On Oct 31, 6:08 am, jt august <starsa...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> In article <1193720607.731527.71...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
>
> "winston19842...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
" <winston19842...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> > It was out in 1979 as the TI-99/4, the 4A came out in '81, so was a
> > contem****ary of the Vic-20.
> > TI made the mistake of positioning themselves against the Vic, so when
> > the 64 came out, people saw it as more advanced than the Vic (and by
> > association, the TI-99). Granted, the C64 _was_ more advanced (being
> > about 2-3 years newer than the TI design), but I'd argue the TI was
> > more advanced than the Vic. Commodore suckered TI in on doing
> > themselves in by setting up a price-war against a lesser machine that
> > was produced more cheaply.
>
> I would argue, first, that even though the TI was older than the C=64,
> the TI was still more advanced. It is debatable, but I would say the TI
> sound chip was more powerful, as it had a wider dynamic range and was
> easier to program, both in TI BASIC and in assy. The graphics chip was
> more powerful, as characters could be redefined, and in assy and
> x-basic, the sprites were easily manipulated. And the TI had a 16-bit
> cpu that was far more powerful and twice as fast as the cpu of the C=64.
>
> While TI did hurt themselves in price competing with the Vic 20, they
> made plenty of other mistakes that added up to self destroy the 99/4a
> package from day 1.
>
> To C='s credit, they brought the C=64 out with great timing and a just
> right marketing campaign. Once again, great marketing overcomes a
> products potential shortcomings to bring out a success. In both cases,
> it was more marketing of the two companies, but with different results.
> TI made numerous marketing and product errors, and lost. C=64 made all
> the right marketing moves with the C=64 and worked successfully around a
> few product errors, and won.
TI always had a penchant for making their own products look bad...
But you are right - the TI-99 wouldn't have been 16-bit if the TMS9985
microprocessor had been a success. It failed, so they had to stick in
a huge 9900, with static RAM chips to provide memory (the 9985 had an
on-board 256 byte cache, like the later 9995) and added logic (a
demultiplexer to interface with 8-bit peripherals) and added wait
states that REALLY slowed the 9900 down.
I would've imagined the 9985 would've been faster because of the
cache, and it may have had instruction pipelining (like the 9995), but
TI didn't even fully use the 9995 on the unreleased TI-99/8 from what
I've read.
Closest thing to a fully-realized system using a 9995 would be the
clone from Myarc, the 9640 (or Geneve)...
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