At 01:18 PM 8/26/98 -0500, you wrote:
< Now *that's* historic! Western Digitals first (and last) CPU effort, th
< first HLL ever implemented as an instruction set on a chip (afaik, anywa
< rare as hen's teeth (I'll bet it's scarcity is on the order of the Apple
< not to mention that it was a *very* early 16-bit system that was actuall
< available to mere mortals.
BZZT!!! first the PDP-11/03 is the WD chipset, the alpha microsystems
s100 crate used the same WD chipset. The WD chip set alloed you to create
your own microcode based cpu. It was the only whole computer WD marketed.
Hm, interesting. I had always thought that DEC made all of their own silicon.
Does anybody know when DEC started rolling their own?
It didn't run pascal it ran the compiled result
P-code which was a stack
machine.
OIC. Silly Me.
Scarce, they did make a few. They were expensive
though.
< It was a good idea; but as is so common in this business, the old axiom
< held true:
< No good deed goes unpunished.
<
< I think WD lost their shirt on this one . . .
About right. It's was not cheap and hard to expand. However the sales
of the chipsets to outside producers (DEC and AMS) made them a bundle.
Kinda reminds me of the Moto 88000. The original 88k never gained a
following, and Mot lost their shirt. But much of the 88k's technology
went into the PowerPC, which was a little more successful.
I'd love to see a manual for the chipset and
microcode information.
I think the burning question would be: How does one debug somehting
like this?
Jeff
Allison