--- title: MYARC Geneve 9640 categories: - Computers types: - Home Computer origins: - U.S.A. years: - '1987' cpus: - Texas Instruments TMS9995 params: name: Geneve 9640 image: /media/museum/photos/myarc_geneve_1.jpg logo: /media/museum/logos/myarc_geneve_logo.gif company: /companies/myarc company_name: MYARC specs: - label: NAME value: Geneve 9640 - label: MANUFACTURER value: Myarc - label: TYPE value: Home Computer - label: ORIGIN value: U.S.A. - label: YEAR value: '1987' - label: CPU value: Texas Instruments TMS9995 - label: SPEED value: 12 MHz - label: CO-PROCESSOR value: Texas InstrumentsTMS9938 (Yamaha V9938) 128K display + TMS9901 Interrupt Controller + MM58274 real-time clock - label: RAM value: 512 KB 1-wait-state CPU RAM (expandable to 2mb) + 32 KB 0-wait-state CPU RAM (expandable to 64K) - label: VRAM value: 128 KB VDP RAM - label: TEXT MODES value: 80 columns - label: GRAPHIC MODES value: 256 x 424 (256 colors), 512 x 424 (16 colors) - label: COLORS value: '512' - label: SOUND value: SN76496 sound processor - label: I/O PORTS value: RGB & composit video ouput (8-pin DIN), mouse, joystick port, keyboard connector (IBM compatible) - label: OS value: MDOS (very close to MS-DOS) - label: PRICE value: Unknown tabs: - photos - adverts - software - emulators - links - docs photos: - title: THE MYARC GENEVE “COMPUTER-ON-A-CARD”. subtitle: '' text: |- This card would be inserted in the TI Peripheral Expansion System in slot one – the slot normally taken up by the Flex Interface Card (the “firehouse”) that connected to the 4A console. The 4A console was unused in the Geneve system. Any memory expansion cards that gave the TI its additional 32K of RAM had to be removed or altered, as they would interfere with the Geneve. RS232 and Disk Controller cards were generally compatible with the system. Thanks to Fabrice Montupet and his fabulous site [www.ti99.com](http://www.ti99.com) for this picture! image: /media/museum/photos/myarc_geneve_2.jpg - title: THE CARTRIDGE CLOSED subtitle: '' text: '' image: /media/museum/photos/myarc_geneve_closed_1.jpg - title: ELECTRONIC BOARD subtitle: '' text: |- Wonderful drawing of the Geneve mother board by Ron Reuter! Thanks to Ron Reuter and its website [www.mainbyte.com](http://www.mainbyte.com) for this picture. image: /media/museum/photos/myarc_geneve_mobo_1.jpg - title: ELECTRONIC BOARD - REAL PICTURE subtitle: '' text: '' image: /media/museum/photos/myarc_geneve_mobo_3.jpg - title: ELECTRONIC BOARD EXPLAINED subtitle: '' text: Thanks to Ron Reuter and its website www.mainbyte.com for this picture. image: /media/museum/photos/myarc_geneve_mobo_2.jpg - title: ELECTRONIC BOARD - DETAIL subtitle: '' text: '' image: /media/museum/photos/myarc_geneve_mobo_detail_1.jpg - title: 'ELECTRONIC BOARD - DETAIL #2' subtitle: '' text: '' image: /media/museum/photos/myarc_geneve_mobo_detail_2.jpg - title: CONNECTORS subtitle: '' text: |- from left to right: \- joystick\ \- mouse\ \- video image: /media/museum/photos/myarc_geneve_connectors.jpg - title: LOGO subtitle: '' text: '' image: /media/museum/photos/myarc_geneve_logo_1.jpg - title: COMPUTER 99/8 subtitle: '' text: |- It could be said that the never-released TI-99/8 was the predecessor to the Geneve. It shared the same processor and speed characteristics. However, it had a cartridge port (not 4A compatible) and featured the new TI Hex Bus interface – a simpler and cheaper way to daisy-chain peripherals vs. the Peripheral Expansion System. In many ways – such as the DOS, the graphics – the Geneve was a superior machine to this never-released successor to the 99/4A. Thanks to Fabrice Montupet and his fabulous site [www.ti99.com](http://www.ti99.com) for this picture! image: /media/museum/photos/myarc_geneve_3.jpg adverts: - title: OFFICIAL FLYER (RECTO) subtitle: '' text: Thanks to [www.mainbyte.com](http://www.mainbyte.com) for this picture image: /media/museum/pubs/myarc_geneve_flyer_1.jpg - title: OFFICIAL FLYER (VERSO) subtitle: '' text: Thanks to [www.mainbyte.com](http://www.mainbyte.com) for this picture image: /media/museum/pubs/myarc_geneve_flyer_2.jpg screenshots: - title: ALTERNATIVE BOOT ROM subtitle: screenshot text: Normally, the initial screen for the Geneve is a high-res image of a swimming swan (“the ugly duckling” being the TI-99/4A…get it?) However, a popular boot ROM let you hold down the space bar for a menu of devices from which to boot (floppy, hard drive, battery-backed RAM disk card, etc). The screen use 40-column graphics mode. image: /media/museum/software/myarc_geneve_ss1.png - title: INITIAL 80 COLUMNS SCREEN subtitle: screenshot text: |- This is the initial (80-colum) screen that appears if the Genve’s built-in clock/calendar is unable to discern the current date and/or time. Later versions of MDOS are Y2K-compliant! If MDOS finds an AUTOEXEC file in the root of the boot volume, it will execute the commands within, just as MS-DOS does with AUTOEXEC.BAT files. image: /media/museum/software/myarc_geneve_ss7.png - title: MDOS subtitle: screenshot text: |- Showing the MS-DOS similarities of MDOS, this is a sample DIR(ectory) command. Note that the hard drive is drive E:. This is because all disk controllers support at least three floppies, and the Myarc Hard and Floppy (HFDC) card supported 4. Thus, A through D were held in “reserve” making E: the first letter available for hard drives. Alternatively, you could refer to the hard drives as HDS1 and HDS2, and floppy drives as DSK1 through DSK4. MDOS accepts either a period or a backslash in path names. The use of either drive letters or device names and slashes or periods was a wise move to bridge the gap between TI users (device names and periods) and those familiar with MS-DOS. image: /media/museum/software/myarc_geneve_ss3.png - title: GEME SPLASH SCREEN subtitle: sceenshot text: The splash screen (again in lower-res mode for some reason) for the Windowing program GEME. One of the many pieces of software that Myarc started but ultimately never finished, this was meant to be a quasi-GUI that would allow you to run multiple programs in windows on the screen – somewhat akin to GEM, Atari’s TOS, DOSshell, and similar programs. image: /media/museum/software/myarc_geneve_ss4.png - title: GLOBAL WAR GAME subtitle: screenshot text: Not all programs had such boring displays. Here’s a game written in Myarc Advanced BASIC (ABASIC) that uses a high-res photo and line art for its splash screen (the remainder of the game is in 80-column text mode). image: /media/museum/software/myarc_geneve_ss5.png - title: GPL INTERPRETER subtitle: screenshot text: |- The GPL Interpreter allowed you to run cartridge-based software for the TI-99/4A that you previously saved to disk format with the CSAVE utility. The format of the resulting disk files is the same as that used by the TI accessory GRAM Kracker. Files saved on a TI with the “GK” will usually run fine out of the GPL Interpreter. GPL speed is set with the F4 key. A setting of 1 is TI (slow) speed, and is often the required speed for any TI games that use speech. The faster settings are ideal for programs like spreadsheets and word processors. The F6 option is unique…a lot of TI software expects to be in the first disk drive, DSK1. With DSK1 emulation “on”, you could create a subdirectory on your first hard drive called DSK1 and place files in it. The emulated GPL/TI mode would then see that directory as if it were the actual DSK1 floppy disk drive. CTRL SHIFT SHIFT would usually (but not always) take you out of the GPL environment and back to this loader screen. image: /media/museum/software/myarc_geneve_ss6.png - title: MY-WORD, WORDPROCESSING SOFTWARE subtitle: screenshot text: |- The user interface for My-Word, the included word processing software. It is largely based on TI-Writer (which itself was largely based on text processing systems found on the TI 990 minicomputers) which was placed in the public domain by TI upon leaving the home computer market. The program uses dot commands for formatting very similar to what Wordstar did on the PC. For example, placing .C centers text while .B turns on bold face. Text files using such formatting must be run through a separate “Formatter” program (as shown in the menu bar) to “interpret” the dot commands into actual print. There is no WYSIWYG mode, although the later aborted Press program from Asgard Software was working on a graphical word processor for the TI and Geneve. A Help file is included. image: /media/museum/software/myarc_geneve_ss2.png - title: CONFIG YOUR AUTOEXEC subtitle: screenshot text: In these days, programs just weren’t programs without having a windowing menu/interface. Here is Config Your Autoexec by Tim Tesch, which aids in the creation of AUTOEXEC files. image: /media/museum/software/myarc_geneve_ss8.png - title: DIRECTORY MANAGER subtitle: screenshot text: In these days, programs just weren’t programs without having a windowing menu/interface. Here is Directory Manager by Clint Pulley, which is a nice directory/file manager program useful on the command-line oriented Geneve. image: /media/museum/software/myarc_geneve_ss9.png - title: MY-ART subtitle: 'drawing sample #1' text: Here is a