Old Hardware Emulated : TI Avigo On MAME
Texas Instruments Wants In On The Action
The TI Avigo PDA starting up in MAME
With the success of
the Palm Pilot, many new competitors entered into the scene to get in
on the PDA action. Texas Instruments entered into the market with the TI
Avigo 10 PDA. TI sold this device between 1997 and 2000. After this run
though, there wouldn't be a follow-up, making the Avigo 10 the only
entry in TI's PDA offerings.
On paper, it would make sense for TI to enter the PDA market. This company already had a long history making handheld calculators for a few decades up to this point. Starting in the early 70's, TI became very well-known for there pocket and scientific calculators. Some of them have already been covered on this blog. TI started to release graphing calculators in the early 90's. These graphing calculators were essentially handheld computers in there own right, able to do advance computation on the go. In fact, the TI series of graphing calculators sported a 8-bit Zilog Z80 processor, along with RAM and there own OS. In the eyes of many, these calculators are sort of like PDA's in that they were much more capable than 4 function and scientific calculators. However, a graphing calculator was a very poor substitute for a PDA since they weren't designed for anything outside of number crunching.
With there expertise in handheld calculators under there belt, they would proceed to create there PDA. To be honest though, TI never had much luck in consumer electronics outside of calculators. Don't get me wrong, they are a very big company. However, the vast majority of there revenue comes from semi-conductors and processors; the behind-the-scenes technology. There semiconductors and processors are found in countless circuit boards of numerous products. In fact, the thing that they're most well known for, calculators, only make up a small segment of total company revenue. In 2019, TI made 14.3 billion in revenue. Out of that, only 1.22 billion was from there calculators.
When TI competed in other areas of consumers electronics, things never ended well for them. The TI-99 home computer turned into a disaster for the company when it went head-to-head against Commodore. Jack Tramiel of Commodore was out for blood. TI exited the home computer market in 1983 due to the price war with Commodore with there C64 home computer prevailing. With Jack Tramiel, business is war. TI then competed with the professional computer market with the TI Professional PC. This was one of those "Not-so-quite-IBM-compatible PC" (actually from what I've read, nothing from the IBM realm could run on these PC). The professional market was just as brutal on TI as the home market was. IBM and Compaq would take no prisoners as customers demanded PC's that were truly IBM-Compatible, and not just "IBM-inspired" machines. Afterwards, TI made the TravelMate laptop PC which were mildly received. TI continued to make them until they sold there mobile PC division to Acer in 1997.
Despite these failures and shortcomings in the consumer marketplace, TI was going to go on and compete head-to-head with Palm Computing. For the PDA equivalent of the Roman Empire, TI didn't have a chance in retrospect. However, since the Avigo was on the market for 3 years, maybe it wasn't as bad of a disaster as there other attempts in consumer electronics.
Of course, for the vast majority now curious about this largely unknown platform, the only experience with the Avigo would be via emulator. Older devices are harder to come by, and they usually have hardware issues with them. As such, I'm using the MAME emulator. The Avigo firmware is needed for the emulation to work. Since the firmware is still intellectual property of TI, it will not be linked here. However, once one has the ROM file, place it in the folder and start MAME. The emulator will start up and the finger/stylus presses are simulated with the mouse, like with POSE and the Windows CE simulators.
If one is interested in running MAME's Avigo emulation from the command line, here is the command that I'm using:
"mame64 avigo -w -mouse"
On paper, it would make sense for TI to enter the PDA market. This company already had a long history making handheld calculators for a few decades up to this point. Starting in the early 70's, TI became very well-known for there pocket and scientific calculators. Some of them have already been covered on this blog. TI started to release graphing calculators in the early 90's. These graphing calculators were essentially handheld computers in there own right, able to do advance computation on the go. In fact, the TI series of graphing calculators sported a 8-bit Zilog Z80 processor, along with RAM and there own OS. In the eyes of many, these calculators are sort of like PDA's in that they were much more capable than 4 function and scientific calculators. However, a graphing calculator was a very poor substitute for a PDA since they weren't designed for anything outside of number crunching.
With there expertise in handheld calculators under there belt, they would proceed to create there PDA. To be honest though, TI never had much luck in consumer electronics outside of calculators. Don't get me wrong, they are a very big company. However, the vast majority of there revenue comes from semi-conductors and processors; the behind-the-scenes technology. There semiconductors and processors are found in countless circuit boards of numerous products. In fact, the thing that they're most well known for, calculators, only make up a small segment of total company revenue. In 2019, TI made 14.3 billion in revenue. Out of that, only 1.22 billion was from there calculators.
When TI competed in other areas of consumers electronics, things never ended well for them. The TI-99 home computer turned into a disaster for the company when it went head-to-head against Commodore. Jack Tramiel of Commodore was out for blood. TI exited the home computer market in 1983 due to the price war with Commodore with there C64 home computer prevailing. With Jack Tramiel, business is war. TI then competed with the professional computer market with the TI Professional PC. This was one of those "Not-so-quite-IBM-compatible PC" (actually from what I've read, nothing from the IBM realm could run on these PC). The professional market was just as brutal on TI as the home market was. IBM and Compaq would take no prisoners as customers demanded PC's that were truly IBM-Compatible, and not just "IBM-inspired" machines. Afterwards, TI made the TravelMate laptop PC which were mildly received. TI continued to make them until they sold there mobile PC division to Acer in 1997.
