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COMPACT COMPUTER 40 (CC40)

The Compact Computer 40 is a cute little system which represents Texas-Instrument`s first entry into the portable computer market. It can be considered in many ways as the TI-99 4/A's little brother.

It includes a special version of the TI Extended Basic, where most of the graphical and sound statements has been discarded. But it is so close, than some TI-99 4/A can actually be executed on a CC40 !
Basic statements can be accessed directly through specific key combinations (CTL + key). There is a reset button located to the right of the spacebar.

A lot of peripherals were available thanks to the Hexbus connector : a printer/plotter, a cheap and unreliable wafertape drive (a 8000 baud digital tape which can store about 48 kb) and an RS232c / Centronics interface.

Several software were available on cartridge. Titles released by Texas Instruments include : Memo Processor, Mathmatics, Games #1, Finance, and Electrical Engineering. Memory could also be expanded through special cartridges.

In some ways, the CC40 is the ancestor of the Exelvision EXL 100.

David Vohs report us :
Texas Instruments planned to launch later a TI CC40+, it has the same text and graphics modes and the same operating system as the TI CC 40. This model was announced after TI realized that their cheap wafertape drive turned out to be cheap but unreliable (no other method of mass storage was ever adapted for the TI CC 40). So the cool part about the CC40+ was that it had connectors for a regular tape player to be hooked up to it (just like the TI 99/4 & 4A). It may also have sported a better keyboard (unconfirmed at this time).

But unfortunately, this computer was a casualty of bad planning, since TI was backing out of the computer market at this time, and the TI CC 40+ was never released.