Another advantage of the DOS machine was the availability of a decent BASIC compiler. I ran your program through BASCOM and LINK (both dated 1985), and the created executable then ran in 8.7 seconds (with DOSBox configured for a 286@8MHz).
@cbmeeks
2 жыл бұрын
65C02 for the win! Take that IBM! We all know the TI is slow with BASIC. But I have to give a shout out to my first computer, the TI-99/4a. I would love to see the same code written using one of the compiled BASIC's you can get for the TI now. Many programs can simply be compiled and run at near ASM speed.
@Ti99iucIt
3 ай бұрын
This video, although well constructed has one major shortcoming. This video does not demonstrate the real result of the 16-bit TMS9900 processor, but it proves just the one that the TI-99/4A can have. The TI-99/4A processor though it is a 16-bit processor only a small portion of the system was 16-bit (system ROM and 256 bytes of scratchpad RAM), and used a second 8-bit computer bus for the rest. You basically in this video have obtained a result among a real 16-bit computer compared to an 8-bit computer.
@weirdboyjim
2 жыл бұрын
Interesting new series thanks Matt. I did spend some time in the preparation stage for one of my videos trying to nail down an exact definition for 8-bit and 16-bit but in the end it comes down to “I know it when I see it”. Internal bus between alu and registers seems to have the biggest correlation with established terminology but that isn’t something you really “see” outside.
@galier2
2 жыл бұрын
58:30 the TI-99 in assembly would be very interesting. The TI-BASIC interpreter is extremely slow because it is doubly interpreted. The interpreter was written in a pseudo code named GPL which itself was interpreted by the TMS-9900. Even redoing your test with TI-Extended Basic would be interesting as Extended Basic was a little bit faster than the ordinary Basic.
@mikafoxx2717
6 ай бұрын
Ouch, and I thought MS basic was slow. Would be fun to compare basic implementations with clock speeds factored in. Ideally you use the same cpu, like 6502 and z80 BBC basic vs MS basic.
@user-hs2mv8tz2n
2 жыл бұрын
On CGA-based PC you can have only 8 background colors in the text modes. You'd better use foreground color and filled square (character with ascii code 219) instead of 'space'. Using statement 'WIDTH 40' you can switch into 40-column mode, so you don't need to use two characters as a 'pixel'.
@casaderobison2718
2 жыл бұрын
TI-99/4 is to TI-99/4A as NCC-1701 is to NCC-1701-A. So it would be interesting to see what a TI-99/4B through TI-99/4D and beyond would look like.
@ElectronStarCollapse
2 жыл бұрын
Where does the NCC-1701 Refit, as seen in Star Trek 1-3 come into play? :p
@casaderobison2718
2 жыл бұрын
@@ElectronStarCollapse it had a prime marker, but it was the same color as the hull so you couldn't see it.
@winstonsmith478
2 жыл бұрын
Somewhere on KZitem there's a fascinating detailed analysis of the TI-99/4A design which points out how screwed up it was. I wish I'd bookmarked it. I bought one new when they went to $99 to liquidate inventory and got rid of it when I discovered it didn't have peek or poke in its standard BASIC, but that wasn't part of the the "screwed up" design video I mentioned.
@ElectronStarCollapse
2 жыл бұрын
Have you considered trying PCem? Windows and Linux support, and is designed to emulate multiple systems that utilize Intel processors starting with 8088 and going up to Pentium 2. I'm not certain of its timing accuracy, but I have been successful installing Windows 98SE in its work environment.
@slithymatt
2 жыл бұрын
That's a new one to me. I'll give it a try!
@OliverGraf
2 жыл бұрын
What could be better then some Mandelbrot sets? Well more Mandelbrot sets obviously! :) Thanks for ramping up the bit count, looking forward to more systems and assembly comparison.
@youreperfectstudio4789
2 жыл бұрын
I had a 99/4a in addition to several 8 but micros as a kid and it was the nicest to use felt the most well built I would often use it even over much more powerful systems like the coco3 cause the hardware was much more pleasing to use.
@pe1dnn
2 жыл бұрын
Fun fact: the Z80 is actually a 4 bit ALU. So a 16 bit add actually passes 4 times. Now you also know why the half carry flag is there....
@slithymatt
2 жыл бұрын
That's right! I forgot about that.
@AiOinc1
2 жыл бұрын
I'm pretty sure a stock TI-99/4A will destroy the early model PCs that were out around the same time and probably many XTs as well, but the AT probably wins out.
