What Classic Computer are All About - A Lovers View

On Sat, 12 Jul 1997 00:00:40 GMT, you wrote: % %Nor me. One of the reasons I use classics is that they're so well made and %so reliable. A few weeks back I mentioned at a computer club that a new %hard disk that I'd run for less than 25 _hours_ was already giving me trouble %but that a 25 _year_ old minicomputer on the same desk was still going strong. It really depends. No doubt minicomputer HD were reliable, but the early MFM stuff for PCs were shitty to work with. %Err, don't forget the HP Saturn, which is used in almost all their %calculators (including the HP48). That's a 4-bit machine at the hardware %level (and sort-of 64 bit at the software level - strange chip). It's a pity that a lot of the custom uProcessors were never really publicly documented. That includes the ones found in the Sharp Basic calculators. %Or an 8048, 8051, ST6, PIC, COP4, COP8, 7810, or something custom. Or the F8 which later became the 3870 (I think). Ben