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Slightly OT - Texas Instruments ad from 1977 - Two Bytes are better than one
Oh- how far we have come with computers. Seeing this ad really gave a
reminder today. Two Bytes Are Better Than One TEXAS INSTRUMENTS TMS 9900 16BIT MICROPROCESSOR FREE YOURSELF FROM THE ONE BYTE WORLD. MOVE UP TO THE TWO BYTE TEXAS INSTRUMENTS TMS-990C 16-BIT MICROPROCESSOR – WITH OUR — “SUPER STARTER SYSTEM” – TEC-9900-SS. SHOWN ABOVE. FEATURES HARDWARE MULTIPLY AND DIVIDE, 69 MINI-COMPUTER INSTRUCTIONS, 7 ADDRESSING MODES, EXPANDABLE TO A FULL 65K BYTES; MONITOR, TMS 9900 CPU, RAM, P-ROM, E-PROM, PROGRAMMER ALL ON ONE P-C BOARD BASIC OPERATING SYSTEM AS LOW AS $299 UNASSEMBLED $399 ASSEMBLED AND TESTED EXPLICIT MANUAL INCLUDED OR AVAILABLE SEPARATELY AT $35, TO LEARN MORE . . .JUST TEAR OFF A PIECE OF THIS AD. PIN TO YOUR LETTERHEAD & RETURN TO TECHNICO OR CALL OUR HOTLINE 1-800/638-2893 TO RECEIVE FREE INFO-PACKAGE. —DESIGN & TECH SUPPORT BY ROSSE CORP TECHNICO INCORPORATED 9130 Red Branch Rd. Columbia, Md. 21045 301-596-4100 THE TECHNOLOGY LEADER IN ELECTRONICS DISTRIBUTION View the attachments for this post at: http://www.jlaforums.com/viewtopic.p...5068#513945068 |
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Slightly OT - Texas Instruments ad from 1977 - Two Bytes arebetter than one
MummyChunk wrote:
Oh- how far we have come with computers. Seeing this ad really gave a reminder today. Two Bytes Are Better Than One TEXAS INSTRUMENTS TMS 9900 16BIT MICROPROCESSOR FREE YOURSELF FROM THE ONE BYTE WORLD. MOVE UP TO THE TWO BYTE TEXAS INSTRUMENTS TMS-990C 16-BIT MICROPROCESSOR � WITH OUR � �SUPER STARTER SYSTEM� � TEC-9900-SS. SHOWN ABOVE. FEATURES HARDWARE MULTIPLY AND DIVIDE, 69 MINI-COMPUTER INSTRUCTIONS, 7 ADDRESSING MODES, EXPANDABLE TO A FULL 65K BYTES; MONITOR, TMS 9900 CPU, RAM, P-ROM, E-PROM, PROGRAMMER ALL ON ONE P-C BOARD BASIC OPERATING SYSTEM AS LOW AS $299 UNASSEMBLED $399 ASSEMBLED AND TESTED EXPLICIT MANUAL INCLUDED OR AVAILABLE SEPARATELY AT $35, TO LEARN MORE . . .JUST TEAR OFF A PIECE OF THIS AD. PIN TO YOUR LETTERHEAD & RETURN TO TECHNICO OR CALL OUR HOTLINE 1-800/638-2893 TO RECEIVE FREE INFO-PACKAGE. �DESIGN & TECH SUPPORT BY ROSSE CORP TECHNICO INCORPORATED 9130 Red Branch Rd. Columbia, Md. 21045 301-596-4100 THE TECHNOLOGY LEADER IN ELECTRONICS DISTRIBUTION View the attachments for this post at: http://www.jlaforums.com/viewtopic.p...5068#513945068 I have one of those. It was used in the first computer I built. I breadboarded the TMS9900 on an ACE236. The nice thing about the chip, is the package is white ceramic, and the chip is big enough, you can write the signal names on the chip with a pencil. And it didn't have a heatsink on it. It used a four phase non-overlapping clock, with the clock amplitude being 12VDC. While the chip itself had 5V logic outputs. Instead of being CMOS, it was NMOS. The part of the thing that was hairy, was the clock generator. (That's an external DIP chip, 48MHz quartz crystal input, 3MHz output.) The clockgen really needs to be buffered with transistors, to keep the clock generator from burning out. I burned out a clockgen, and because they cost $20 and I was a student, I was royally ****ed at them. There's no excuse for making a clockgen with a Pdiss way outside what the package can dissipate. It's quite possible the clockgen burned up more power than the processor. As I don't remember the processor getting all that warm. I don't think it executed instructions at 3MHz, and the rate was likely lower than that. (Just as Intel chips being CISC, take their sweet time doing stuff.) To run code on mine, I had to hand assemble the code, with a pencil and paper, and then it would take around maybe an hour to key it all in with dipswitches. I had a pushbutton, a reasonable size one, as my "write strobe", and after you set up a RAM address and 16 bit data pattern on the DIP switches, a press of the write strobe button would store that in static RAM. My output was a calculator display. Four hex digits on the left were the address, four hex digits on the right were the RAM data (16 bit word). I really wish I'd taken a picture of it, as it looked a mess, but the damn thing was stable. It never crashed while I was working on it. Which is more than I can say for some other projects of that sort. The frequency counter I built on the ACE236, would regularly go nuts, because the chips used had edge rates a lot faster than the TMS9900. That was the secret to what made it work. Moderate edge rates. I didn't know that at the time. Back then, you just "built it and see", as the amount of transmission line theory available to a student at the time, was limited. That's also why the S100 generation of computers sucked donkey balls. It took years and years for engineers to get the hang of this stuff :-/ Paul |
