i432, i860, i960 (was: Re: Wanted: iAPX-432)

So much silliness... 1) The iAPX-432 was released, and I've seen them in the wild. Why they don't own the computing world has been hashed to death but more articulate folks than I. They even show up from time to time on (horror, much gnashing of teeth, devil incarnate) eBay. You, of course, blaspheme against the Classiccmp gods if you ever look for one there, so we shouldn't even mention it... 2) The i860 was a fascinating little chip, but in a train wreck sort of way. In other words "it is horrible, and yet I cannot look away". The compiler was miserable, the doco insufficient, but if you had a wonk that really understood the beast, and had a single algorithm that you wanted to implement, you could achieve magic. Many graphics processors worked this magic. 3) The i960 was originally worked up for a next generation Intel mainstream processor. It's definition included MMUs, etc., and it ended up in one of Intels' supercomputers. Never quite worked out that way they hoped, though, so the MMUs got deleted and the i960 found new life as an embedded processor. There are a vast number of i960s out there in printers, network card, RAID controllers, etc. 4) XTerminals. Nice toys. Contrary to one posters opinion, there was an Xterm built around *everyones* processor, not just i960. I know of XTerminals based on VAX, 34010/34020, 680[0234]0, MIPS, 88000, i960, i860 & i80[2345]86. They aren't exactly rocket science. Ken