TMS1000 Series Microcontrollers Peculiar Parts, the series

摘要

Microprocessors were starting to appear on the market in the 1970's as a new way to implement complex functions without needing custom engineered logic chips. They were very powerful for the time, but they needed a group of chips (RAM, nonvolatile memory, etc.) which were expensive. Texas Instruments needed a much lower cost solution for a new calculator so in 1971 Gary Boone and Michael Cochran designed the TMS1802. It was a breakthrough at the time because it included all of logic necessary for a four-function calculator into a single chip except for the keyboard and display. The TMS1802 did all of that with 3000 bits of program memory and 128 bits of random-access memory.