20 Nov
2002
20 Nov
'02
12:20 p.m.
Charles has a Zilog System 8000 Model 31 available somewhere in Australia
(sorry, I don't know what city...I realize Australia is vast ;)
This is a development system based on the Zilog 8000 CPU. I have no idea
what it looks like (estimated to weigh around 20Kg) but here is a picture
from a brochure:
http://siconic.com/computers/Zilog_System_8000_Brochure.jpg
Contact Charles for details.
Reply-to: <tjf(a)dodo.com.au>
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 9 Nov 2002 01:33:00 +1100
From: Charles L <tjf(a)dodo.com.au>
Subject: Donation
Hello,
I have a Zilog System 8000 Model 31 that I don't really know what to do with.
Would you be interested in it?
Regards,
Charles
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
* Old computing resources for business and academia at www.VintageTech.com *
20 Nov
20 Nov
7:27 p.m.
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21 Nov
21 Nov
4:22 p.m.
Tony Duell wrote:
Quite a fun toy if you like odd processors.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I think that'd be quite likely on this list, Tony!
BTW, recent acquisitions here include a Newbrain,
an Amstrad CPC6128 and a PET. Two Z80s and a 6502;
hmm, not very odd!
--
John Honniball
coredump(a)gifford.co.uk
5:49 p.m.
Eric Smith wrote:
I guess with Big Brother Intel the best processor designs
like the 6809 and the PDP-11 are the odd ones.
BTW, recent
acquisitions here include a Newbrain,
an Amstrad CPC6128 and a PET. Two Z80s and a 6502;
hmm, not very odd!
Yeah, you need a TRS-80 Color Computer or PDP-11 if you want an odd
processor. :-) 
7:14 p.m.
I guess with Big Brother Intel the best processor
designs
like the 6809 and the PDP-11 are the odd ones.
Intel's had their share of odd processors as well, such
as the 8035 and 8051. The 8089 as well, though it's not a
general-purpose processor.
For that matter, the original Pentium is odd, though not all
later ones are.
22 Nov
22 Nov
7:03 a.m.
> I guess with Big Brother Intel the best processor
designs
> like the 6809 and the PDP-11 are the odd ones.
Intel's had their share of odd processors as well,
such
as the 8035 and 8051. The 8089 as well, though it's not a
general-purpose processor.
Who ever played around with low level programming on a
mainframe (/370ish) will recognize the structure Intel
had in mind when they designed the 8086/87/89 family.
On a 3/70 you usualy have at least one CPU (=86) and
one IOC (=89), while the FPU (=87) was a (never needed)
option. The high performance of classic mainframes was
based on this concept, and if you look at modern PCs,
somehow, 20 years later it creeps back into PCs with
programmable graphic processors and quite complicated
disk protocolls.
Having a seperate processor to handle all the low level
(and fast reaction) tasks of I/O handling also supports
well structured and simple oterating systems - and even
more, device drivers can be writen 100% independant from
the operating syswtem. If IBM had folowed Intel in using
the 8089 the problem of geting a device driver for unit
X and operating system Y wouldn't be the problem we have
today.
Intel was around 1976-1980 a quite innovative place,
the fact is widely ignored by common media. Just
remember the 432, or the 186, still one of the best
all in one CPUs around. Everybody just sees and
points out the PC CPUs - and a lot of them are
repeating the dogma that the 86 is a bad design.
I'm defenitly not an Intel fellow, just the other
way, I started out in the /370 world, and prefered
68xx / 65xx CPUs and I never liked the 8080/85 (or
Z80), but Intel-basching without diferentiation gets
me upset.
Gruss
H.
--
VCF Europa 4.0 am 03./04. Mai 2003 in Muenchen
http://www.vcfe.org/
6:37 a.m.
>>BTW, recent acquisitions here include a
Newbrain,
>>an Amstrad CPC6128 and a PET. Two Z80s and a 6502;
>>hmm, not very odd!
> Yeah, you need a TRS-80 Color Computer or PDP-11
if you want an odd
> processor. :-)
I guess with Big Brother Intel the best processor
designs
like the 6809 and the PDP-11 are the odd ones.
Hmm... I have a hard time to agree here. The 8086/7/9 is
to me one of the best CPU designs ever - at least for a
true 16 Bit machine. I true atempt to brng the good parts
of mainframe design to microprocessors.
Ok, if we just look at the CPU, then the 9900 will catch
the title for beeing a true 16 Bit design.
Gruss
H.
--
VCF Europa 4.0 am 03./04. Mai 2003 in Muenchen
http://www.vcfe.org/
12:19 p.m.
Hans Franke wrote:
The problem is that 8086 is not a clean 16 bit processer
but rather a 8 bit load/store architecture ( 8008/8080)
with 16 bit and CISC instructions tacked on. The 8008/8086
was ment to be one family of chips, with real 16/32 bit
processing by another family of chips that totaly bombed.
