TI-99/4A acquisition

On 22 February 2014 21:36, Terry Stewart <terry at webweavers.co.nz> wrote: Nice articles and an impressive restoration! I am not sure I've got the details right, but the significance of the weird CPU of the TI99/4a might be worthy of a mention. AIUI it was a low-end (single-chip?) version of an existing CPU, which TI also used in much larger machines, right up to minicomputers. Possibly the 99/4a's version was the first VLSI version or something. (So a comparison with the PowerPC chip there - a single-chip implementation of the IBM POWER architecture, an expensive multi-chip UNIX server/workstation processor.) Also arguably bears comparison with the BK Elektronica - that Soviet home-micro PDP-11. But yes, as you say, the first 16-bit home micro - but very slow, in fact slower than most 8-bits of its time period. AIUI part of the reason for this is that the 99/4a CPU has no registers of its own, uniquely among microprocessors - the registers are kept in main RAM, meaning very slow bus accesses for /everything./ -- Liam Proven * Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile Email: lproven at cix.co.uk * GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven MSN: lproven at hotmail.com * Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 * Cell: +44 7939-087884