10 Apr
2013
10 Apr
'13
3:58 a.m.
I didn't directly work with the TI-99/4 but from what I read the problem
with it was it took what was a lovely 16-bit microprocessor and embedded it
in a crippled memory/support environment. Apparently only a few hundred
words of RAM were directly on the processor bus - that mem being intended
for the workspace/registers (and presumably this actually was static ram,
not DRAM) - while the majority of RAM was accessed through a slower,
secondary, 8-bit bus.
I had a 99/4 (not an A) when I was a kid, and it was best used as a doorstop.
You were completely locked out of the innards of the machine, unless
you wanted to spend a couple of grand on disk drives, a massive
expansion box, and the assembeller. For some reason, my parents
didn't want to do that -- they bought an Apple // instead.
The other problem, besides it being unsuitably slow for any sort of
programming, was that it would overheat after a few hours, and start
generating random characters. I probably could have solved that by
getting rid of the case, or cutting some more holes in it, but my
parents wouldn't go for that either.
Parents! Oh, wait...
--
Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems: "The Future Begins Tomorrow"
Visit us at: http://www.yoyodyne-propulsion.net
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"Gregor Samsa awoke one morning to discover that he had been
transformed into a giant cockroach." Nah, it's too good.
--Max Bialystock