25 Apr
2006
25 Apr
'06
10:24 a.m.
Hi,
While rummaging around a secret scrapyard, Dan Cohoe
and I dug up the
remains of an Intel 432/600 micromainframe, based on the ill fated 432
processor.
This leads to the question: Are the any operable i432 systems still in
existence? If so it seems like it'd be incredibly rare. Eric Raymond has
documentation and a few parts, but not a complete system:
http://www.brouhaha.com/~eric/retrocomputing/intel/iapx432/
The only ones I've ever heard of are Intel's development systems, and I
think most of these were "loaned" rather than purchased. I suspect Intel
recalled these when the magnitude of the flop was discovered and destroyed
them (just speculation).
The nail in the coffin seems to be the paper that came out of Patterson's
Berkeley lab in '82, demonstrating that it was 10x slower than the 68K
Cheers,
jp