This shows the TI Professional Computer Graphics. I had a loop of various demo programs and images that showed off the graphics capability. The TI was released in 1983. At this time IBM only offered MDA text only display board and CGA text and graphics board. The MDA text was rendered in 720x350 resolution. CGA highest resolution was 640x200 but only in 2 colors. It also had 320x200 in 4 colors and 160x100 in 16 colors.
The TI supported 720x300 resolution in 8 colors and 25x80 text on the same resolution screen. It also supported 768k memory vs IBM PC 640k. TI thought they could compete by making a better PC. The problem with this is that software talked directly to the hardware to use the display since BIOS & DOS only had support for text and it was slower than talking to the hardware directly. TI was initially able to get major programs ported to their machine but most companies stopped offering TI versions since the IBM compatible computers had higher sales and required less work. This killed off these MS-DOS only compatible machines. Later Windows which prevented direct access to hardware allowed companies to innovate again in PC hardware since you could provide a device driver so existing software could use your new hardware.
Photo by Commodore Z
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