ASM Program Size Limitation
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Michael Vincent - michael@radicalsoft.org


** WHY PROGRAMS ARE LIMITED TO ~8 KB

TI was (and still is) afraid that people would pirate applications by converting the code into a program. So they restricted ASM programs' size to about 8 K, thus preventing 16 K converted apps from running as normal ASM programs.

** WHAT TI DID

TI implemented a hardware restriction that locks up the calc if the program counter (PC) is above C000h. Since ASM programs start at 9D95h, they can't run code past about 8.8 K into the program.

** WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU

Programs can still access sprites, strings, data, etc. above C000h, they just can't run anything above that. This restriction does not affect most programs. If you have a large program, you can copy subroutines to saferam and call them from there, hence bypassing the limitation.

** MYTHS

Unlike what some people believe, disabling interrupts and not using any ROM calls will not allow code to run above C000h. It is a hardware limitation and cannot be bypassed.