14 Jun
2006
14 Jun
'06
7:56 p.m.
On Wednesday 14 June 2006 03:53 pm, Don Y wrote:
Roy J. Tellason wrote:
Ok, so you're talking mostly what I'd call embedded applications then.
That's an interest of mine but I've really not that much experience at it and
don't know as much as I'd like to about what sorts of things would make a
machine better suited to the kinds of specific purposes you're talking about
here.
On Wednesday 14 June 2006 12:03 pm, Don Y wrote:
Sorry. :-( The things I design are intended for a specific purpose. Not
"general purpose computing" but, rather, "application specific".
E.g., an
autopilot for a boat, a device for testing blood samples, a gas (petrol?)
pump, a slot machine, etc. I think once the 2901 "fell from grace"
(?), this became a thing
of the past. I've designed two processors "from scratch" (TTL
with bipolar ROMs for the microcode store) and found it quite
an interesting exercise. Not just the "logic design" but
actually thinking about what the instruction set should be
for that particular application domain, etc.
Can you elaborate a bit on what you mean when you say "application
domain" here? I suspect that this is probably a rather obvious thing to
some of the folks in here who are more familiar than I am with regard to
older hardware that I have no experience with, where that hardware was
more specialized in terms of what it was intended for... So, the designs are tailored to the needs of the
*application*
since that is ALL they will ever do. E.g., a slot machine
might have a video display but no "keyboard" -- instead,
dedicated buttons (and a touchpanel overlay) let the user
do *specific* things; "receipt printers" instead of general
purpose printers; hoppers (for coin payouts) instead of
disk drives, etc.
Gotcha.
What I was thinking when I read that bit about application domain was some
differences in the actual processing itself. Sort of like what some of those
real early computer books I have were talking about when they referred to
"busines" vs. "scientific" computers or something. :-)
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin