The kitchen of a ranch-style house in Texas on a bright summer morning, on a tiled breakfast counter a flat home computer thirty-seven centimetres wide, its top a broad silver surface framed in black, at the left a recessed black keyboard, every key plain, smooth and unmarked, at the right a large plain black panel with a wide slot and fine ventilation slots above it, a hand in a pale yellow sleeve sliding a small black plug-in cartridge into the slot, a portable colour television on the counter glowing with soft coloured bands, a closed wooden recipe box, a mug of coffee, sunlight through the window over the sink.
What it was used for
Texas Instruments home computer, on sale from the summer of 1981. The Smithsonian gives an introductory price of 525 dollars and about 300 software titles, whose development TI controlled itself. It was sold through some 12,000 stores; at peak, Texas Monthly reports, the Lubbock lines turned out about 5,000 machines a day, roughly 150,000 a month. It was used for cartridge games, for TI BASIC and for teaching programs. Peripherals at first plugged into the side port; the later Peripheral Expansion Box at 1,475 dollars was more convenient; the Smithsonian records 250,000 of those sold.
What was new
Per the Smithsonian object page, TI advertised the "lowest priced, 16-bit computer available": the 16-bit TMS9900 at 3 MHz in a machine whose rivals ran 8 bits. The price of that sat in the bill of materials. Texas Monthly puts the 9900 at about 20 dollars a unit against roughly 4 dollars for the common 8-bit chips. When TI matched the VIC-20's 99-dollar price in June 1983 it was selling below its own cost to build. On 28 October 1983 TI announced its exit from the home computer business; for fiscal 1983 UPI reports a segment loss of about 660 million dollars against a corporate net loss of 145.4 million.
What the sources leave open: The sources count different things for the launch price: Smithsonian 525 dollars, Texas Monthly 550 dollars to the consumer and 340 dollars to the dealer. Only the Smithsonian gives a lifetime total (over 2.5 million). The Smithsonian page writes "TMS99000"; the designation TMS9900 is given by Texas Monthly.