@casaderobison2718
2 жыл бұрын
About half of the speed increase of the 286 relative to the 8088 is thanks to the 16 bit external data bus, the rest being more efficient instruction execution in the CPU.
@casaderobison2718
2 жыл бұрын
@@nneeerrrd that is left as an exercise for the student.
@jaf172
2 жыл бұрын
Would like to see the 6809 or 6309 thrown in there for good measure. It would also be interesting to see what the TMS9900 could do if it weren't hampered by the memory bottleneck in the TI-99/4a. Although, I have no idea how you would do that short of building a home-brew computer.
@AlexEvans1
2 жыл бұрын
Do we put the 6309 under 8-bit because it would likely be in a CoCo or a Dragon or 16-bit because it has an internal 16-bit bus and a 16-bit ALU? As for the TMS9900, if you have an expanded TI-99/4a you have more native memory. Mine has 128k.
@AlexEvans1
2 жыл бұрын
CoCo Assembly: 1/2 with 6809 at standard speed: ~6.5 sec, 3 at double speed ~3.5 sec, 1/2 w/ 6309 standard speed ~3 sec w/ 6309 at double speed ~1.5 sec.
@stamasd8500
2 жыл бұрын
You can argue that bit-slice CPUs like the AMD 2901/2903 or the Intel 3002 _can_ be 16-bit too. Heck, one day I want to build a 16-bit computer using for CPU nothing but Motorola MC14500 1-bit processors in parallel. For the hell of it. :)
@michaellosh1851
2 жыл бұрын
Nice to see the early 16 bit systems! Back in college in the mid to later 1980s, our observatory with 24” telescope was controlled by an 8086 minicomputer-style system. It had two terminals (one in the telescope dome, one in the control room) and two additional monitors for graphics and status (again one in some and one in the control room). It also had a hard disk (10 MB?) and 8” floppy diskette drive! The OS was iRMX and it was programmed in PL/M for the low-level and real-time stuff and Pascal for the higher level data analysis and astronomy utilities. Sort of like a DEC PD-11 but from Intel (sort of surprising looking back that it was not a DEC system, as the main campus computer systems were all DEC). I spent a summer there getting paid a stipend to code Pascal for it. About five years ago when one of my sons was in high school, he picked up a TI-99/4a at an estate sale. The keyboard on that version seems decent. He has not done much with it, like many people, unfortunately.
@jasejj
2 жыл бұрын
Talking of not-quite-16-bit CPUs, the Sinclair QL uses the 68008. Would be interesting to see it here.
@TheSulross
2 жыл бұрын
the TI CPU was different and interesting but was a dead-end as RAM memory and CPU sppeeds would widely diverge over time and now there are as much as three tiers of memory caching to enable the much faster CPU deal with the much slower RAM. The TI CPU was devised when CPU and memory were the same in clock timing - the CPU only went forward at speed of it's memory access speed
@d2factotum
2 жыл бұрын
The main reason TI basic sucks so hard is because at the time of the machine's release they couldn't actually afford to install a full 16kB of 16-bit memory--so they used a hack whereby the machine only has 128 bytes of the good stuff (minimum necesssary to boot the CPU) and the rest of the RAM is 8-bit wide and locked behind the video controller. This obviously does not for good performance make!
@michaellosh1851
2 жыл бұрын
It’s sort of too bad TI didn’t move the machine up-market like IBM later did focusing on business users and provided a more suitable system architecture to capitalize on the CPU capabilities. But for the home computer market, it was the wrong approach. I don’t know if TI could have or had designed a more reasonable 8-bit CPU that offered some type of compatibility with the 9900 so the product line worked better and provided a way to start with a lesser/home machine then move up later.
@nikmilosevic1696
2 жыл бұрын
Would be interesting to see how well the 8088 and AT does with compiled code as opposed to GWBASIC, which is notoriously inefficient.
@slithymatt
2 жыл бұрын
That will be Round 2!
@danboid
Жыл бұрын
Any plans to follow this up with assembly versions and including the Amiga (500) and Atari ST? I want to know how fast my Uzebox is compared to an Amiga! :D
@slithymatt
Жыл бұрын
I had started working on BASIC versions first, but this video was met with a big yawn, so it got back burnered indefinitely
@sonic2000gr
2 жыл бұрын
You could CALL COLOR(I, I, I) then you would not need to redefine the chars at all and they would be blocks of color by themselves. BASIC on the TI is double interpreted and is very slow. Extended BASIC is somewhat faster though (not in all regards). I would be interested to see this in Extended BASIC. Noel has also done some interesting benchmarks on the TI. Greetings from an old time 99er!
