Path: news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: FAA To Finally Ditch Floppy Disks & Win-95
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2025 09:35:23 -0700
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On Sat, 14 Jun 2025 00:29:12 -0400
c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> wrote:

> I've done TMS-9900 programming ... odd but interesting chip. Seems to
> have evolved when there was little diff between on-chip cache memory
> and main memory (not the tech to PUT a lot of ram into the CPU
> either). Also had a sort of hardware solution to multi-user/multi-
> processing which was very unique. Still remember "BLWP" - Branch And
> Load Workspace Pointer". The 990 minis weren't so bad.

Always found that one intriguing. Yeah, like the 6502's zero-page, it's
a design from a different era as far as CPU-vs.-RAM-speed goes, but a
clever design-around for fairly elegant multi-tasking in light of it.
Oneathesedays I wanna take one of the later iterations (the TMS99105,
IIRC, is the last one that kept the memory-resident register-file
property; some later TI microcontrollers borrow the basic architecture,
but ditch that) and throw together a little homebrew hobbyist system...