>My Dad was convinced by the marketing that its 16-bit CPU was the wave of the future,

I think my mom was convinced because of bargain bin prices after it was more or less dead as a platform. But I'm not sure, she's not around to ask anymore... I've read though that after TI gave up on it, some department stores were dumping them for well under $100, and sometimes closer to $50.

I think I only once, ever, got it to load a saved program from cassette. I don't know if I was just a moron as a kid, or if they were actually that horrible for storage.