Re: A86: Re: TI's ROM Sux

To: assembly-86@lists.ticalc.org
Subject: Re: A86: Re: TI's ROM Sux
From: Bryan Rittmeyer <bryanr@flash.net>
Date: Wed, 01 Jul 1998 23:26:35 -0400
Delivered-To: assembly-86-outgoing@towerguard.unix.edu.sollentuna.se
References: <002b01bda1e5$9585d280$07b456cf@rebecca.dogtech.com> <3.0.5.32.19980629124816.007a8eb0@tfs.net>
Reply-To: assembly-86@lists.ticalc.org


And would only be 16 times that if they bothered to optimize...
I can understand why they wouldn't go back and optimize later
once things were working, but, hell, the difference between jp
and jr is pretty basic.

Bryan

David Phillips wrote:
> 
> 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

-- 
Bryan Rittmeyer
mailto:bryanr@flash.net
http://www.bridges.edu/horizon/

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