3 Nov
2005
3 Nov
'05
3:53 p.m.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
Consider the very old Packard Bell PB250--22 bit words,
fewer than 400
transistors and 2500 diodes, 63 instructions. Power consumption about 40
watts, exclusive of I/O:
http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/BRL61-p.html
The trick, of course, is to use bit-serial methods. It seems to me that
one could greatly simplify construction of a homebrew machine that way.
We're not doing this for speed, right?
That is interesting reading. Are there any of the large 48 bit
processors still around?
Also TTL and memory is easy to use in 4 bit sizes, a odd size like 18
bits is not so
easy to work with.