20 Oct
1999
20 Oct
'99
4:47 a.m.
Well . . . if you mean really discrete, i.e. no TTL
SSI/MSI stuff, you need
to recall that a single flip-flop was resistors, capacitors and a handful of
transistors.
...
There, methinks you'd be talking about a board as big as your dining room
table, with miles of wire, and potentially millions of errors to correct.
No, it doesn't have to be as big as a dining room table. Like I said,
I own several examples of bit-serial processors implemented using
discrete components - for example, my Monroe programmable calculator -
which pack everything onto a few square feet of printed circuit board,
and not incredibly dense PCB's at that.
There are other examples of bit-serial processors in my collection -
for instance, the HP 9100A - where there is some, but not much, integration
used. The big PCB in the 9100A is the ROM, while the processor itself
resides on a daughtercard!
--
Tim Shoppa Email: shoppa(a)trailing-edge.com
Trailing Edge Technology WWW: http://www.trailing-edge.com/
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