30 Nov
2014
30 Nov
'14
4:54 p.m.
On 11/30/2014 05:29 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
The 16032 with graphics instructions addition (Bitblt)
as the 32CG16 found
some use in laser printers, also--Canon and Panasonic used it on some of
their models.
One of these days, I think I'd quite like to find one of the FPUs; I've got
a few Acorn boards which use the 32016, but I've only ever seen one out in
the wild with the floating point unit fitted - and I happen to have a copy
of Acorn's FP test code which came via an ex-employee. To my knowledge no
commercial software (such as there even was any for the hardware) ever used
it, but it seems a shame to have the code and nothing to run it against.
There was also a rumored port of Xenix to the hardware, but while I can
confirm that it certainly existed as a project, I've never seen anything to
suggest that it got beyond proof of concept.
I think that some avoided NSC when it came to
MPUs--support wasn't what it
should have been, nor the marketing attention span. NSC was fine as a
second-source for many things, but there was a certain reluctance, I think,
in the industry to use them as the prime source.
How did they compare in price with the m68k? Because that chip (pretty
much) "just worked", so if the price was comparable then I can certainly
see why it gained such acceptance and the ns32k line fell by the wayside.
cheers
Jules