I guess with
Big Brother Intel the best processor designs
like the 6809 and the PDP-11 are the odd ones.
Hmm... I have a hard time to agree here. The 8086/7/9 is
to me one of the best CPU designs ever - at least for a
true 16 Bit machine. I true atempt to brng the good parts
of mainframe design to microprocessors. Ok, if we just look at the CPU, then the 9900 will
catch
the title for beeing a true 16 Bit design
The other thing people forget is 8 bit bytes really screwed up
computer architecture. Where a 16 old bit machine like
say the IBM-1130 could have effective accumulator/memory
architecture the loss of 1 bit of addressing and opcode
length because of bytes and indexing neededs to scaled
requires now a register/register architecture like the
PDP-11.
In hindsight we now know that 16 bits is too small a
addressing range for a general purpose byte/word cpu's
and only expanding to split code/data and other memory
management tricks could one have useful machine. Lets
not forget video graphics too only took off with large
addressing space too. Remember CGA !!! 16k of memory.
Gruss
H.
Ben.
2:37 p.m.
On Fri, 22 Nov 2002, ben franchuk wrote:
In hindsight we now know that 16 bits is too small a
addressing range for a general purpose byte/word cpu's
and only expanding to split code/data and other memory
management tricks could one have useful machine. Lets
not forget video graphics too only took off with large
addressing space too. Remember CGA !!! 16k of memory.
In hindsight behind your hindsight, it was very difficult to fit anything
more than 8 bits into a single-chip CPU in the early- to mid-70s when most
8-bit microprocessors were being designed. You have to remember there was
a progression of the state of the art to 16-bits, then to 32, etc.
;)
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
* Old computing resources for business and academia at www.VintageTech.com *
9:34 p.m.
In hindsight we now know that 16 bits is too small a
addressing range for a general purpose byte/word cpu's
I can't believe someone actually said this on *this* list. I think I'll go
throw out all my 6502-based systems since they're so pointless for general
purpose computing.
--
----------------------------- personal page: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --
Cameron Kaiser, Point Loma Nazarene University * ckaiser(a)stockholm.ptloma.edu
-- Arguments with furniture are rarely productive. -- Kehlog Albran -----------
10:42 p.m.
Cameron Kaiser wrote:
I did not say General purpose computing can't be done,
just that it is a very small amount of memory for most
user programs. It is really hard work to have a useful
programs written on the small 8 bit machines, and fit
in 32k or 48k of memory incuding the OS.
PS use 6809's rather than 6502's. :)
In hindsight we
now know that 16 bits is too small a
addressing range for a general purpose byte/word cpu's
I can't believe someone actually said this on *this* list. I think I'll go
throw out all my 6502-based systems since they're so pointless for general
purpose computing.
23 Nov
23 Nov
2:31 p.m.
On Fri, 22 Nov 2002, ben franchuk wrote:
I did not say General purpose computing can't be
done, just that it is a
very small amount of memory for most user programs. It is really hard
work to have a useful programs written on the small 8 bit machines, and
fit in 32k or 48k of memory incuding the OS.
I find it rather odd that such a comment would be made in the face of tens
of thousands of applications software and games that were developed on
dozens of 8-bit computer platforms having anywhere from 4K to 64K of main
RAM where the operating system and application shared that memory space.
?
On a 4K Mattel Aquarius I wrote software that:
- Allowed me to catalog my comic book collection in a database saved to
cassette tape (I was 12 ;)
- Played games
This machine had 4K TOTAL. After BASIC initialized there was actually
something less than 2K of program space.
On a 48K Apple ][+ I:
- Wrote and edited documents in full screen WYSIWYG mode
- Created databases
- Worked numbers in spreadsheets
- Played games
To be blunt, I cannot understand how anyone on this list can make such
comments. It was not difficult, as Ben has characterized. In fact, it
was probably easier. Not only that, but a whole industry was created on
machines that had a fraction of a fraction of the computing power and
storage that systems today have. We could not get from there to here if
it were that "difficult".
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
* Old computing resources for business and academia at www.VintageTech.com *
6:34 p.m.
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24 Nov
24 Nov
11:04 a.m.
It was thus said that the Great ben franchuk once stated:
Cameron Kaiser wrote:
I did not say General purpose computing can't be done,
just that it is a very small amount of memory for most
user programs. It is really hard work to have a useful
programs written on the small 8 bit machines, and fit
in 32k or 48k of memory incuding the OS.
Useful in what context? I wrote nearly every paper for high school and
college, plus a humor column [1] on an 8-bit computer [2], and I had a 2nd
cousin (Mom's cousin) that wrote a few books on an 8-bit computer [3].
