[sdiy] IN your mind, what is ....

[Magnus Danielson]

From: Rainer Buchty <buchty at cs.tum.edu>
Subject: Re: [sdiy] IN your mind, what is ....
Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2004 13:34:26 +0100 (CET)
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.56.0402011330370.15581 at atbode100.informatik.tu-muenchen.de>

> > (Intel's emerging CPU family has a new architecture, the HP
> > collaboration thing...)
> 
> You're talking about their coffin nail Itanium? Interestingly, Intel
> starts to lose faith with that latest architectural offspring and recently
> licensed AMD's x86-64 technology to be used in future Pentium/Xeon
> families.

This is indeed interesting news... there are a number of bad design-choices
behind IA-64 which makes me doubt it in the long run. Let's say it hasn't been
a big seller.

> > If we are naming favorite vintage computer chips, I have got to mention the
> > 6502. As the brain of the Apple ][, it helped to start the personal computer
> > industry. Commodore and Atari also sold countless 6502-based machines. Also,
> > as the brain of many arcade games, the 6502 helped me waste untold hours of
> > my youth playing Asteroids and Tempest and Defender and on and on. I think
> > those games were all powered by the sixty-five-oh-two.
> >
> > Admittedly, the 6502 was the first girl I ever kissed -- umm, I mean the
> > first CPU that I programmed in machine language! -- so I've got a soft spot
> > for it. Though it was no sophisticate, the '02 was hardworking and friendly,
> > and we had many good times together. :-)

You need to get our more often!

Yes, the 6502 was also my first assembler experience, but it wasn't until the
8088 that I started to pick up speed, and that I thank the MS-DOS DEBUG command
for. I didn't have a good monitor for my C-64, so I think that helped putting
me off for a while. It was only till much later that I actually used a real
assembler.

> The thing which I still like most about the 6502 is that you can build
> 2-CPU systems from it so easily. Just clock them off 180° phase different
> clocks and they will happily share the same system resources. The same
> works for Motorola's 6800/9; that kind of multiprocessing was IIRC used in
> the Fairlight CMI series I and II (to bring this somewhat on-topic again :)

Interesting. I haven't even thought about that! ;O)

You're excussed for bringing it a little more ontopic! ;O)

Cheers,
Magnus