Path: csiph.com!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: John Ames Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc Subject: TI-99/small computers (was Re: GIMP 3.0.0-RC1) Date: Wed, 8 Jan 2025 09:34:13 -0800 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 32 Message-ID: <20250108093413.0000064a@gmail.com> References: <441smjp44l5o2ja4c1vlsv32oh2j6m9n4j@4ax.com> <5lCdP.414812$bYV2.6736@fx17.iad> <1jqdnVgKE70VL-T6nZ2dnZfqnPqdnZ2d@earthlink.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Injection-Date: Wed, 08 Jan 2025 18:34:19 +0100 (CET) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="5d626b83c017d516dd252149dc2ee3b6"; logging-data="3041638"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1/sWcBXppf4S/9oDYd1nfj/r24DDUdfGNY=" Cancel-Lock: sha1:YVALqXNh96Vw0422vl/wlhKKFos= X-Newsreader: Claws Mail 4.3.0 (GTK 3.24.42; x86_64-w64-mingw32) Xref: csiph.com comp.os.linux.misc:64004 On Wed, 8 Jan 2025 00:51:19 -0500 "186282@ud0s4.net" <186283@ud0s4.net> wrote: > I bought a TI99 somewhere in there. Had potential but TI kinda > screwed up in several dimensions. Users couldn't even get at the > 16-bitter without ASM. The 9900 chip WAS kinda interesting with > hardware support for multi-user/multi-tasking and in-RAM register > cloning. The TI-99 was an absolutely *mind-boggling* case of misdesign, likely for cost-cutting reasons, but probably also a bone-headed attempt at market segmentation and/or an artifact of TI's toxic corporate culture (one of a *baffling* number of companies in the '70s - '80s that made a habit of Thunderdoming their departments against each other, and then being Very Surprised to find themselves bleeding out from a thousand self-inflicted stab wounds.) It's worth reading up on the details of the architecture; it's *so* much worse than you'd guess. Best analogy I can make would be something along the lines of "trying to drink bubble tea through a coffee-stirrer that someone is periodically pinching shut," but even that doesn't cover the part where the BASIC interpreter was itself written in an interpreted language. Amazing the thing ran at all... https://www.unige.ch/medecine/nouspikel/ti99/architec.htm > In any case, it IS amazing how much solid biz was done on slow boxes > with almost no memory. Good tight code and a few tricks ... Yup. Knew a family back when who were carnival folk; they ran their whole business off a Commodore 128 right up into the '00s.