Re: A85: Just thinking.

To: assembly-85@lists.ticalc.org
Subject: Re: A85: Just thinking.
From: "Jason Blakeley" <phantomlogic@hotmail.com>
Date: Thu, 03 Sep 1998 05:11:59 PDT
Delivered-To: assembly-85-outgoing@towerguard.unix.edu.sollentuna.se
Reply-To: assembly-85@lists.ticalc.org



>Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1998 14:15:43 -0600
>From: kb0sjr <kb0sjr@softhome.net>
>To: Jason Blakeley <assembly-85@lists.ticalc.org>
>Subject: Re: A85: Just thinking.
>Reply-To: assembly-85@lists.ticalc.org
>
>
>Hello Jason,
>
>Tuesday, 1 September 98, you wrote to me:
>
>JB> You know something that would be cool? If Texas Instruments came 
out 
>JB> with a calc or a handheld comp that used the z380 processor. I mean 
lets 
>JB> face it, no matter how much people work on ti calcs, they'll never 
be as 
>JB> good as a regular computers because they don't have the processing 
>JB> ability, they don't have the speed, they don't have the storage 
>JB> capability, or the bandwidth to handle things like sound or 
multitasking 
>JB> or anything that we want it to.
>
>JB> But a z380 calc? That's a different story. 32-bit processing, 8 
(16-bit) 
>JB> registers, 33mHz clock speed, and 16Mb memory addressing! It would 
>JB> combine the power of a 386 or 486 processor with the z80's pristine 
>JB> instruction set. I mean there's only so far you can push the z80 
and I 
>JB> think its almost pushed to the limit as it is. I had an old 286 PC 
that 
>JB> I kept tweaking and tweaking trying to max out its capability, but 
one 
>JB> day I realized that it's like trying to make a Pinto or a Gremlin 
look 
>JB> and run like a Ferrari; it wasn't going to happen because there's 
only 
>JB> so much a 286 can handle. What we need is a calc/mini-computer with 
the 
>JB> power to handle all the stuff we want to do to it. Imagine a calc 
that 
>JB> looks like an 85 but with a 640x480 color display, superfast 
processing, 
>JB> and a 16 or 32-bit expansion bus that you can plug things into like 
>JB> sound cards and I/O controller cards to handle HDD's. The neat 
thing is 
>JB> that it would be devoid of any type of software, making it a huge 
>JB> frontier for programmers to explore. We'd finally be able to make 
the 
>JB> programs we want to make without worrying about choking the CPU or 
>JB> running out of memory: multitasking GUI OS's,  huge action games 
like 
>JB> Doom or Quake, Internet browsers, it would be wide open. And if 
enough 
>JB> pressure was put on Texas Instruments, they'd probably make it.
>
>JB> Anyway, I was just thinking. What do you guys think about it?
>
>
>JB> ______________________________________________________
>JB> Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
>
>i don't think that they would do it
>
>Best regards,
> Kb0sjr                            mailto:kb0sjr@softhome.net
>
>




Maybe they wouldn't, but we've all seen how TI responds to what 
customers want. They put built-in assembly support in their new calcs, 
though they may have had other reasons for doing so than customer 
satisfaction. But never the less, they still did it. Moreover, why would 
they even bother to make the 92 if they weren't interested in making 
more powerful calcs with more powerful processors that would offer their 
customers more computing power without the cost of a laptop? Passivity 
is not the best way to get what you want. You don't just wait for 
something to happen and hope its what you want. You go out and apply 
pressure and bend it to your will. In the end I guess it all depends on 
what TI programmers want.



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