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.
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.
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.
Too bad the UK gov were so shortsighted, or that Atari, instead of making the ATW (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Transputer_Workstation)
should have simply used a T212 in the ST blitter socket as a coprocessor. That way people could have slowly gotten familiar with the arch :|
People are building new hardware to run transputers though: https://forums.atariage.com/topic/369254-pre-annoucement-atw... so maybe this amazing code can be resurrected on real hardware!
Edit: Found it. This is the paper on 3d parallel transforms: https://repository.arizona.edu/bitstream/handle/10150/611934...
Later transputers also had DSP instructions built-in.
The target is the embedded space now, though.
CD-ROMs were outselling all other audio formats in the United States by 1991 for context.
128k is enough for a lot of things.
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.
A quick google didn’t tell me anything so maybe I imagined it.
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.
https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/57231/Amstrad-Buys-S...
I may still have imagined it.
But it's not really a CDROM.
Wow! I defer.
A CD not a CD-ROM, but you're right.