1 Jan
2009
1 Jan
'09
6:56 p.m.
On 1 Jan 2009 at 9:51, Rick Bensene wrote:
OK, suppose we take a typicel microcomputer with BASIC in ROM and replace
the ROMs with a (very large) set of AND and OR gates to carry out the
same logic function (after all, a ROM is just a fixed AND matrix
(the address decoder) follered by a programablt OR matrix (combines the
outputs of that decoder into the desired output words). Is that a
hardware implenentation of BASIC or not :-)
-tony
Yes, the Wang 2200-series machines used a
microcoded architecture that
implemented a BASIC interpreter as a native "language".
Like an IBM 5150 without any disks? If we're talking about
"directly executing" shouldn't the hardware be so tightly wound up
with the language that reprogramming it (say, by replacing ROMs) to
host some other language is impossible? Otherwise, it's just a
conventional processor executing a stored program.