@slithymatt
2 жыл бұрын
Yeah, I realized that eventually, but I still wanted to do the demo with the characters for illustration purposes. Surprising how just that for loop of CALL CHAR still adds a second or so!
@slithymatt
2 жыл бұрын
Oh, and I did run this in Extended BASIC, and it was exactly the same time. So whatever it speeds up, it's not applicable here.
@benbreeck3363
2 жыл бұрын
Well, you'll need to add the original Apple Macintosh, Atari ST, Commodore Amiga OCS, Sharp X68000, Elektronika K3000 and follow-ups# Sinclair QL, Apple IIgs, and one of those new Zilog eZ80 SBCs* # Based on the Digital Equipment PDP11-12-13 series of processors. *The eZ80 is nominally 8-bit, but it has 24-bit registers, 16 bit instruction arguments, 40 bits worth of data bus (when you include all the GPIO) and a (non-multiplexed) 24-bit address bus.
@slithymatt
2 жыл бұрын
I'm already planning on the Mac, ST, Amiga and IIGS for the next episode, and the QL for a later one with others. I like the idea of the Sharp, but I'm not familiar with the Elektronika. Do want to cover a wide range of commonly owned computers
@mikafoxx2717
6 ай бұрын
The PDP-11 would be interesting, if only it had a reasonable graphics mode. Could pick characters with varying white space I guess and TTY them out
@realzneo
2 жыл бұрын
Great video Matt!!
@jeffpara9113
2 жыл бұрын
So how is development on the Commander 16 going? watch most all your vids and you include it in your comparison, but never see any progress videos.
@slithymatt
2 жыл бұрын
Progress has been picking up lately. A new release of the emulator and ROM just came out and another one is coming soon. More people are coming on to resolve some of the software and hardware issues, so a fully working prototype should be happening long before, unfortunately, the supply chain can make production possible. It looks like a lot of parts are on back order for many months, or even over a year.
@8bvg300
2 жыл бұрын
Jaguar: Do the Math!
@slithymatt
2 жыл бұрын
Been trying, and still not adding up to 64 all these years later....
@gravious
2 жыл бұрын
I'm suprised the Z80 is outperformed by the 6502 at a third of its clock.. if we're talking 16bit, does that mean an Amiga video is coming? :)
@slithymatt
2 жыл бұрын
It is! And really, that poor performance by the Spectrum is due to Sinclair BASIC just being so slow. The difference wasn't so extreme when using machine code.
@desertfish74
2 жыл бұрын
@@slithymatt AmigaBasic that originally came with the Amiga was also notoriously slow and incompatible with newer models. I wonder how it stacks up to the likes of GFA Basic or even BlitzBasic or AMOS :)
@slithymatt
2 жыл бұрын
@@desertfish74 I plan on trying both ABasiC and AmigaBASIC
@desertfish74
2 жыл бұрын
@@slithymatt but AmigaBasic is soo sllloooowwww :P
@talideon
2 жыл бұрын
Sinclair BASIC is notoriously slow. To be fair, this is because they were trying to fit it into as little memory as possible, which is also part of why it has you do the tokenisation as you type.
@jandoor2068
2 жыл бұрын
?! No 68000?
@slithymatt
2 жыл бұрын
Didn't watch the video? Round 1 will continue with the original Mac, the Amiga and the Atari ST. This video was long enough just covering these two!
@jandoor2068
2 жыл бұрын
@@slithymatt ?I just finished and must have missed that bit (making a cup of coffee?)! Also, isn't the Motorola 68000 considered more a 32bit CPU with 16 bit arithmetic and data bus? I know many CPU's fall in this "grey area". If you are doing the 68000, then any chance of including the QL too? It is a 68008, but it is still 16 bit internal and it might be interesting to see if the basic is any faster than the ZX Spectrum.
@slithymatt
2 жыл бұрын
@@jandoor2068 the 68000 is 16-bit by the definition I give in the video, so we're good there, but not for the 68020 and later models. I do hope to get to the QL eventually.
@jandoor2068
2 жыл бұрын
@@slithymatt Cooliez. What about the IIGS? ;) I am betting the ST will be the fastest of the lot with it's simplistic but efficient screen addressing system and slightly faster CPU.
@slithymatt
2 жыл бұрын
@@jandoor2068 yep IIGS, too. The second half of Round 1 will have all 4, the Round 2 will be 8088, 68000 and 65C816 assembly. No TI assembly in the plans, though!
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