[HN Gopher] Texas Instruments TMX 1795: the almost first, forgot... ___________________________________________________________________ Texas Instruments TMX 1795: the almost first, forgotten microprocessor (2015) Author : lproven Score : 49 points Date : 2022-09-20 17:33 UTC (5 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.righto.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.righto.com) | monocasa wrote: | (2015) | dang wrote: | Added. Thanks! | SighMagi wrote: | Is there a Forth for it? Search inconclusive.. | kens wrote: | This blog post was turned into an IEEE Spectrum article, if you | prefer a published version: https://spectrum.ieee.org/the- | surprising-story-of-the-first-... | dang wrote: | Discussed at the time (of the article): | | _The Texas Instruments TMX 1795: the first, forgotten | microprocessor_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9520210 - | May 2015 (30 comments) | chasil wrote: | Why has T.I. consistently tended to produce faulty products | throughout the company history? | | This quote makes me think of many more: | | "Texas Instruments didn't seem to put much effort into the | layout, which Mazor calls 'pretty sloppy techniques' and | 'throwing some blocks together'." | | I recall the TI-99/4a that gave the TMS-9900 CPU a few hundred | bytes of RAM, and prevented peek/poke or any other low-level | manipulation of the machine (and trashed its educational value). | I really wish TI had stayed out of this market. | | They sold 386 Xenix machines for a while, and their motherboards | came in three pieces connected by ribbon cables, which did not do | much for reliability compared to Compaq. They should have used a | one-piece motherboard design. | | Later 68000 NuBUS TI-UNIX systems were developed when MIPS and | ARM were both visible. What were they thinking? | | The DSPs and other core competencies must be quite good to cover | for these kinds of mistakes. Their SPARC chips never seemed to | get any complaints, but I would be curious to hear Scott | McNealy's take. | jhallenworld wrote: | >the TI-99/4a | | TI-99/4a is what you get when you design in a complete vacuum, | I mean ignoring the competition at the time. | | http://shawweb.myzen.co.uk/stephen/tihistory.htm | | GPL? GROMs? What on earth were they doing? | | https://www.unige.ch/medecine/nouspikel/ti99/groms.htm | | https://www.unige.ch/medecine/nouspikel/ti99/gpl.htm | | Well Apple-II had its "Sweet16". | metadat wrote: | In this instance, GPL == Graphic Programming Language. | | This one through me for a loop until I clicked through all | your links! | parker_mountain wrote: | > Later 68000 NuBUS TI-UNIX systems were developed when MIPS | and ARM were both visible. What were they thinking? | | Inexpensive unix workstations for running established and | embedded applications. Also, they developed a lot of chips and | designs for certain other large 68k+nubus players, so it | certainly wasn't just throwing money into a one-and-done pit. | | BTW, whatever they were thinking was correct, because afaik | those TI1500 machines were profitable for them. | chasil wrote: | They were also producing SPARC chips for Sun by this point. | | Why on earth choose 68k when the entire market saw SPARC | wiping the floor with CISC? | | EDIT: If Wikipedia is right, Fujitsu made the original SPARC | v7 (MB86900) chips starting in 1986; T.I. didn't start SPARC | manufacture until 1992 with a SPARC v8 (SPARCStation 10). | parker_mountain wrote: | > Why on earth choose 68k | | Well, it was a good choice, because it made them money for | that product line. So they must have known something (or | gotten really lucky) | | Like I said, existing 68k applications and userbase were a | huge draw. Using existing development work to establish a | product line. Time tested embedded designs over the newer | and less long-lived SPARC. | | These were never supposed to be cutting edge - that's a | feature, not a bug, sometimes. | chasil wrote: | Realistically, ARM-1 tapped out on April 26th, 1995, just | as Olivetti was buying Acorn. This was a year before MIPS | and SPARC if I am reading the dates right. | | T.I. could have acquired the ARM processor. They likely | would have killed it. | | At 25k transistors, a UNIX machine based on it would have | been far more profitable than 68k. | | https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/acorn/microarchitectures/arm | 1 | KerrAvon wrote: | SPARC didn't exactly set the world on fire. | chasil wrote: | It actually blew the VAX away, and a lot of other major | systems. | | "(1984) RISC II proved to be much more successful in | silicon and in testing outperformed almost all | minicomputers on almost all tasks. For instance, | performance ranged from 85% of VAX speed to 256% on a | variety of loads. RISC II was also benched against the | famous Motorola 68000, then considered to be the best | commercial chip implementation, and outperformed it by | 140% to 420%." | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_RISC | AdamH12113 wrote: | _> The DSPs and other core competencies must be quite good to | cover for these kinds of mistakes._ | | TI is primarily a semiconductor company. The consumer | electronics business was sold off in the 90s. From what I've | heard, I think laptops were the main product at that point. | causi wrote: | T.I.'s lobbying department is about ten times as skilled as | their engineering department. Schools don't embrace the TI-83 | calculator because it's the best, most economical tool for the | job, they do it because they're legally obligated to. T.I. has | built _empires_ on peddling electronics with thousand-percent | markups. | AdamH12113 wrote: | Former TIer here. | | The calculator business is a tiny part of TI. Wikipedia says | less than 3% of revenue; that seems high to me but I don't | remember a specific number from my time there. I can assure | you, though, that approximately all of TI's engineering and | business efforts are directed towards semiconductors. You | will note, for instance, that the words "calculator" and | "education" do not even appear in their second quarter | financial statement[1], while the words "analog" and | "embedded processing" do. | | [1] https://investor.ti.com/news-releases/news-release- | details/t... | hulitu wrote: | > Later 68000 NuBUS TI-UNIX systems were developed when MIPS | and ARM were both visible. What were they thinking? | | A lot of UNIX vendors had 68k machines. I was impressed in 2004 | how smooth Domain OS/Aegis run on a 68020. | chasil wrote: | They did, but DEC already had MIPS/Ultrix workstations on the | market that beat the living daylights out of any 68k machine. | | ARM-1 tapped out in 1985. No excuse really. | [deleted] | Someone wrote: | Another example (http://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-pong- | you-could-progra...): | | _"Texas Instruments, typical of their modus operandi in that | era, had the most over-engineered solution. Instead of all-in- | one chips, TI offered separate ICs for scoring, various types | of graphics (walls, balls, stick figures, cars, rockets, etc.), | game logic chips and position generators. You combined them | together to make a complete game, which was fairly flexible for | circuit designers but caused an expensive parts count for | manufacturing, and the chip line ended up being a flop."_ | | That was supposed to compete with a single chip solution. | nsxwolf wrote: | The lack of machine language programming out of the box was | deliberate and similar to Apple's App Store business model. If | you wanted to be a serious developer for the platform you had | to buy an expensive 32K upgrade and floppy drive. Then you | could use the assembler and other languages. | | The RAM thing was an architectural choice - you weren't really | meant to use the 256 bytes of SRAM for your programs, you were | meant to share 16K of RAM with the video processor and make all | read and write requests via the video chip. (You could access | the 32K expansion directly) | PaulHoule wrote: | I'd say the 99/4A was unique among the 8-bit computers. All | the rest had basically the same architecture, but the TI had | that strange system where most of the RAM had to be accessed | through in's and out's. | KerrAvon wrote: | The App Store model only works if developers want to build | apps for your system. In the microcomputer market, even IBM | couldn't afford to make that assumption. Every successful | vendor had to evangelize and grease the skids for developers | as much as possible. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-09-20 23:01 UTC)