Despite these failures and shortcomings in the consumer marketplace, TI was going to go on and compete head-to-head with Palm Computing. For the PDA equivalent of the Roman Empire, TI didn't have a chance in retrospect. However, since the Avigo was on the market for 3 years, maybe it wasn't as bad of a disaster as there other attempts in consumer electronics.
Of course, for the vast majority now curious about this largely unknown platform, the only experience with the Avigo would be via emulator. Older devices are harder to come by, and they usually have hardware issues with them. As such, I'm using the MAME emulator. The Avigo firmware is needed for the emulation to work. Since the firmware is still intellectual property of TI, it will not be linked here. However, once one has the ROM file, place it in the folder and start MAME. The emulator will start up and the finger/stylus presses are simulated with the mouse, like with POSE and the Windows CE simulators.
If one is interested in running MAME's Avigo emulation from the command line, here is the command that I'm using:
"mame64 avigo -w -mouse"
The TI Avigo In Action.
The TI Avigo uses
an 8-bit Zilog Z80 processor running at 8MHz. TI was very familiar with
this CPU as this is the processor that was used in there graphing
calculators. While this CPU worked well for devices that were only with
designed number crunching, it would pale in comparison to Palm's
offerings. Since the Palm Pilot was designed to accomplish various task,
a more powerful CPU was a necessity. The Palm Pilots did not disappoint
in this regard. They were burning circles around the Avigo in the
performance category with there 32-bit 68000 CMOS equivalent made by
Motorola. There is 2MB's of flash memory on the emulated Avigo, which is
very typical of handheld PDA's from 1997. The Avigo, like the Palm,
could be synced to a PC using a cradle. The Avigo had a monochrome LCD
display, like the early Palm devices. Unlike the Palm, there was no
hand-recognition software.
Using the software, the PDA seemed very "Palm-ish". It was mostly inspired by PalmOS. The main difference between the two is that the devices is powered on into the Calendar application. There are button on the bottom of the screen for the user to launch additional apps. On the whole, the TI Avigo OS seemed like a uninspiring clone of PalmOS. While there are slight differences in the user interface, a Palm user wouldn't not have felt out of place using an Avigo.
Using the software, the PDA seemed very "Palm-ish". It was mostly inspired by PalmOS. The main difference between the two is that the devices is powered on into the Calendar application. There are button on the bottom of the screen for the user to launch additional apps. On the whole, the TI Avigo OS seemed like a uninspiring clone of PalmOS. While there are slight differences in the user interface, a Palm user wouldn't not have felt out of place using an Avigo.
Here are some more apps for comparison.
The application
launcher is very similar to PalmOS. Windows CE was competing against
Palm while providing a very different user experience. It seemed as TI
simply did a quick case study of why Palm was successful and built
"Palm-ish" PDA more-less identical hoping that lighting would strike
twice. It has to also be noted that the 8-bit Z80 wasn't built for
powerful handheld environments, so the TI software engineers would have
also faced hardware limitations that the Palm engineers did. Thus,
hardware constraints was going to determine the user environment.
One wonders how come TI didn't build a PDA around the Motorola 68000. This processor was used in the TI-89 and TI-92 Plus graphing calculators. As such, TI wouldn't have been a stranger to this CPU platform either. The operating system running on these devices were much more sophisticated than the OS's running on the Z80-based graphing calculators. It would have been possible to re-work the OS to support data entry for appointment keeping as the TI-92 had a physical keyboard. The TI-92 was similar in price to what Palm charged for there higher-end PDA's at the time, so a device like this wouldn't have been out of reach for the typical consumer. TI could have reworked the TI-92 and turned it into a PDA that was also capable of advance numerical calculations and data visualization, giving TI a feature lead over Palm.
Despite these speculative what-ifs, TI would have faced a major hurdle: market domination by Palm. Maybe TI never expected to dominate, but still tested the waters to see how there PDA's would do in the marketplace. The Palm Pilots were already leaders in there field, and was reshaping the marketplace in there image. They have already attracted the vast majority of software developers that coded for mobile platforms. This is what makes TI's decision to create a new platform even more baffling. It didn't have a chance to attract the same number of developers that Palm already embraced. It took years for Microsoft to attract a large number of developers to there Windows Mobile platform, and that's Microsoft! Whoever joined the PDA battleground would have to show serious commitment for there devices for the long-haul. One couldn't expect massive success overnight if they weren't first. TI wasn't first. While there graphing calculators were in the consumer space before Palm became a thing, graphing calculators and personal organizers are very different from each other.
Given these issues, what possessed TI to create a completely new platform to compete with Palm? If TI wanted to simply test the waters, it would have been much easier to just license PalmOS and build a PDA around the specs than building an new platform with OS from scratch, even when using an older 8-bit Z80. TI could have just simply licence PalmOS like Handspring, Sony, Handera, or IBM. Not surprisingly, 3rd party support for the device was non-existent on the Avigo. One would be constricted to the apps loaded on the device, or write there own using the TI Avigo SDK.