Okay, you might not be able to effectively run more than one application at
a time, but that might not be such a *bad* thing, if you want to get work
done 8-)
In
hindsight we now know that 16 bits is too small a
addressing range for a general purpose byte/word cpu's
I can't believe someone actually said this on *this* list. I think I'll go
throw out all my 6502-based systems since they're so pointless for general
purpose computing. PS use 6809's rather than 6502's. :)
No argument there.
-spc (First assembly language was 6809 ... )
[1] http://www.conman.org/people/spc/writings/murphy/
[2] Color Computer 2 with 64K RAM.
[3] Northstar, probably running CP/M. I remember using it to play
games writtin in BASIC on it.
4:52 p.m.
New subject: 8 bit vs other Computers.
Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner wrote:
Useful in what context? I wrote nearly every paper
for high school and
college, plus a humor column [1] on an 8-bit computer [2], and I had a 2nd
cousin (Mom's cousin) that wrote a few books on an 8-bit computer [3].
Okay, you might not be able to effectively run more than one application at
a time, but that might not be such a *bad* thing, if you want to get work
done 8-)
For a real word processing you need 80x24 upper/lower case display,
full keyboard (compared to the membrane keyboards of some computers)
a good printer and at least 32k of memory, and floppy disks. The IBM
PC had all the above features, but most 8 bit systems like S100
bus,apple,C64 Coco did not as a base system. Sadly the PC still does
not have a real OS,but then I am a OS/9 fan.
Right now modern machines require at least 67108864* bytes of memory to
run. What will it be in 10 years from now. The first machine I used had
4096 words of memory.(* really more but my calculator can't display 256
* 1024 * 1024.) Somehow don't see the new computers a better machine for
word processing, than the 8 bitters. For getting work done I think
we took a wrong turn in computer design. Has anybody done a real
feature/function compare of software with the 8/16/32 and now 64 bit
machines?
Ben
All computers wait at same speed.
5:15 p.m.
New subject: 8 bit vs other Computers.
I've written a lot of papers on a Commodore 64. I used this over my PC
with Windows and Microsoft Word because it never crashed... That, and
even with my 1541, it still seemed to save faster than Word.
Ian Primus
ian_primus(a)yahoo.com
On Sunday, November 24, 2002, at 05:51 PM, ben franchuk wrote:
Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner wrote:
Useful in what context? I wrote nearly every
paper for high school
and
college, plus a humor column [1] on an 8-bit computer [2], and I had
a 2nd
cousin (Mom's cousin) that wrote a few books on an 8-bit computer
[3]. Okay, you might not be able to effectively run more than one
application at
a time, but that might not be such a *bad* thing, if you want to get
work
done 8-)
For a real word processing you need 80x24 upper/lower case display,
full keyboard (compared to the membrane keyboards of some computers)
a good printer and at least 32k of memory, and floppy disks. The IBM
PC had all the above features, but most 8 bit systems like S100
bus,apple,C64 Coco did not as a base system. Sadly the PC still does
not have a real OS,but then I am a OS/9 fan.
Right now modern machines require at least 67108864* bytes of memory
to run. What will it be in 10 years from now. The first machine I used
had
4096 words of memory.(* really more but my calculator can't display 256
* 1024 * 1024.) Somehow don't see the new computers a better machine
for
word processing, than the 8 bitters. For getting work done I think
we took a wrong turn in computer design. Has anybody done a real
feature/function compare of software with the 8/16/32 and now 64 bit
machines?
Ben
All computers wait at same speed.
8:48 p.m.
New subject: 8 bit vs other Computers.
> For a real word processing you need 80x24
upper/lower case display,
> full keyboard (compared to the membrane keyboards of some computers)
> a good printer and at least 32k of memory, and floppy disks. The IBM
I've written a lot of papers on a Commodore 64. I
used this over my PC
with Windows and Microsoft Word because it never crashed... That, and
even with my 1541, it still seemed to save faster than Word.
Pocket Writer for the C64 rules. I also did a lot of my papers in Word
Writer 5, which is primitive compared to the bliss that is Pocket Writer,
but it had a much bigger document buffer.
For Ben's benefit, Pocket Writer *did* have a 80x24 (software generated)
display. So there.
Heck, if you want WYSIWYG on the C64, there's geoWrite/geoPublish or PageFox.
I'm still threatening to write my 'tiny vi' for the 64.
--
----------------------------- personal page: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --
Cameron Kaiser, Point Loma Nazarene University * ckaiser(a)stockholm.ptloma.edu
-- Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups. ------------
5:20 p.m.
New subject: 8 bit vs other Computers.
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5:42 p.m.
New subject: 8 bit vs other Computers.
Tony Duell wrote:
But 99% of all 8 bit machines in the 1980's were marketed as
game machines.
For a real word processing you need 80x24 upper/lower
case display,
This would take 2K of memory space (if memory-mapped),
and therefore
could easily be accommodated by an 8 bit processor.
But 80 x 24 display cards are hard to find, but a 80x24? terminal
most likely would be used? I wonder if you can get a nice OS/9
machine still?
full keyboard
(compared to the membrane keyboards of some computers)
That has _nothing_ to do
with the processor bus width!
Heving driven Daisywheel printers and a Sanders 12/7 Varioprinter (a
multi-pass dot-matrix printer that could do _very_ near letter quality
output) from 8 bit machines, I don't see the problem either.
I never had the money for a good printer at that time.
25 Nov
25 Nov
6:35 p.m.
New subject: 8 bit vs other Computers.
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7:54 p.m.
New subject: 8 bit vs other Computers.
For waht machine? 80*24 display cards were _very_
common for the Apple
][. I've seen them for the CoCo, and for the Tatung Einstein. I've seen a
design for one for the C64.
I have two such cards (Batteries Included BI-80) which are based on the
6845 IIRC.
--
----------------------------- personal page: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --
Cameron Kaiser, Point Loma Nazarene University * ckaiser(a)stockholm.ptloma.edu
-- What use is magic if it can't save a unicorn? -- Beagle, "The Last
Unicorn"
26 Nov
26 Nov
10:18 a.m.
New subject: 8 bit vs other Computers.
For a real word processing you need 80x24 upper/lower
case display,
This would take 2K of memory space (if memory-mapped), and therefore
could easily be accommodated by an 8 bit processor.
But 80 x 24 display cards are
hard to find, but a 80x24? terminal most likely
would be used? I wonder if you can get a nice OS/9
machine still?
Well, I am not sure the 6809 is still in production. But I would
guess
OS-9 68K boxes still exist, If not, why not make one? > >>full keyboard (compared to the membrane
keyboards of some computers)
> > That has _nothing_ to do with the processor bus width!
> But 99% of all 8 bit machines in the 1980's were marketed as
> game machines.
What's that got to do with anything. Maybe many of
the 8 bit machines
sold to home users had poor keyboards (I would agree with that). This
does not mean an 8 bit machine can't have a good keyboard.
Also we need to define 'many' in here ... if we go for sheer numbers
during the whole 80s, then Homecomputers (not game systems) might be
the winners. but if we go vor value or number of meodels, then non
home/game systems where way ahead. also, where do you put a C64 used
as the main system for a small company? And there have been an awful
lot of professional applications for C64s - I never liked the machine,
it's one of the least desireable designs, nonetheless, it deserves
some honor.
ALso, arn't most PCs sold today home computers? Just because they
have a better display and keyboard (well, sometimes) they still
fit the same nice as a C64 - or at least an Apple II - did 15 years
ago.
> > Heving driven Daisywheel printers and a
Sanders 12/7 Varioprinter (a
> > multi-pass dot-matrix printer that could do _very_ near letter quality
> > output) from 8 bit machines, I don't see the problem either.
> I never had the money for a good printer at that time.
Again, what you could afford back then and what was
possible are 2
totally different things...
To me there's a prety simple way to determinate what's a good, up
to date configuration. it's exactly what you'll get for ~3500 Mark
(1750 Euro). It's been a fix thing since about 1975. Back then you
got an Apple II, 16 K, a cassette drive and a simple green screen.
Today it's a 2.x GHz, 256 Meg PC with a niche 17" CRT a scanner and
a colour printer.
Still the same thing, relative to it's time.
Gruss
H.
--
VCF Europa 4.0 am 03./04. Mai 2003 in Muenchen
http://www.vcfe.org/
10:53 a.m.
New subject: 8 bit vs other Computers.
Hans Franke wrote:
To me there's a prety simple way to determinate what's a good, up
to date configuration. it's exactly what you'll get for ~3500 Mark
(1750 Euro). It's been a fix thing since about 1975. Back then you
got an Apple II, 16 K, a cassette drive and a simple green screen.
Today it's a 2.x GHz, 256 Meg PC with a niche 17" CRT a scanner and
a colour printer.
Still the same thing, relative to it's time.
Still the SAME SPEED too. :)
25 Nov
25 Nov
2:14 a.m.
New subject: 8 bit vs other Computers.
It was thus said that the Great Tony Duell once stated:
No, but a good keyboard is worth its weight in gold.
At least to this touch typist.
-spc (I will *only* use IBM AT or PS/2 keyboards and buy them every
chance I get ... )
full keyboard (compared to the membrane keyboards
of some computers)
That has _nothing_ to do with the processor bus width! 
2:05 p.m.
New subject: 8 bit vs other Computers.
Hi,
ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) said;
Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner wrote:
For a real word processing you need 80x24 upper/lower case display,
I also disagree with the display size issue. I did a
lot of word
processing on my TRS-80 model 1 (with lowercase mod)> It has a 64*16
display.
Me too. And my Tatung Einstein with 80 column display card and running
ZCPR3 qualified on all counts.
--
Cheers,
Stan Barr stanb(a)dial.pipex.com
The future was never like this!