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Slightly OT - Texas Instruments ad from 1977 - Two Bytes are better than one
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Slightly OT - Texas Instruments ad from 1977 - Two Bytes are better than one
On Sun, 29 Mar 2020 20:56:12 -0400, Flasherly
wrote: On Sun, 29 Mar 2020 14:51:37 -0500, (MummyChunk) wrote: Oh- how far we have come with computers. Seeing this ad really gave a reminder today. A niche marketing, though significant at least for developed countries and an interest capable then to afford a relative specialty provided at higher to exponential costs. Instrumental grade entities, though not to be underplayed, as in the case of early HP's RPN calculators. A 180-shift in phase whereby to place a similar liking for a Raspberry Pi, UK's present answer to at least in economically positioning the Pi at an affordable juncture, one so applied for universally affordability. Although not a convincing one when, especially, practically where that market indeed would lie, being in handheld *NIX dependency operand subsets run from candy-flavored droid systems. Rootkits where firmware circumvention is possible are far more intriguing, much to a kindred spirit then, yet are seen allied to a fuller expectancy of resources from a proper Intel instruction sets, nonetheless, obsequious to computer resources and interface convenient to augment their conventions by such as USB linkage. Although potential benefits indeed are an astounding attestation to advancement, still, that 8" entry backlit display on Bozo's FireHD Amazon tablet, reasonably on sale at under $50/US, is scarcely distinguishable, if and at that level, from a true Chinese Surveillance State whence its impetus, the wholesale societal adoption of "Asian answer" to Microsoft, is derived. Happy to see a mention of HP's RPN calculators. I'd say the best made claculators "ever". I still have 2 HP 15C's and a 16C, all still work fine and I still prefer them to any others. I wouldn't sell them, but I'd bet they are worth more now than when they were new (and no, I don't remember what they cost). |
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Slightly OT - Texas Instruments ad from 1977 - Two Bytes are better than one
On Sun, 29 Mar 2020 22:06:02 -0500, Charlie Hoffpauir
wrote: Happy to see a mention of HP's RPN calculators. I'd say the best made claculators "ever". I still have 2 HP 15C's and a 16C, all still work fine and I still prefer them to any others. I wouldn't sell them, but I'd bet they are worth more now than when they were new (and no, I don't remember what they cost). Expensive, some HPs included insertable modules for modifying their application. I have them, better unit models (possibly not the programmable unit above). Three HP calculators ported to a DOS program to correspond to simulations to three popular HP RPN models. Quick dig: Several RPNs, not all HP, just not the three HP models I'm thinking of, which I'd have to dig deeper with some UnixDOS ported text utilities for better search operands. Better graphic calculators are still expensive, just not as expensive as an aftermarket Pacific Rim facsimile, not even near some of the deals to be found there. A couple more other earlier models, anyway. README.V30 This file lists the changes from version 2.2/2.3 of RPN to version 3.0. RPN is an MSDOS-based emulator of an HP-29C calculator, with extensions. It assumes an 80x25 text display. RPN is a calculating tool written by J.I. Landman to be used primarily by scientists and engineers. RPN is basically a calculator, with quite a bit of power. RPN is a useful and powerful tool for those who regularly use Hewlett Packard calculators (such as the HP-42S, after which RPN was modeled) |
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