13 Oct
2007
13 Oct
'07
11:40 a.m.
On Saturday 13 October 2007 05:13, Brent Hilpert wrote:
Can't remember where I read it, but it seemed
plausible for the time the
4004 was being developed (1970), also that it was compounded by
management's perceptions that the 4004 was a little business on the side
and not willing to invest much in it, memory chips still being the focus.
On the other hand, I wonder what packages the original Busicom designs
utilised - that Intel would otherwise have been obligated to produce - one
would expect, or typically, they would be larger. (The 4040 would go to a
larger package, of course.)
Having heard of the 4004 of course, I know basically nothing about it.
Except that it's the part that was supposed to have started all this... And
the 4040? I've only seen mention of it now and then.
(Snip)
Perhaps not speed as an issue but you were wired into
the small family of
chips that understood the highly specific machine/bus cycle, at least
until the 4008/9 came along that broke out the address/data busses.
4008/9? First I've heard of these at all.
Can you give any sort of a general overview of what those parts were all
about?
I remember very little about the 8008, it having appeared in that
Radio-Electronics article way back when.
I do remember, even after the 8080 article in Popular Electronics came out,
not thinking very much of microprocessors for quite a while. They seemed
limited, it appeared that you had to really go through a lot to fit your
thinking and way of doing things to what they could handle, and it took me
quite a while before I got to the point where I got a really good grip on the
tradeoffs involved, like low package count, etc. :-)
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin