alt Hacker NewsInteresting project. IIRC, one of the biggest challenges with the TI-99/4A was its TMS9900 processor. It was a 16-bit CPU, but had a really awkward memory architecture that made it difficult to write efficient code.
The lack of dedicated registers meant a lot of memory access, which slowed things down considerably. This is probably why it never gained the same traction as the 6502-based systems like the Apple II or Atari.
I'm curious to see how this UNIX-like OS addresses those limitations. It's a pretty neat accomplishment if it can provide a usable environment on that hardware.
The lack of dedicated registers meant a lot of memory access, which slowed things down considerably.
It gets worse because the TI99 only has 256 bytes of RAM directly addressable on its 16-bit bus. All the other memory in the system is video RAM and is accessed 8 bits at a time through the video display processor. Oh, and you can only do this when the VDP is not accessing the memory. This is incredibly slow and severely hobbles the potential performance of the CPU.