how the cortex came to be...
how the cortex came to be...
The cortex came about as an extension of a group of us at TI trying to build ourselves a home computer out of "scrap", remember that at the time a home computer was somewhere between non-existant and insanely expensive. We started of by taking faulty viewdata boards (sort of teletext over a dial-up modem) based on the TMS9980. When the TMS9995 came out we started looking at building something around that. At that time TI had a minicomputer division (990/12 etc) and a home computer division (99/4A) with lots of internal politics to ensure that the home computer didn't tread on the minicomputer dept toes so to speak, we however worked for the semiconductor division an just wanted to build something and management just wanted to sell chips. The semiconductor division building a home computer was a big no-no, it would have been stomped on by both the home computer division & the minicomputer division so we had unofficial encouragement to go ahead with the design and the way to "get it out" was ETI (as long as there was no direct connection to TI), Powertran simply made the kits & sold it.
Jim Gill and myself did the BASIC (based on one from TI but mostly rewritten), Colin Hinson did the debug monitor, Neil Quarmby did the schematics and floppy boot code and Ian White did hardware prototyping and "resourcing".
Originally the computer was named "Synapse" and the first prototype photos showed that name but it was renamed at the last moment because of a conflict with another product with that name.