JB

Everything was not exactly dark, but it was too fuzzy to see?

Trufax: as a kid, the wumpus chomp scared the bejeezus out of me.

Game of the year material right here.

That looks to be "Defense Systems & Electronics Group"

Yup. Common problem of the era. 's why most of the companies that successfully launched a home computer were not traditionally computer companies(IBM and TI being notable exceptions).

Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn't. Yes, there's some places where TI could have done better, but that's true of everything. I could give you completely different impressions of the system by cherry-picking specific pieces of software. (Our Defender is pretty darn good.) Ultimately, what the system actually is is both more concrete and harder to define: it's QUIRKY. Some things are done very differently than contemporary platforms, the software selection has little overlap with the competition... things are just DIFFERENT in Texas.

Beige wedge blasphemers unite!

Congratulations on the repair. So much harder to live the 99 life when you can't type 99.

It seems more like the Linux community started using "vt100" to mean "terminal emulator" and forgot it referred to a specific piece of hardware at some point. So the DEC VT220 color codes are now part of the Linux vt100 software platform.

"VT100 up to 5 colors"? That's a bit impressive, given theVT100's a B/W teminal.

Yeah, I do acknowledge that adding the clocks up would be a, umm, questionable thing to do. But you COULD do it!

Given it requires four different 3-MHz clock inputs, there's an argument to be made there.

The datasheet is clear that there's a 1/4 divider in the chip. Granted, it does not explicitly say "and the processor runs at the divided clockerate", but they didn't include the divider for no reason(transistors cost money). Empirical evidence shows that, with a 12 MHz input clock, the 9995 performs slightly better than a 9900 with a 3 MHz clock input, which is what is expected for a slightly improved 9900 running at 12/4 MHz. It is also what is expected for a much much worse version of the 9900 running at 12/1 MHz, but it is difficult to imagine how iterative updates could result in a 4x loss of performance. I would say the onus is on you to prove the processor ISN'T clocked off of that divider, and it truly was included for no reason. And I look forward to your groundbreaking research in that regard.

They take different clock inputs, but both run at the same internal frequency. It is like a 486 DX2, only in reverse. A 486 DX2 66 takes a 33 MHz clock input and doubles it internally, but no one will argue it isn't a 66 MHz chip. Similarly, the 9995 takes a 12 MHz input and divides it by four internally. We can only speculate as to why, but it clearly doesn't "run at" 12 MHz.

Illegus looks nice as heck. I know there's other obstacles on the 99, but it is like Tunnels of Doom if Tunnels of Doom wasn't hella choppy.