CD-ROMs and only 128k of RAM? Sorry, that doesn't pass the smell test. Once CD-ROMs were available, 2-digit megabytes of RAM were standard (and affordable) for home PCs.
It is something you can download and test, and it includes the source code for the emulator, the operating system, the C compiler, and everything else.
Just provide the emulator with an ISO CD image, and once it boots up, type DIR D: this single operation requires just about 28 kb of transputer RAM memory for the operating system, the command-line processor, and the buffers.
There's a file browser embedded in the text editor, so you can navigate using the arrows keys and choosing text files to read.
In fact, we need very little info to read CD-ROM directories. A directory search only requires a 2 kb buffer and some variables to keep track, read until you find the first part of the path, read that block, and repeat recursively until you find the desired file.
Reading a file from the CD-ROM can also be done just keeping a 2 kb. buffer and some position variables. My transputer operating system is inefficient in this because it reads the CD-ROM discs in terms of 512-byte sectors, cached by the host system.
When something doesn't match your expectations you (and others reading along) can often learn a lot more if you start with the assumption you had missing information rather than the assumption it's just incorrect. Even in cases where the story really does have an error by asking about it instead of asserting it you are more likely to hear something additional you didn't know before.
When somebody questions a description that by the face of it violates general sanity checks then you (and others reading along) can often contribute more to the discussion by providing the context in which it makes sense, rather than berating the commenter for being critical and not just buying into any claim posted on the internet.
I'm not recommended you buy every claim made on the internet, just inviting you to open with curious discussion about them! I need a good reminder of that myself every once in a while.
If the other commenters left additional discussions on the table I didn't consider let's chat about them. You've also got the author themselves as the poster and in the comments so they may be able to shed more light than I ever could on that side though. It looks like they've since left a comment about the technical approach in the source.
Sure. Not common, but possible. Still 8x as much as what I responded to, and thereby even as an uncommon case an order of magnitude more. Further contributing to my point.
An Apple IIc with an Apple II SCSI interface card will happily utilise the 1989 AppleCD SC. Apple IIgs maxed out at 8mb RAM or so; with only 128kb out of the box for the IIc for example.
CD-ROMs were outselling all other audio formats in the United States by 1991 for context.
CD-ROM block sizes were 2048 bytes (2k), so its not entirely unreasonable to design what we now consider low-memory devices around the technology, nor is it a requirement that huge-memory systems be tied to CD-ROM drives...
The standard home PC in rural Mexico at the time was a mechanical typewriter—if you were lucky. Oscar Toledo E. designed and built one from electronic components, such as the Zilog Z280 CPU mentioned in the article. As I understand it, he and his son Oscar Toledo G. wrote the operating system for it in assembly.
CD-ROMs were available long before the mid-90s and even 8086-class machines could be equipped with them. They were just very expensive, and there wasn't a consumer market for them until the "multimedia" craze hit which required a 386 or 486 with at least 4 MiB of RAM (8 or more was better). But public libraries, for instance, had InfoTrac machines as early as the late 80s, which were XT- or AT-class machines that pulled magazine data off a CD-ROM catalog.
That all may be the case. But these two arguments are working against each other.
One is to work on a super low spec machine because things were really expensive and the tech scrap in Mexico at the time just didn't have anything better. Fine, believable.
The other is that CD-ROM drives were available much earlier than the general public believes, just that they were really expensive. Fine, also believable.
But it's much harder to believe that both are true for the same person at the same time and place. Either they couldn't afford the CR-ROM drive or they could afford more RAM. Moving forward on the time axis strengthens one argument (CD-ROM drive availability since those got cheaper over time) at the expense of weakening the other.
The Spectrum did not have 128kB until near the end of its life. It started out with a choice of 16kB or 48kB and that was all you got until 1986.
It also didn't have a joystick port. Nor did it have floppy disks (although 3rd party interfaces existed). Amstrad added joystick ports when it bought the product line and brand from Sinclair Research, soon after Sinclair launched the Spectrum 128, based on a Spanish model.