24 Nov
24 Nov
6:47 p.m.
New subject: 8 bit vs other Computers.
On Sun, 24 Nov 2002, ben franchuk wrote:
For a real word processing you need 80x24 upper/lower
case display,
What's "real word processing"? You must mean What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get.
In that case, sure, an 80x24 screen would be nice, but the same can be
achieved (and was, in fact) on 40x24 screens. And if we want to talk real
"real" word processing, why stop at 24 lines? Why not the requisite 60
lines to get a full page?
By your standard, no computer even today can perform "real" word
processing.
Lowercase? A nice amenity, but the fact again is that even on computers
that didn't have lowercase capability, people came up with effective ways
to get around that limitation. You seem to want to go back and compare
today's state of the art on computer technology of two decades ago. It's
the equivalent of saying that nobody could get from Point A to Point B in
any automobile before 1930 because they didn't have fuel injection, power
steering and AM/FM radio.
full keyboard (compared to the membrane keyboards of
some computers)
a good printer and at least 32k of memory, and floppy disks. The IBM
PC had all the above features, but most 8 bit systems like S100
bus,apple,C64 Coco did not as a base system. Sadly the PC still does
not have a real OS,but then I am a OS/9 fan.
So what? People still did useful work on those machines. I wrote a
database program to store my comic book collection on a computer with 2K
of effective memory and a rubber "chiclet" keyboard using cassette tape
for storage. Are you saying this was't real?
Right now modern machines require at least 67108864*
bytes of memory to
run.
Maybe in your Microsoft-centric world.
What will it be in 10 years from now. The first
machine I used had
I don't know, but I suspect you'll argue that real work couldn't be
performed with computers of today because we don't have 4 terabytes of
main memory and a 100 Quadrabyte hard drive.
4096 words of memory.(* really more but my calculator
can't display 256
* 1024 * 1024.) Somehow don't see the new computers a better machine for
word processing, than the 8 bitters. For getting work done I think
we took a wrong turn in computer design. Has anybody done a real
feature/function compare of software with the 8/16/32 and now 64 bit
machines?
I have no idea what you are arguing about now. Sure, computers still have
a way to go, but how does that justify your saying that no real work could
be done on old 9-bit computers?????
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
* Old computing resources for business and academia at www.VintageTech.com *
7:17 p.m.
New subject: 8 bit vs other Computers.
At 08:49 AM 11/24/02 -0800, Sellam wrote:
On Sun, 24 Nov 2002, ben franchuk wrote:
-snip-
For a real word processing you need 80x24
upper/lower case display,
What's "real word processing"? You must mean What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get.
In that case, sure, an 80x24 screen would be nice, but the same can be
achieved (and was, in fact) on 40x24 screens. And if we want to talk real
"real" word processing, why stop at 24 lines? Why not the requisite 60
lines to get a full page? It's
the equivalent of saying that nobody could get from Point A to Point B in
any automobile before 1930 because they didn't have fuel injection, power
steering and AM/FM radio.
Heck, a pc-xt running emtex (Eberhard Mattes' port of TeX for the ibm pc)
did better at formatting text than Word 2000, and this was back in 1990 or
so.
So did Framemaker on a Mac IIci in 1992, and it was wysiwyg.
They were slow, though.
carlos.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Carlos E. Murillo-Sanchez carlos_murillo(a)nospammers.ieee.org
7:51 p.m.
New subject: 8 bit vs other Computers.
Sellam Ismail wrote:
What's "real word processing"? You must
mean What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get.
In that case, sure, an 80x24 screen would be nice, but the same can be
achieved (and was, in fact) on 40x24 screens. And if we want to talk real
"real" word processing, why stop at 24 lines? Why not the requisite 60
lines to get a full page?
By your standard, no computer even today can perform "real" word
processing.
All word processing is, is a way to electronically store and edit a form
of writing, so one doesn't have to print several wrong copies to get one
that is correct. The simplest of tasks done on a computer.
Lowercase? A nice amenity, but the fact again is that
even on computers
that didn't have lowercase capability, people came up with effective ways
to get around that limitation. You seem to want to go back and compare
today's state of the art on computer technology of two decades ago. It's
the equivalent of saying that nobody could get from Point A to Point B in
any automobile before 1930 because they didn't have fuel injection, power
steering and AM/FM radio.
Yep and that's why we have gas sucking SUV's on the road rather than
small cars.
So what? People still did useful work on those
machines. I wrote a
database program to store my comic book collection on a computer with 2K
of effective memory and a rubber "chiclet" keyboard using cassette tape
for storage. Are you saying this was't real?
People on an ego trip with their latest Wintel boxes all have that same
attitude. Back in the days of a few K memory, you had to program tight,
and do just what you had to do to get the job done. By definition, my
VIC20 is a computer just like a Linux/Beowolf or Cray is.
I don't know, but I suspect you'll argue that
real work couldn't be
performed with computers of today because we don't have 4 terabytes of
main memory and a 100 Quadrabyte hard drive.
Those are needed for the latest incarnation of Windows code bloat. Real
O/S's should be minimal, like cp/m was in its day.
I have no idea what you are arguing about now. Sure,
computers still have
a way to go, but how does that justify your saying that no real work could
be done on old 9-bit computers?????
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
I stand and applaud your honesty on this thread.
Gary Hildebrand
St. Joseph, MO
11:07 p.m.
New subject: 8 bit vs other Computers.
Sellam Ismail wrote:
On Sun, 24 Nov 2002, ben franchuk wrote:
What's "real word processing"? You must
mean What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get.
In that case, sure, an 80x24 screen would be nice, but the same can be
achieved (and was, in fact) on 40x24 screens. And if we want to talk real
"real" word processing, why stop at 24 lines? Why not the requisite 60
lines to get a full page?
800x600 will give you a full page.
Lowercase? A nice amenity, but the fact again is that
even on computers
that didn't have lowercase capability, people came up with effective ways
to get around that limitation. You seem to want to go back and compare
today's state of the art on computer technology of two decades ago. It's
the equivalent of saying that nobody could get from Point A to Point B in
any automobile before 1930 because they didn't have fuel injection, power
steering and AM/FM radio.
Ok then what way of travel is best for you? The Model-T may be fine
for a sunday drive,but is a race car just as good for going to work?
So what? People still did useful work on those machines. I wrote a
database program to store my comic book collection on a computer with 2K
of effective memory and a rubber "chiclet" keyboard using cassette tape
for storage. Are you saying this was't real?
Do you still use it for surfing the web?
Maybe in your Microsoft-centric world.
That goes for linux/freeBSD and others too.
I don't know, but I suspect you'll argue that
real work couldn't be
performed with computers of today because we don't have 4 terabytes of
main memory and a 100 Quadrabyte hard drive.
No I am stateing that there is a mininum level of computing power
needed for a task,and differnt level for practical use. Right now
one problem that is cropping up because of the internet, is the
standards for multi-language information is really crappy.
I have no idea what you are arguing about now. Sure, computers still have
a way to go, but how does that justify your saying that no real work could
be done on old 9-bit computers?????
Well now that you bring it up, 9/18/36 bit computers are nice.
I like classic computers, but I want a computer that meets my
needs, and modern computers are crap, because they are mass market
products, and I am the round peg.
25 Nov
25 Nov
7:35 a.m.
New subject: 8 bit vs other Computers.
On Sun, 24 Nov 2002, ben franchuk wrote:
No, but I could. It's a computer. It can be made to do such things.
And I'm stating that you're misguided. It depends on your definition of
"practical", which for you seems to be based on a sliding window. By your
standards, computers will never be useful for "practical use".
800x600 will give you a full page.
If you want to type with a tiny little font that looks crappy, sure.
Ok then what way of travel is best for you? The
Model-T may be fine
for a sunday drive,but is a race car just as good for going to work?
Yes, but in either case, it's still driving, and they still get you to
work. And the race car won't get you there any faster if you take the
speed laws at all seriously.
So what?
People still did useful work on those machines. I wrote a
database program to store my comic book collection on a computer with 2K
of effective memory and a rubber "chiclet" keyboard using cassette tape
for storage. Are you saying this was't real?
Do you still use it for surfing the web? I don't
know, but I suspect you'll argue that real work couldn't be
performed with computers of today because we don't have 4 terabytes of
main memory and a 100 Quadrabyte hard drive.
No I am stateing that there is a mininum level of computing power
needed for a task,and differnt level for practical use. Right now one problem that is cropping up because of the
internet, is the
standards for multi-language information is really crappy.
That's a standard. It has nothing really to do with whether a computer is
practical or not for a given task. What's with the non-sequitur?
Well now that you bring it up, 9/18/36 bit computers
are nice.
I like classic computers, but I want a computer that meets my
needs, and modern computers are crap, because they are mass market
products, and I am the round peg.
In that case, I suggest you use an old 8-bit computer for all your work.
They are much simpler and easier to use.
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
* Old computing resources for business and academia at www.VintageTech.com *
10:28 a.m.
New subject: 8 bit vs other Computers.
Sellam Ismail wrote:
In that case, I suggest you use an old 8-bit computer
for all your work.
They are much simpler and easier to use.
True, and cheap to build with lots of doc's.If I everbuild
something it would a OS/9 system.
How ever like 12 bits better, thus I am building my own FPGA cpu.
Still would like a Papertape reader/punch as mas storage.
For looks gada have da blinking lights.
Ben.
6:32 p.m.
New subject: 8 bit vs other Computers.
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1:44 a.m.
New subject: 8 bit vs other Computers.
Well the Micom 2000 came out in 1986 while the Apple was still in
Woz's garage, with a 31x80 display(3 lines were control lines), and
64k memory. It used a NEC D8080 and it's Qume daisywheel printer
attained 55 cps. It could do underline, subscript and superscript, and
straightline graphics ( end of lines were automatically joined if you
over- or under-scrolled) so you could make borders and frames. You
could do cut and paste and merge separate documents and had a
sort feature. I used mine to make a little sales brochure for a
community paper.
It could also do background communication with it's "Micronet"
(NASA had 50 of them hooked up to their mainframe), interfacing
with mainframes and phototypsetting equipment, something they
called bi-synchronous, and asynchronous to use with modems.
They also had an "OCR-B" , a bilingual optical character reader
before 1981. It had math ability and it's own version of MS80 Basic.
Pretty useful 8-bit I'd say. Of course marketers always reinvent the
wheel like MS did with its' plug-n-play "breakthru".
Lawrence
Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner wrote:
lgwalker(a)mts.net
bigwalk_ca(a)yahoo.com
Useful in what context? I wrote nearly every
paper for high school
and
college, plus a humor column [1] on an 8-bit computer [2], and I had a
2nd cousin (Mom's cousin) that wrote a few books on an 8-bit computer
[3]. Okay, you might not be able to effectively run more than one
application at a time, but that might not be such a *bad* thing, if
you want to get work done 8-)
For a real word processing you need 80x24 upper/lower case display, full
keyboard (compared to the membrane keyboards of some computers) a good
printer and at least 32k of memory, and floppy disks. The IBM PC had all
the above features, but most 8 bit systems like S100 bus,apple,C64 Coco
did not as a base system. Sadly the PC still does not have a real OS,but
then I am a OS/9 fan.
Right now modern machines require at least 67108864* bytes of memory to
run. What will it be in 10 years from now. The first machine I used had
4096 words of memory.(* really more but my calculator can't display 256
* 1024 * 1024.) Somehow don't see the new computers a better machine for
word processing, than the 8 bitters. For getting work done I think we
took a wrong turn in computer design. Has anybody done a real
feature/function compare of software with the 8/16/32 and now 64 bit
machines? Ben All computers wait at same speed.
2:12 a.m.
New subject: 8 bit vs other Computers.
It was thus said that the Great ben franchuk once stated:
Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner wrote:
Ah well ... I was able to write papers and columns on a 32x16 upper case
display (okay, I had 64K RAM and a floppy drive) but hey, if you say so ...
And I consider Linux to be close enough to a real OS for government work.
Useful in what context? I wrote nearly every
paper for high school and
college, plus a humor column [1] on an 8-bit computer [2], and I had a 2nd
cousin (Mom's cousin) that wrote a few books on an 8-bit computer [3].
Okay, you might not be able to effectively run more than one application at
a time, but that might not be such a *bad* thing, if you want to get work
done 8-)
For a real word processing you need 80x24 upper/lower case display,
full keyboard (compared to the membrane keyboards of some computers)
a good printer and at least 32k of memory, and floppy disks. The IBM
PC had all the above features, but most 8 bit systems like S100
bus,apple,C64 Coco did not as a base system. Sadly the PC still does
not have a real OS,but then I am a OS/9 fan. Right now modern machines require at least 67108864*
bytes of memory to
run.
Odd, I only have 33,554,432 bytes in my main development machine. My
webserver has 20,975,616 bytes (and it handles email as well).
What will it be in 10 years from now. The first
machine I used had
4096 words of memory.(* really more but my calculator can't display 256
* 1024 * 1024.) Somehow don't see the new computers a better machine for
word processing, than the 8 bitters. For getting work done I think
we took a wrong turn in computer design. Has anybody done a real
feature/function compare of software with the 8/16/32 and now 64 bit
machines?
Depends upon what you do. For word processing, yes, what we have is a bit
overkill, but now a days I can keep an editor, my email client and a web
browser going. Email because I'm addicted, and the web browser so I can do
research using Google. While you can get an IP stack for the C-64, TCP is a
bit of a heavy-weight protocol and I'm not sure if you can have that, and a
browser (even text based) in 64K of RAM.
It was supposedly said that LISP didn't get interesting until you had a
megabyte of memory and that's the second oldest language there is ...
Ben
All computers wait at same speed.
I thought all user interfaces run at 9600 bps, reguardless of speed ...
-spc (Seems that way sometimes ... )
8:11 a.m.
New subject: 8 bit vs other Computers.
Depends upon what you do. For word processing, yes,
what we have is a bit
overkill, but now a days I can keep an editor, my email client and a web
browser going. Email because I'm addicted, and the web browser so I can do
research using Google. While you can get an IP stack for the C-64, TCP is a
bit of a heavy-weight protocol and I'm not sure if you can have that, and a
browser (even text based) in 64K of RAM.
