as the first programmer for Atari to credit himself for writing the game by secretly coding his name in the program. If a player entered a certain room during game play Robinett's name was displayed on the screen. Because Atari considered all programs their property, programmers were not allowed to claim credit for their creations, a policy which frustrated most of them. Fearing the loss of his job, Robinett decided to covertly give himself credit through this technique. The secret was uncovered by a 12 year old boy in Salt Lake City, Utah, but Atari received favorable publicity from the so-called "Easter Egg", so Robinett was never reprimanded.

ROBO-DROIDS: See SHAMUS.

ROCKETMAN: A checkbook balancing program produced in Disk ($39.95) and Tape ($24.95) versions by a California dentist who sold the program under the business name Rocketman (1983-84) and California Programs (1985 and later). The firm was headquartered at 4102 San Pablo Dam Rd in El Sobrante, CA 94803 and could be reached at 415-222-1625.

ROM CARTRIDGES: The concept of ROM cartridge use on a home computer, that is "burning" a program onto a Read Only Memory chip, and then placing the chip(s) in a quick connect/disconnect casing, did not originate with the introduction of the TI-99, nor for that matter did it originate with the introduction of the TI-99's greatest enemy, the Commodore VIC-20. In August 1976 Fairchild Camera and Instruments, a Palo Alto, California semiconductor firm, released its Video Entertainment System, later renamed Channel F to avoid being confused with Atari's Video Computer System, which was the first full-color video game machine to use replaceable cartridges.

Channel F came with hockey and tennis games built in and a port to accept new game cartridges as they were developed. On the heals of Channel F was Atari's Video Computer System (VCS) which also debuted in 1977. In June 1978, the $895 Exidy Sorcerer personal computer was released with 8K of Ram, a 64 column by 30 row screen and the ability to use plug in modules which were the size of 8-track tapes. The Sorcerer appears to be the first "home computer" on the market to use ROM cartridges, though it was never to be a major player in the home computer cartridge software market.

The last computer built for ROM cartridge use was the Atari XE Video Game System, which was a reconfigured Atari 65XE that could be purchased as a game machine, but upgraded to a personal computer if desired. It was introduced at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show in January 1987. The major players in the "computers that use cartridges" market were the Atari 400/800 computers, which were announced in December 1978, the TI-99/4 which was announced in June 1979, and the Commodore VIC-20, which appeared in June 1980. Other computers by these same companies also existed in the computers-that-use-cartridges market. These were computers like the Commodore 64, the Commodore 264/364, the TI-99/2 and the Atari XL line which included the 600, 800, 1200, and 1400XLs, as well as the 1450XLD and finally the Atari 65XE.

Of course there were other "computers" that used cartridge software such as the video game computers like the Atari VCS 2600 (VCS stands for Video Computer System), the Atari 5200, the ColecoVision Game System, Mattel's Intellivision and Intellivision II Systems, the Vectrex Arcade System and others. There were still other home or low-end computers that offered a ROM cartridge slot, but I have found it very difficult to locate much information on the existence of cartridge software written for these machines. Some of the computers I am referring to are the NEC PC-6001, the Spectra Video SV-318, and the Mattel Aquarius, all of which were announced or introduced in January 1983. Also, there are the late entries into the home computers-that-used-cartridges market like IBM's PC Jr., which appeared in November 1983, and the Coleco Adam, which appeared in October 1983. With the exception of the Atari 65XE, the introduction of home computers that used ROM cartridge software all but ceased by January 1985. There may be several reasons why cartridge slots were eliminated on newly introduced computers, but the most obvious one to me is the fact that the newer machines had more memory, which meant that cartridges simply weren't needed.

Cartridges may have been designed by some manufacturers to prevent duplication of software (TI comes to mind), but the biggest advantage they offered was their ability to bank-switch program code. This meant that large programs could (if written correctly) run in small memory machines. This was especially true of the VIC-20, which had only 5K RAM, but a ton of cartridge-based programs written for it. But cartridges cost much more to produce than a disk or cassette version of a program. When Commodore introduced the Amiga 500 and Atari the 520ST, it was the beginning of the end for cartridge using home computers. The final blow seemed to be IBM's loss of the copyright and patent on their PC's BIOS, which opened up the PC clone market in 1986. Once the flood of low-priced, high memory, PC compatible machines hit the market, there was no looking back.

Now before you get too excited and holler that the MSX machines from Japan (that were supposed to take over the low-end computer market in the U.S.) had cartridge slots, a look back at the home computer time line shows that the first generation of MSX computers made their debut in Japan in November 1983. The supposed invasion of MSX computers was to have occurred beginning with the January 1985 Consumer Electronics Show, but it never happened. So, I'm going to stick with my assertion. As an aside, you might find it interesting to know that the MSX concept, though usually credited to the Japanese because they pushed it the most, was actually owned by Microsoft (MSX stands for Microsoft Extended) and it was based on the American made Zilog Z80A microprocessor used with TI's TMS9918A video chip.

