On 8/17/23 17:40, ben via cctalk wrote:
Did any body ever buy the PACE 16 cpu? Godbout ad, DEC
1975, BYTE page 9.
I grabbed one and manuals as a freebie at Wescon, I think. I built it
onto an S100 board (PMOS-TTL level translation will add lots of parts).
I got it going, and then, I thought "now what?" Eventually I repurposed
the prototype board. The novelty of a 16-bit CPU wasn't worth the
effort. The instruction set wasn't all that great and the limitation of
a 10-level stack was a buzz kill. The GI CP1600 was far easier to work
with--I sold that CPU chip to a collector a few years ago.
I think NSC re-cast the PACE as the NMOS INS8900, with TTL-level I/O.
The PACE itself was a re-cast of the NSC IMP-16 chipset.
--Chuck