On 11/16/24 12:09, Sid Jones via cctalk wrote: Yup, on my first real job, I did the controller for an air pollution instrument on an 8008 in 1975 bleeding into 1976.  It was a fairly tough slog, I had to write my own integer multiply and divide routines, 7-segment LED driver code, etc. Jon

On 11/16/24 15:43, Mike Katz via cctalk wrote: Well, it is all historical.  The 8086 was an extension of a familiar instruction set. They SHOULD have started with a clean sheet, of course.  Now, the X86 is a complete pile of barnacles. Jon

The IAPX432 came out the same year that the IBM PC came out which was 3 years after the 8086 and 2 years after the 68000. It was slow and clunky compared to the 68000 and the 8086 was firmly entrenched in the IBM-PC. The 8086 used an extension of the very familiar 8080 instruction set and the 68000 was modeled after the PDP-11 with it's orthogonal instruction set. Though they both had their flaws (the 8086 more so than the 68000) the IAPX432, by comparison, was too little, too complicated & too late. On 11/16/2024 5:26 PM, Tony Jones via cctalk wrote:

On Sat, 16 Nov 2024, Mike Katz via cctalk wrote: Well, a blank slate resultsin a better final product, although it takes longer to develop, and all support needs to be re-implemented. By adding a kludge to an existing product, the final result isn't as good, but it is available much more quickly, and hardware and software support requires "minor" updates. For example, when the PC came out, Micropro was able to patch Wordstar VERY quickly; it took them longer (as a word-processor company) to edit the manuals. The Mac was released with MacWrite and MacPaint; how long was it before a spreadsheet program and other word processors were available? So, Intel went with the "quick fix" rather than the long-term good. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com

/So, Intel went with the "quick fix" rather than the long-term good.  <-- Grumpy Old Fred /And the world has been putting up with that decision with hardware and software that have gotten klugier and klugier as time goes on. The 6809 was amazing with what could be done with a random logic 8-bit microprocessor.  Instead of resting on their laurels Motorola started with a clean slate and the PDP-11 architecture as their muse and created a microprocessor that was so far beyond anything else at the time.  Not quite as orthogonal as the PDP-11 but elegant in it's simplicity.  It's too bad they went the super complex instruction set route with follow on microprocessors like the 68020, 68030, 68040 and 68060. Just imagine how poorly your cell phone would work and how quickly the battery would run down if our cell phones were based on the Intel 8X86(X) architecture. According to worldmetrics.org there area approximately 2.5 Billion PC's out there.  According to statista.com about 80% of these are Intel based.  That would mean there are approximately 2 billion Intel/AMD based PC's in the world. also According to statista.com there are approximately 18.22 billion cell phones out there.  So by shear numbers the Arm architecture win hands down.  And that doesn't account for all of the embedded systems/Raspberry Pis running ARM CPUs. Intel won the battle but lost the architecture battle. On 11/16/2024 6:24 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:

Why did those processors not catch on? It seems to me that hardware people had a “if we build it, they will come” mentality and hoped other companies would adopt it and actually write software to make it useful. Sent from my iPhone

In order to have the "world beat a path" to a new microprocessor is has the be sufficiently better than what is there to justify the time and expense.  Intel doesn't know how to architect a decent CPU.  They just keep kludging their previous successes. From what I heard from some inside sources around the time that the PC came out, IBM didn't pick the 8088 for it's speed or ease of use.  Quite the contrary, they chose it because it was slow and they could buy part of Intel.  They didn't want their $10,000 computer competing with their bread and butter main frames. A 68000 could address more memory than a basic IBM 360 (which could only address up to 64K) and was faster as well.  As a matter of fact when IBM created the System 360 PC card that was an IBM 360 on a card that plugged into an IBM Xt is used a re-microcoded 68000 to emulate the System 360. On 11/16/2024 7:49 PM, Wayne S via cctalk wrote:

On 2024-11-16 2:43 p.m., Mike Katz via cctalk wrote: Now what was that joke again about hell being run by PC's and Heaven by Macs So if you get flames don't blame the PC. Was just me or did everyone think 32K words was all a single process needed in the 70's?