Between the years 1979 and 1990 there were over 360 cartridges released or announced for the TI-99/4 and 4A. Of that number, about 275 are verifiable titles thus far. Honors for being the first cartridge produced for the TI-99 must be shared between several programs which were all ready for release when the TI-99/4 was first announced in June 1979 (Diagnostic, Demonstration, Beginning Grammar et cetera). Honors for being the first third-party cartridge for the TI-99 actually goes to four titles produced by Milton Bradley Company and released in December 1979. These were Connect Four, Hangman, Yahtzee and ZeroZap, all sold under the Gamevision banner. News of their impending release actually leaked out in August 1979 when Interface Age magazine reported their upcoming arrival. As far as I can tell, Yahtzee did not actually appear until the first quarter of 1981, despite the announcement, and despite the fact that Milton Bradley Company included it in an 8.5" x 11" color glossy Gamevision flyer. The reason may have been attributable to the fact that Connect Four, Hangman and Zero Zap were all existing programs Milton Bradley had created for their ill-fated Microvision hand-held games playing machine (a prehistoric version of today's Nintendo Game-Boy), while Yahtzee was something new, and thus had to be created from scratch.

So far, honors for being the last cartridge to be produced for the TI-99 goes to Asgard's Extended Basic 3, which was released in the 4th Quarter of 1992. By my calculations, if a person had started their collection in 1979 and purchased every cartridge ever produced for the TI-99 up to the 4th quarter of 1990, at manufacturer's suggested retail price, that person would have spent over $11,000 on their collection.

Almost 50 companies were involved in producing cartridges for the TI-99 at one time or another, some of whom never actually kicked a cartridge out the door (like Walt Disney), despite having finished the code for the cartridge. The most prolific producer of cartridges for the TI-99 was Texas Instruments, next came the Scott, Foresman Company, followed by DataBiotics, Milton Bradley, Atarisoft, Exceltec or Sunware as they were also known, Milliken Publishing, and Funware. A list of cartridges released by company appears on the next page.

CARTRIDGES ANNOUNCED or RELEASED FOR THE TI-99, BY MANUFACTURER:

• Addison-Wesley 7
• Artios 1
• Asgard 6
• Atarisoft 16
• Broderbund 2
• CBS Toys 1
• CSI Design Group 1
• Control Data Corp. 1
• CorComp 4
• Data East 3
• DaTaBioTics 28
• DataSoft 1
• DLM 9
• Exceltec/Sunware 15
• Fox Video 1
• Funware 13
• Futuresoft 3
• Imagic 7
• IUG 1
• John Phillips 10
• Kantronics 1
• Looking Glass 3
• Mechatronics GmbH 2
• Micropal 2
• Milliken Publishing 14
• Milton Bradley 22
• Myarc 1
• Navarone 20
• Norton Software 1
• Not-Polyoptics 1
• Parker Brothers 5
• Personal Peripherals 1
• Pilgrim's Pride 1
• Romox 7
• SNK Electronics 1
• Scholastic Inc. 4
• Scott Adams 2
• Sega 3
• Sierra On-Line 3
• Sofmachine 5
• Software Specialties 3
• Spinnaker Software 2
• Synapse 2
• Tex Micro 1
• Thorn-EMI 3
• Tigervision 10
• Triton 4
• Ultracomp 1
• Walt Disney 4

Not all of the companies listed actually produced the programs or the cartridges they are given credit for in the above list. For example, the Walt Disney programs that were to be produced for the TI-99/4A were actually written by programmers at DLM in Allen, Texas, not programmers at Walt Disney Studios.

In another example, the Face Maker and Story Machine programs that belonged to Spinnaker Software were not written for the 99/4A by programmers at Spinnaker. They were simply licensed to Texas Instruments by Spinnaker Software and then TI either used in-house or contract programmers to do the porting of the code to the TMS9900 chip. For example, Jerry Spacek, owner of Intersoft (the firm that produced Defend the Cities), and John Phillips ported the Face Maker code to the TI-99. In the case of Story Machine, it was Bill Mann who did the programming that brought it over to the 99/4A computer.

ROMANO, DR. GUY-STEFFEN: Dr. Romano died on August 15, 1989. He was a linguistic genius, the author of several pieces of advanced software in the early 80's and the original librarian for the IUG. He founded the Amnion Helpline in the latter part of the 80's to provide assistance to any 99er in need. A scholar, a gentleman and a TI-99er in the very highest sense. Dr. Romano was 57 years old.

