8088s seattle comp. - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

8 Jun 1997

...
  Yes, I've since seen the guts of a TI-99/4A.  I
ignored it for many years
 since the time I first played with a TI-99/4 at the computer store in Las
 Vegas, wrote a BASIC loop to count to a hundred and got there first
 counting out loud.  I've been shown since that the machine was reasonably
 fast, as long as you avoided BASIC, but that was the only tool at the 
Basic was slow. But since I'd had the technico board for a few years before
the TI99 I'd been into assembler.  The TI9900 cpu is a bit slow as it was 
very memory intensive (registers AKA workspace was an allocated block of 
ram).  IT was a real computer archetecture compared to the 8080.  When 
compared to z80 at 2.5mhz or faster it was slower.  But that was the spped 
they could get out of silicon and the ti99 tried to cost reduce it by 
narrowing the bus slowing it further.  Still in many other ways it was a
more sophisticated cpu with memory banking when that was rarely heard of.

Allison