Who says you need TCP/IP in the C64 to do web browsing? *innocent smile*
http://www.armory.com/%7Espectre/cwi/hl/
Strictly speaking, this is cheating, but it works. I demonstrated this with
a Lantronix UDS-10 Ethernet-to-serial interface at VCF5.
--
----------------------------- personal page: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --
Cameron Kaiser, Point Loma Nazarene University * ckaiser(a)stockholm.ptloma.edu
-- Die, v.: To stop sinning suddenly. -- Elbert Hubbard -----------------------
24 Nov
24 Nov
10:39 a.m.
It was thus said that the Great Hans Franke once stated:
Hmm... I have a hard time to agree here. The 8086/7/9 is
to me one of the best CPU designs ever - at least for a
true 16 Bit machine. I true atempt to brng the good parts
of mainframe design to microprocessors.
What is the 8089 used for? Some sort of DMA or IO controller?
-spc (Didn't mind programming the 80x86 in assembly ... )
12:47 p.m.
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1:12 p.m.
It was thus said that the Great Tony Duell once stated:
Did you program it by writing to registers (using the 80x86 IN/OUT
instruction) or did it work like the 80x87, which extended the instruction
set?
-spc (Sounds interesting in any case ... )
What is the 8089 used for? Some sort of DMA or IO controller?
It was called an I/O processor. It was a _very_ fancy DMA controller --
more like a processor designed for moving data around, checking status
bits, and so on.
25 Nov
25 Nov
7:27 a.m.
> > What is the 8089 used for? Some sort of
DMA or IO controller?
> It was called an I/O processor. It was a _very_ fancy DMA controller --
> more like a processor designed for moving data around, checking status
> bits, and so on.
Did you program it by writing to registers (using
the 80x86 IN/OUT
instruction) or did it work like the 80x87, which extended the instruction
set?
The 8089 IOP, can be seen (as a lot of people prefer) of as a smart
DMA controller for usual ways of DMA transfer which is able to follow
programmed instruction sequences stored in (main-) memory. I rather
prefer to see it as a very specialized processor. In some way it is
quite similar to a CDP 1802. A bit weired but quite usefull. Basicly
capable of doing general purpose work, but with a very restricted and
focused on data transfer. For example are the DMA operations part of
the instruction set - rather than a seperate unit. Also, the IOP may
execute two programms at the same time.
IOP Programms can consist just of a setup for DMA operation, or be
quite sophisticated drivers for programmed IO, or copmbinations
thereof. For example could the IOP read a block from a floppy disk
via DMA and then do things like code translation before it signals
the end of the operation to the main CPU. Likely for some interfaces,
lets use a quite classic example, connecting a baudot tty. In a CPU/IOP
system the CPU would just prepare the ASCII data to be sent in a memory
block and build a message block which names the operation (basicly
addressing the device driver programm), points to the data, and tells
how the result ist to be handled. Then an 'attention' signal is issued
and the IOP starts to handle the IO. From the IOPs view this signal
is an interupt. Now the IOP jumps to the selected programm, and
starts to output each byte ... after translating it to the according
Baudot sequence. When done, an interupt for the CPU may be generated.
Such operations can be chained from the CPU, so you could first let
the interface be initialized and then a block of date be sent....
The possibilities are wide open.
Gruss
H.
BTW: I found a Company in INDIA ( Hiya John ) who sell a traing kit
which can have a 8089 ...
http://www.dynalogindia.com/Products/MF-86-88/Datasheets/mf8688.PDF
Achtung, their web site works only with IE
It' also important that the 8089 can be integrated into an 8086 system
with almost no glue logic. Bus synchronisation is done via RQ/GT.
--
VCF Europa 4.0 am 03./04. Mai 2003 in Muenchen
http://www.vcfe.org/
21 Nov
21 Nov
6:37 p.m.
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6:54 p.m.
Eric Smith wrote:
I have a 6303 in the Psion Organiser... that's odd!
Or how about a T801 transputer?
--
John Honniball
coredump(a)gifford.co.uk
BTW, recent
acquisitions here include a Newbrain,
an Amstrad CPC6128 and a PET. Two Z80s and a 6502;
hmm, not very odd!
Yeah, you need a TRS-80 Color Computer or PDP-11 if you want an
odd
processor. :-)
6:35 p.m.
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8069
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42 comments
14 participants
participants (14)
-
ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
bfranchuk＠jetnet.ab.ca -
carlos_murillo＠epm.net.co -
coredump＠gifford.co.uk -
eric＠brouhaha.com -
foo＠siconic.com -
ghldbrd＠ccp.com -
Hans.Franke＠mch20.sbs.de -
ian_primus＠yahoo.com -
lgwalker＠mts.net -
spc＠conman.org -
spectre＠stockholm.ptloma.edu -
stanb＠dial.pipex.com -
vcf＠siconic.com