ROMOX ECPCs and SOFTWARE CENTERS: Romox was a Campbell, CA firm, with manufacturing facilities in the Phillipines, that specialized in manufacturing cartridges for home computers like the TI-99/4A and others in the same or lower price range. The company was founded in 1982 by a management team of pioneers in the computer and semiconductor industries. In 1983 Romox, with noted industry pioneer Paul Terrell as company president, announced a new idea in marketing computer game programs that would allow the user to buy their new reusable Edge Connector Programmable Cartridge (ECPC) only once, and have it reprogrammed each time a new game program was desired. Initial purchase price for the ECPC was around $25 and a new game could be "burned in" for less than $10.

The Romox Plan for the ECPC was to put Romox "Software Centers" in retail outlets like 7-11 stores, at a $160 per month lease charge to the retailer, which would allow easy access to new programs by computer users. The user had only to bring their ECPC to any outlet with a Romox Software Center, place the ECPC in the correct cartridge slot, choose the game they wanted, pay the new game fee and the clerk would activate the Software Center.

The Software Center was an off-white colored plastic cabinet and monitor which looked alot like a computer. It was approximately 18" wide by 6" high with a color monitor approximately 12" wide by 8" high. There were ten slots on the front panel of the cabinet for different types of computer cartridge connectors and a membrane covered keypad for typing in the catalog number of the program to burn in to the ECPC's reprogrammable chip.

The user pressed any key to start the Software Center, selected a program from the screen or the Romox Catalog, paid for the new program and the clerk would activate the Software Center. The machine would notify the user when the new game was ready to go. That was all there was to it.

Only 5 of the 10 slots in the Software Center front panel were used, probably because Romox already had the major players in the cartridge software business covered, but they built the machine for the possibility of new computers in the future. I know the Spectravideo SV-318 and the Coleco Adam both came with a cartridge port and there might have been a couple of others, but the "big guns" were already on the panel.

Going from left to right while facing the Software Center, the slots were dedicated to:

- Slot #1: TI-99/4A Home Computer - Slot #2: Commodore VIC 20 - Slot #3: Commodore 64 - Slot #4: Atari 2600 VCS - Slot #5: Atari 400/800, Atari 600/800XL, and the Atari 1200XL

The TI-99 games housed in the Software Centers were Ambulance, Anteater, Cave Creatures, Data Base Sort Utility, Driving Demon, Henhouse, Hen Pecked, Princess and the Frog, Rabbit Trail, Rotor Raiders, Schnoz-ola, St. Nick, Topper, Typo II and Video Vegas. Other machines has more titles available. Atari 2600-49 titles, Atari (all others)-39 titles, VIC 20-51 titles, Commodore 64-26 titles and the TI-99/4A-16 titles.

I have never seen an actual Romox Software Center anywhere, but Kyle Crighton of Milbrae, CA, who is a software engineer in the San Jose area, has verified their existence, at least in convenience stores in the northern California area. Byte Magazine, in their February 1985 issue on page 10, reported that Romox ceased operations mainly because of poor dealer response and the general collapse of the cartridge video-game market, so it appears that the Software Center concept lived a short life.

ECPC CARTRIDGE PROGRAMMER: Romox also offered a complete ECPC Cartridge Programmer tool kit that was not related to the Software Center marketing concept. The tool kit consisted of:

• WD-03 Cartridge Programmer $300.00
• WD-04 Cartridge (EPROM) Eraser 39.95
• Blank ECPC cartridges were also offered:
• TI-01 Blank 8K ECPC Cartridges 19.95

An illustration/photo of this system may be seen in the July 1983 issue of Enthusiast 99 magazine on page 40.

During the second quarter of 1984 Navarone Industries took over the Cartridge Programmer business from Romox and added an IBM PCjr. cartridge making tool kit to their product line. At the same time, Navarone announced a licensing agreement with Romox that allowed Navarone to produce and distribute Romox's entire line of cartridge software for both the 99/4A and the Commodore 64. Byte Magazine, in their February 1985 issue on page 10 reported that Romox ceased operations mainly because of poor dealer response and the general collapse of the cartridge video-game market. Perhaps the licensing agreement with Navarone was the beginning of the end for Romox? (Charles LaFara writing in Enthusiast 99, Nov83, p.40 -- Romox Software Catalog -- Jerry Price, former owner of Tex*Comp User's Supply in Granda Hills, CA)

ROPER, PAT: See Games By Apollo.

RYTE DATA: 99/4A support company formed by Bruce Ryan, running out of 210 Mountain Street Haliburton Ontario Canada K0M 1S0 (705) 457-2774. Company produced the R/D Computing Newsletter and distributed several products, especially those produced by the German firm Mechatronics GmbH.

RYTE DATA SOUTH: Short-lived American arm of Bruce Ryan’s Ryte Data company. Staffed by Henri Schlereth and Judi Beckett. Formed in May 1987 and closed in October 1987.

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