16 Nov
1997
16 Nov
'97
6:20 a.m.
The 3B2 line use the Western Electric 32000 series
processors. Good for
making phone switches, adequate for some database engines, sucks rocks
for general purpose computing. IMAO.
I once met a Bell engineer that was part of the early days of the 32x00
processors, and he said the thing was obsolete the day it was released.
Apparently the floating point was really bad, even worse than Motorolas.
The 32100 (the first generation) came in a unique package - a non-square
PGA, with rows of pins. Typical WE, do things the weird way.
William Donzelli
william(a)ans.net