5 Jun
2006
5 Jun
'06
3:57 a.m.
William Donzelli wrote:
It was a custom device. I.e. the CPU was fabricated entirely
of discrete ECL chips. The size of a medium sized briefcase.
But you couldn't get "everything" in any given family.
Hence the problems...
Yeah, I always enjoyed "adjusting" the -Vbb supply -- a
*shunt* regulator fabricated with a whopping big Lambda
power supply driving *BIG* diodes to ground... "select
at test". <shrug> Crude but it *worked*! Power supplies
that big can't descriminate between their load and a dead
short! :-(
I worked on a
100MHz (doesn't sound like much, 30 years later :> )
CPU in the mid 70's.
Damn impressive for the 1970s. What CPU? The problems
I found were all the *different*
ECL families (10K, 100K, MECL III, etc.) plus all the other
cruft to interface the real world to them (4000 series CMOS
for the JTAG stuff, other level translators for the "fast"
stuff).
10K sucked. MECL III sucked. 100K was the way to go, except for the
relatively skimpy selection. And never mix... And, the
colossal *power* requirements (>500W for
that CPU alone!).
Real computers used real power supplies.