Re: A86: Re: TI's ROM Sux

To: assembly-86@lists.ticalc.org
Subject: Re: A86: Re: TI's ROM Sux
From: David Phillips <electrum@tfs.net>
Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1998 12:48:16 -0500
Delivered-To: assembly-86-outgoing@towerguard.unix.edu.sollentuna.se
In-Reply-To: <3597A641.33026950@flash.net>
References: <002b01bda1e5$9585d280$07b456cf@rebecca.dogtech.com>
Reply-To: assembly-86@lists.ticalc.org


Does a poorly written (if it really is) ROM affect you?  It's probably the
same as the 85.  Remember, when they wrote the 85, they probably never
thought that 100's of people would dissasemble it one day.  If you wrote
256k worth of z80 assembler, do you think you'd have time or inclination to
optimize every byte of it?  You need to give TI more credit.  How easy do
you think all the floating point routines were with an 8 bit processor?

Think of how big the rom is before you go and criticize.  A huge game like
sqrxz is only about 8k.  The rom is 32 times that!

At 10:35 AM 6/29/98 -0400, you wrote:
>
>I sometimes think I do. :) I can still find tons of nitpicky
>things about the TI calculators though... why would they waste
>around 50 bytes of ROM space just to use jp over jr? Its
>no great secret the TI link protocol is one of the slowest
>things around... surely a few CPU ticks aren't gonna make any
>noticable difference. The link port is limited electrically
>to a relatively low bitrate.
>
>Bryan
>
>Matt Johnson wrote:
>> 
>> >> really?  tell ti, they used add
>> >
>> >I really wonder about the quality of some of their ROM coders...
>> >Half the people on the list could do a much better job. They use
>> >jp in some of the link port code to move PC up/down less than
>> >10 instructions!
>> >
>> >Was the 8X ROM written in C as well? I believe the 92 ROM was.
>> >Then again, if they have a whole ROM chip to play with they
>> >can waste as damn much as they want.
>> 
>> JP is faster then JR when no conditions are involved.
>> 
>> When conditions are involved, use JR when there is more of a chance
>> that the code will "fall through", else use JP
>> 
>> Trust me, I am sure TI has guys who can program better then us.
>> I'm sure all of them have EE or Computer Science degrees. Do you?
>> 
>> Later,
>>     Matt
>
>-- 
>Bryan Rittmeyer
>mailto:bryanr@flash.net
>http://www.bridges.edu/horizon/
>
>


// David Phillips
// mailto:electrum@tfs.net
// ICQ: 13811951
// AIM: electrum32

References:

A86: Re: TI's ROM Sux

From: "Matt Johnson" <matt2000@gte.net>

Re: A86: Re: TI's ROM Sux

From: Bryan Rittmeyer <bryanr@flash.net>