January 27, 2026
One line, big drama
The Texas Instruments CC-40 invades Gopherspace (plus TI-74 BASICALC)
Tiny ’80s pocket PCs sneak online — nostalgia erupts
TLDR: Hobbyists wired 1980s TI pocket computers to an old-school menu internet (Gopher) and a Unix shell, all on a one-line display. Comments celebrate constraint-driven creativity and school‑day nostalgia while side‑eyeing practicality and TI’s past missteps—showing why retro hacks still matter.
Texas Instruments’ forgotten little legends — the chunky CC‑40 and the slim TI‑74 — just muscled their way onto the old-school internet with a DIY serial add‑on, and the comments lit up. The hook: squeezing a Unix shell and Gopher (a pre‑Web, menu‑style internet) onto a single-line screen. The vibe: equal parts “adorable” and “are you kidding me?”
One reader set the tone with wholesome chaos: “great work comes from dealing with difficult constraints,” reminiscing about a Casio pocket computer and skipping class to code games — complete with a link. From there, the crowd split. Nostalgia camp: This is peak creativity, proof that tiny keyboards and battery life beat today’s locked-down phones. Skeptics: fun museum piece, but “please don’t call it practical,” and yes, a few jabs at TI’s “shortsighted” Hexbus port that could’ve ruled the ’80s if anyone had tried.
The jokes flew fast: “Can it run Doom?” (someone always asks), “Dark Souls UI” for the one-line menu crawl, and a running gag that TI now stands for Tiny Internet. Meanwhile, purists cheered the hand‑assembled terminal code like it was retro NASCAR. Verdict from the peanut gallery? Tiny screens, big feelings — and a reminder that constraints make nerd magic, even if you scroll your email one word at a time.
Key Points
- •Texas Instruments’ CC-40 (1983) and TI-74 BASICALC (1985) share a common architecture producing handheld and pocket computer variants.
- •Hobbyist hardware can use the Hexbus interface to provide a serial port on both devices, enabling terminal access to Unix shells and Gopherspace.
- •The article situates these devices within a continuum of pocket vs handheld computers, citing examples from Tandy, Casio, Sharp, Epson, NEC, and TRS-80.
- •Programmable calculator history includes the HP-65 (1974) and TI’s SR-52 (1975), leading to TI-58/59 (1977) with solid-state ROM modules used in vertical markets.
- •TI launched Project X in 1977, introducing wider displays, expandable memory, and the Equation Operating System on the LCD III architecture.