21 Nov
2009
21 Nov
'09
5:59 p.m.
On 20 Nov 2009 at 9:54, CSquared wrote:
My old Microdata 820 has a 4-4-4-4 front panel pattern
which is rather
easier to deal with I think. Of course you realize this discussion
has me wanting to drag it out of the garage and get it going again. :)
The switches on the MITS Altair are grouped in threes; the IMSAI
allowed one to (by virtue of paddle colors) group in 3 or 4 (or 2).
I simply ignored the grouping on the MITS and thought in hex anyway.
It would have been much more difficult had the display on the system
been octal via 7-segment displays.
(I know that 8080 instructions, especially register moves, lend
themselves to octal representation, but that was less important to
me).
--Chuck