'Texas Instruments is aiming at 20 to 25 per cent of the projected £15,000 million world micro/minicomputer market over the next ten years. In order to capture a share of this lucrative market, it is launching a new family of third generation 16-bit microprocessors, two new microcomputers and a minicomputer.'
So starts a story in Electronics Weekly's edition of October 15th 1975.
The story continues:
'At the heart of this family is the TMS 9900 - a 16-bit microprocessor using MOS N-Channel silicon gate technology , having memory to memory architecture , with 16 register work spaces.'
'The new processor, which has a 64 pinout, is smaller in size than the 8080.
Compared with the 8080, the 9900 takes 10 microseconds (average) to handle an interrupt whereas an 8080 takes 55 microseconds (average). The 9900 performs a 16 by 16-bit multiply in 31.5 microseconds, but the 8080 performs an 8 by 8-bit multiply in 220 microseconds.'
'The TMS 9900 processor is being sold as part of the 990 microcomputer family. The 990/4 microcomputer is priced at £194 with 512-bytes of memory and at £269 with 8k-bytes of memory, but without chassis and power supply.'
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