Re: TI-H: General questions with a possibly big im
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Re: TI-H: General questions with a possibly big im
Thanks for your input, Mel. You've shown me how my idea would be
impossible and therfore saved me hours of trying to get it to work:)
Youre idea sounds complicated, and like you said, the average electrical
hobbiest wouldn't be able to do it. I certainly would be lost, but then
again, I dont claim to be much of an electronic hobbiest either:) The
reson i wanted to do this anyway was most for personal reasons. I am a
programmer. Pretty much cut and dry. I program. But, as a programmer,
i am insulted by the limits TI poses on us with their calculators. I
want complete control over teh entire computer system, which TI just
doesn't give me. I therefore am obliged to announce that i am going to
create a better Z80 computer system that can be just as small, but more
hardware adaptable and controllable. Someone wants a memory expander,
they plug in the chips to the parelel bus port out of the system and
install a driver. I dont want to be limited by TI-OS constraints. I
want overlays, i want Shell startup, i want complete interupt control, i
want most of the 64k RAM for my progs to work in, I want, I want, I
want, I want!
So, I was wondering: you said lots of people sell Z80 microproccesors?
do they sell them singly? I dont think Zilog does. Maybe, i dont know.
I fthey did, i could slap that on a baord, with power supply,
oscillator, and a big wide bus to put stuff on containing all of the 40
pins from the processor. With the Low profile thingies in computers, i
can put SIM like memory modules in theri depending on how I want it
setup. A 2K System Rom would be sufficent, for all it has to do is load
up the actual shell from the memory expander built in to the system. It
could be a very simple expander, for it can work 8 bits at a time,
instead of serially. The shell can do the rest. The hard parts would
be getting the ROM done. I dont know if companies do this for consumers
on a small scale basis, or if i could do it myslef, id ont know.
another problem would be the video. If we chose th TI way, we would
need dual access RAM for the video RAM, and i dont know if/where they
sell that, or how expensive it is. Also, the screen itslelf i dont know
how to do. Anyway, programmers would love it, USer's would love it
(bigger games!) and people could sell them (for only the cost of the
building, almost nill profit, to keep the price reasonable. Hardware
hackers would love it cause they could make all sorts of devices to plug
into the thing, and they could even work together. I dont know how much
this ould all cost, it probably would be expensive. but maybe not. I
would do it anyway if it was under $200 or so. :) I would need a lot
of help with this, but it would be worth all effort if it lived up to
expectations. And think how much fun it would be!
at is all i ahve to say for now i think.
Jonathan KAus
kaus@cybrzn.com
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