After 2000, TI would exit the PDA market. Despite that though, there calculators would continue to sell well as the company had a complete stranglehold on the school districts in this country. So it's not a total loss for TI. Going into rant mode, TI is way over-rated when it comes to there calculators. The main reason why they have such a domineering presence in schools in because they paid text-book publishers to make there calculator instructions to TI-specific. Instead of teaching students general concepts, there taught how to conform specifically in a particular brand, thus not understanding the mathematical concept fully. TI has basically locked-out out Sharp and Casio here in the US. In my opinion, Casio makes better calculators than TI does. TI then proceeds to lock out other handhelds from testing, keeping there grip on the marketplace. Also, because competitors have mostly been locked out of the marketplace, TI could keep the price of there graphic calculators artificially high as they didn't face real competition in this country. It's outrageous that a calculator with a low resolution, 128KB RAM, and a monochrome LCD screen powered by a 8-bit Z80 cost as much as a Android smartphone with a 32-bit HD display and quad-core ARM processor. Market domination doesn't always necessarily mean better products, and this is the case with TI.
One wonders how come TI didn't build a PDA around the Motorola 68000. This processor was used in the TI-89 and TI-92 Plus graphing calculators. As such, TI wouldn't have been a stranger to this CPU platform either. The operating system running on these devices were much more sophisticated than the OS's running on the Z80-based graphing calculators. It would have been possible to re-work the OS to support data entry for appointment keeping as the TI-92 had a physical keyboard. The TI-92 was similar in price to what Palm charged for there higher-end PDA's at the time, so a device like this wouldn't have been out of reach for the typical consumer. TI could have reworked the TI-92 and turned it into a PDA that was also capable of advance numerical calculations and data visualization, giving TI a feature lead over Palm.
Despite these speculative what-ifs, TI would have faced a major hurdle: market domination by Palm. Maybe TI never expected to dominate, but still tested the waters to see how there PDA's would do in the marketplace. The Palm Pilots were already leaders in there field, and was reshaping the marketplace in there image. They have already attracted the vast majority of software developers that coded for mobile platforms. This is what makes TI's decision to create a new platform even more baffling. It didn't have a chance to attract the same number of developers that Palm already embraced. It took years for Microsoft to attract a large number of developers to there Windows Mobile platform, and that's Microsoft! Whoever joined the PDA battleground would have to show serious commitment for there devices for the long-haul. One couldn't expect massive success overnight if they weren't first. TI wasn't first. While there graphing calculators were in the consumer space before Palm became a thing, graphing calculators and personal organizers are very different from each other.
Given these issues, what possessed TI to create a completely new platform to compete with Palm? If TI wanted to simply test the waters, it would have been much easier to just license PalmOS and build a PDA around the specs than building an new platform with OS from scratch, even when using an older 8-bit Z80. TI could have just simply licence PalmOS like Handspring, Sony, Handera, or IBM. Not surprisingly, 3rd party support for the device was non-existent on the Avigo. One would be constricted to the apps loaded on the device, or write there own using the TI Avigo SDK.
After 2000, TI would exit the PDA market. Despite that though, there calculators would continue to sell well as the company had a complete stranglehold on the school districts in this country. So it's not a total loss for TI. Going into rant mode, TI is way over-rated when it comes to there calculators. The main reason why they have such a domineering presence in schools in because they paid text-book publishers to make there calculator instructions to TI-specific. Instead of teaching students general concepts, there taught how to conform specifically in a particular brand, thus not understanding the mathematical concept fully. TI has basically locked-out out Sharp and Casio here in the US. In my opinion, Casio makes better calculators than TI does. TI then proceeds to lock out other handhelds from testing, keeping there grip on the marketplace. Also, because competitors have mostly been locked out of the marketplace, TI could keep the price of there graphic calculators artificially high as they didn't face real competition in this country. It's outrageous that a calculator with a low resolution, 128KB RAM, and a monochrome LCD screen powered by a 8-bit Z80 cost as much as a Android smartphone with a 32-bit HD display and quad-core ARM processor. Market domination doesn't always necessarily mean better products, and this is the case with TI.
Articles of Interest
Wikipedia : Avigo 10 -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avigo_10
Wikipedia : Acer Travelmate - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acer_TravelMate
meta-caldfulator blog : TI Graphing Calculator: Profit Margins - https://www.meta-calculator.com/blog/ti-graphing-calculator-profit-margins/
Forbes : After Dropping In 2019, Can Texas Instruments’ Revenue Cross $15 Billion By 2021? - https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2020/01/28/after-dropping-in-2019-can-texas-instruments-revenue-cross-15-billion-by-2021/#1b9c97b8642c
Texas Instruments Revenue: How Does TXN Make Money? - https://dashboards.trefis.com/no-login-required/2BlYtl9x/Texas-Instruments-Revenue-How-Does-TXN-Make-Money-?fromforbesandarticle=trefis200128
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