Re: World-wide 8-bit computer sales (all-time)?

[wildstar <wildstar128@hotmail.com>]

Exegete <millers@noneofyourbusiness.com> wrote in news:3EFDE7E5.7070200
@noneofyourbusiness.com:


> "16 bit machines with bit, byte, and word capabilites" pg 2-1
> 
> This seems to suggest that 8 bit operations and addressing is possible.
> 
> Roy

The 9900 series was a 16 bit chip but the rest of the MB was 8 bit. 9900 
had local 16 bit SRAM because of the way the 9900 was designed around the 
philosophy in the TI Minicomputer processors. It had nothing to do with 
bus but the SRAM needed to be 16 bit because the standard DRAMs where 8 
bit RAM and be too slow. TI wanted to speed things up a bit (despite how 
slow its BASIC was due to the double interpreting). The SRAM was a 16 bit 
memory which acted like a quasi cache. The 9900 was based around the 990 
controller board. The local SRAM was not multiplexed but the rest of the 
RAM is multiplexed. They simply wanted to speed up execution at machine 
level. What TI should have done is provided GPL as the programming 
language or made BASIC interpret directly to Assembly. Thus eliminating 
that double-interpreting and the machine would have been easily a bit 
faster than even the c64. If they did that, things may have been a bit 
different. Technically TI had a fairly decent computer despite most of 
the computer was 8 bit but CPU instruction and the local SRAM circuit was 
decent. TI assembly language program execute a bit faster than 6502 
programs. So TI would have had a decent design. They were hoping they can 
make the rest of the system 16 bit but that was not the case.