microcoding a PC into a PDP-11 (was: RE: Classic Computers vs. Classic Computing)

18 Sep 2001

...

 Very good point. I was thinking that it would be
nice to have a machine that
was a PDP-11 as soon as you flipped on the power, but probably not worth the
cost and hassle of the flash. Didn't some of the VAXen boot their microcode
from a floppy?  
 Yes, the VAX 11/780 does.
 --Chuck 
Actually much of the 11/780 microcode is in rom.
The stuff loaded from RX01 is mostly bug fixes to the rom code.
The patches went into the Writeable Control Store board.

The 11/785 went to completely RAM loaded microcode.
The 11/780 did have an optional second User Writeable Control Store
board.

-Bill
-- 
  d|i|g|i|t|a|l had it THEN.  Don't you wish you could still buy it now!
  bpechter@shell.monmouth.com|pechter@pechter.dyndns.org

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microcoding a PC into a PDP-11 (was: RE: Classic Computers vs. Classic Computing)