25 Jul
2014
25 Jul
'14
1:47 p.m.
-----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
From: Paul Koning
Sent: Friday, July 25, 2014 10:06 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: microcode store (was Re: Looking to get into a Mini
Computer...)
On Jul 24, 2014, at 10:22 PM, Eric Smith <spacewar at gmail.com> wrote:
All of the microcoded processors DEC designed, whether
they had
loadable microcode or only ROM, had hardware that was substantially
oriented toward the normal DEC macroinstruction set(s), and would have
been very inefficient at implementing other instruction sets. The
VAX-11/7xx series hardware was designed for efficient execution of
both VAX and PDP-11 instruction sets, but the other machines were
designed for a single instruction set only. Even the machines that
officially supported user-written microcode (PDP-11/03, PDP-11/60,
some VAXen) were generally unsuited to implementing entirely different
instruction sets, and user-added instructions were expected to have
similar structure to standard instructions.
That?s probably pretty accurate, but even so, it was well know around DEC
that the PDP-11/60 was the world?s fastest PDP-8. (The WPS-8 development
team, which was right next to Typeset-11 where I started, used an 11/60 for
their development work.)
paul
That is what I have read somewhere, long ago ... Owning an 11/60 with WCS
I wonder if there is anybody out there who has the "pdp8 microcode" ...?
Or is that piece of software lost forever?
- Henk