Re: A86: very very odd
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Re: A86: very very odd
Robby Gutmann wrote:
>
> At 02:06 PM 2/15/98 -0600, you wrote:
> >
> >i dont think that it would be a way to find out 'illegal' disassembly of
> >rom. lets face it, if TI didnt want us to disassemble the rom and find out
> >the calls for the calc they woulda made a documentation of the entire set of
---8<---digital scissors applied---8<---
the way TI kind of trickles out information of varying usefulness. I
know
> a little bit of business theory, and I can't think of a single reason why
> TI doesn't release all they know about programming ASM on the 86,
> ESPECIALLY since the built in asm support was a major advertising point.
Well, Apple found with the Apple ][ that lots of great ideas they had
for later versions of the machine had to be axed because people had
hacked through the ROM and were making calls to routines Apple wanted to
move. If they came out with a fancy new Apple ][, like the the //gs,
they would have a devil of a time supporting backward compatibility for
existing programs. Perhaps TI is figuring that "possibly somewhere down
the line" they'll come out with an 87, 89, or whatever, and will want to
make it "mostway" compatible with the 86, even at an assembly level. By
finding routines they aren't likely to need to move, they give us some
access to ROM, without terribly preventing that plan.
Face it, assuming lots of solid assembly applications are written, and
three years from now they want to release an 87, with all the features
of an 86, but with a faster CPU, more memory, business apps, or
whatever. It might be handy to say, "And all those fancy assembly
programs for the TI-86 will work just dandy!"
All of this is, of course, pure speculation from one whose link cable is
still in "shipping limbo." :-)
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