![]() Unlike most BASICs of the era, TI BASIC did not provide a full-screen editor. For instance, running the Byte Sieve in BASIC took 3960 seconds in TI BASIC, while the same test in Applesoft BASIC on the Apple II, ostensibly a much slower machine, took 2806 seconds, about 30% faster that the TI. As a result, TI BASIC had poor performance on common benchmarks of the era, the TI-99 generally ran half as fast as 8-bit machines like the Commodore PET or Apple II. Every instruction in the user's program had to be read from 8-bit memory, interpreted using code written in GPL, and then output back over the 8-bit bus again. This was particularly noticeable in BASIC. įor all of these reasons, the machine ran far slower than it was theoretically capable of. The GPL code itself was stored on the 8-bit side of the machine, further slowing its performance. The downside to this approach is that every GPL instruction had to be converted on the fly into one or more underlying TMS9900 instructions. To address this, TI created an 8-bit virtual machine with its own language or intermediate representation known as the "Graphic Programming Language", or GPL, that allowed programs to be written in a more compact format. In the era of expensive memory, this presented a significant cost. The TMS9900's instruction set architecture was based on 16-bit opcodes, meaning that programs would generally be twice as large as they would be on an 8-bit machine. TI thus adopted the solution of making the machine mostly 8-bit and connecting the various support chips to this 8-bit bus, with the TMS9900 reading the bus twice to produce a 16-bit value. In a minicomputer, 16-bit support systems were built up of many individual chips, but this was not suitable for a low-cost product. The TMS9900 was also suitable for use in a microcomputer, but at that time the rest of the support chips required to build a complete computer were invariably 8-bit, and this included TI's wide catalog of such chips. ![]() The TI-99 was based on the TMS9900 microprocessor, a 16-bit design that was originally built to provide a single-chip central processing unit (CPU) in low-end models of their TI-990 minicomputer lineup. Due to the specifics of the TI-99 platform, TI BASIC was most notable for its extremely slow performance, roughly half that of common machines, but conversely sported high numerical accuracy. On top of Minimal BASIC, TI added commands for text, graphics, and basic file operations like recording to tape or any other file system. This included a wide variety of features found in other BASICs, as well as new system functions for sprite handling, sound, and other features of the platform.Īs was common on home computers, TI BASIC was used not only for programming but also as a thin operating system. Minimal BASIC lacks a number of features that are commonly found on contemporary BASICs, and Texas Instruments later introduced the TI Extended BASIC cartridge that enhanced the functionality accessible to BASIC users. There are a number of differences, sometimes subtle, between TI BASIC and the more common MS varieties. This was, in turn, based on the original Dartmouth BASIC from the 1960s. In contrast to most BASICs found on contemporary microcomputers, TI BASIC does not trace its history to Microsoft BASIC, but was instead a TI-developed interpreter following the emerging Minimal BASIC standard being created by ANSI and ECMA. as text if I understood the linked page correctly.TI BASIC is an ANSI-compliant BASIC programming language interpreter built into the 1979 Texas Instruments TI-99/4 home computer and its improved 1981 version, the TI-99/4A. SpectrumLab is one of them, it can process direct I/Q input from an RSPx directly (due to that ExtIO.dll) and output FFT data e.g. Just so much, a variety of 3rd-party SDR softwares are compatible with devices that come with an "ExtIO" library written for that device, so this device can be used with any of those softwares. Sorry, I understood you already have an RSPx, if not it would be best if you go through the first setup steps for usage with ExtIO compatible software like HDSDR once you have it, then most of what I wrote above will be less cryptic I guess. DLL via the little browse button in the SpectrumLab Settings menu to make it show up in the list of available input devices, then you can simply select that new entry in the list. That means it works pretty much like configuring HDSDR for the SDRplay RSPx in this regard, you can copy the ExtIO_SDRplay.dll (or ExtIO_SDRplay_RSP2.dll if you have an RSP2) into the SpectrumLab directory, then you can select that.
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