sample drawings from My-Art, the drawing program sold (or “included free” if you prefer) with the Myarc Mouse. It shows the graphics potential of the Geneve – certainly akin to the Ataris and Amigas being produced at the time (if not slightly better) and far exceeding the capabilities of PCs and Macs at the time. image: /media/museum/software/myarc_geneve_ss10.png - title: MY-ART subtitle: 'drawing sample #2' text: Here is a sample drawings from My-Art, the drawing program sold (or “included free” if you prefer) with the Myarc Mouse. It shows the graphics potential of the Geneve – certainly akin to the Ataris and Amigas being produced at the time (if not slightly better) and far exceeding the capabilities of PCs and Macs at the time. image: /media/museum/software/myarc_geneve_ss11.png - title: CAR-AZY RACER subtitle: screenshot text: Though this game is all low-resolution (ported from the TOMY Tutor, which was basically a TI-99/4A console!), they show some of the potential of the machine in low-res mode. image: /media/museum/software/myarc_geneve_ss14.png - title: POOYAN CLONE subtitle: screenshot text: Though this game is all low-resolution (ported from the TOMY Tutor, which was basically a TI-99/4A console!), they show some of the potential of the machine in low-res mode. image: /media/museum/software/myarc_geneve_ss12.png - title: SCRAMBLE CLONE subtitle: screenshot text: Though this game is all low-resolution (ported from the TOMY Tutor, which was basically a TI-99/4A console!), they show some of the potential of the machine in low-res mode. image: /media/museum/software/myarc_geneve_ss13.png emulators: - title: MESS url: http://www.mess.org platform: Multiplatform text: MESS seems to emulate the Geneve 9640! links: - title: www.ti99.com url: http://perso.orange.fr/fabrice.montupet/geneve.htm text: Nice information (french) - title: Web Wiz CAPTCHA url: http://www.webwizcaptcha.com text: Schematics, docs, info and more docs: - title: THE MYARC 9640 USER'S MANUAL FOR MDOS 2.0 url: ftp://ftp.whtech.com/geneve/ cover: /media/museum/docs/couvs/myarc_geneve_mdos_manual.jpg text: |- [**THE MYARC 9640 USER'S MANUAL FOR MDOS 2.0**](ftp://ftp.whtech.com/geneve/)written by Jack Miller  compiled/archived by Jack Miller\  type of document : PDF\  size : 195 KB\  source : [ftp.whtech.com](ftp://ftp.whtech.com) - title: SCHEMATICS FOR THE GENEVE 9640 url: http://www.mainbyte.com/ti99/geneve/geneve.html cover: /media/museum/docs/couvs/myarc_geneve_doc_schematics.jpg text: |- [**SCHEMATICS FOR THE GENEVE 9640**](http://www.mainbyte.com/ti99/geneve/geneve.html)written by Eric Bray  compiled/archived by Eric Bray\  type of document : Unknown\  size : 4 MB total\  source : [www.mainbyte.com](http://www.mainbyte.com) oc_id: 1208 source: url: https://web.archive.org/web/20230609150029/http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=1208 date: '2023-06-09' --- In 1983, Texas Instruments announced the cancellation of the 99/4A Home Computer. This was shortly after they announced their intention to produce its successor, the TI-99/8, a computer with the "big brother" to the 4A's TMS9900 processor, the TMS9995. Myarc was a company that made a name for itself selling expansion cards for the TI's Peripheral Expansion Box, including memory, RS232, and disk controller cards. They also produced a "replacement" for the large PE Box in a smaller self-contained unit. Then, Myarc dropped the bombshell that they were producing an "upgrade" computer. The unnamed machine - actually just a mock-up in a shell very similar to the 99/8, was shown at the large, annual Chicago TI Faire. After a few years of false starts and production delays, the Myarc Geneve 9640 Family Computer was for sale. The TI PE Box attached to the 4A via an interface card and large "firehose" cable. The Geneve replaced this card, its cable, and the TI console itself - a "computer on a card." It featured the faster processor meant for the 99/8, 80-column high-res graphics (composite and RGB interfaces were included), the ability to run almost all 4A software (including cartridges saved to a disk format), mouse and joystick interfaces, an IBM-style keyboard, and an Operating System somewhat similar to DOS. The system shipped with mostly incomplete software, and this ultimately led to the demise of Myarc and the machine itself. Today, Genve's can be found but are fairly rare. --- Contributors: Andy Frueh and the TI community
We need more info about this computer ! If you designed, used, or have more info about this system, please send us pictures or anything you might find useful.