> When going for Sinclair and journalists, I always
bring up the
> Z88 at some point. Old guys may remember them (or similar
> machines), while younger often think it's a brand new invention,
Not a fool mistake. IBM recently released a server
called a "z800".
http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/zseries/i/zseries800.jpg
Now, that's the modern incarnation of a REAL(tm) Computer.
no Z80's or Z8000's in it, I believe.
Nop, the zSeries is todays version of a classic /370. The
only real differnence to its predecessor (ES9000) is a
somewhat weired 64 Bit mode - I have still no Idea what
it is good for. Shure, the address extension from 24 to
31 Bit was quite helpful (8 MB user address space became
quite tight when you already need 3 for your programm and
need more speed due caching for 3000 concurent users), but
above that, I see no real need. We got all bells and
whistles in our data base engine, but still don't use
more than a half a gig of mem. And even there the address
extension of earlier architectures (swaping address spaces
in and out of a task - aka banking:) was more than enough.
I think, the extension was more a marketing thing than
anything else.
Gruss
H.
--
VCF Europa 5.0 am 01./02. Mai 2004 in Muenchen
http://www.vcfe.org/