2 May
2009
2 May
'09
5:49 a.m.
All:
For those interested, IEEE has an article about the 25 chips that
changed the world. The NE555 is #1 and the 6502 is #2.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/may09/8747
Rich
--
Rich Cini
Collector of Classic Computers
Build Master and lead engineer, Altair32 Emulator
http://www.altair32.com
http://www.classiccmp.org/cini
2 May
2 May
10:01 a.m.
Thanks for the link, that was a very interesting read.
However, isn't there a mistake in the Motorola 68000 description. Doesn't it use
32-bit addressing and not 24-bit?
"The hybrid 16-bit/32-bit MC68000
packed in 68 000 transistors, more than double the
number of Intel?s 8086. It had internal 32?bit
registers, but a 32-bit bus would have made it
prohibitively expensive, so the 68000 used 24-bit
address and 16-bit data lines. "
Regards,
Andrew B
aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk
--- On Sat, 2/5/09, Richard A. Cini <rcini at optonline.net> wrote:
From: Richard A. Cini <rcini at optonline.net>
Subject: Chips that changed the world
To: "MARCH-Post" <midatlanticretro at yahoogroups.com>, "Discussion:
On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Date: Saturday, 2 May, 2009, 1:49 PM
All:
For those interested, IEEE has an article about the 25 chips that
changed the world. The NE555 is #1 and the 6502 is #2.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/may09/8747
Rich
--
Rich Cini
Collector of Classic Computers
Build Master and lead engineer, Altair32 Emulator
http://www.altair32.com
http://www.classiccmp.org/cini
10:36 a.m.
Thanks for the link, that was a very interesting read.
However, isn't there a mistake in the Motorola 68000 description. Doesn't i=
t use 32-bit addressing and not 24-bit?
The addres _registers_ were 32 bits wide, but only 24 address lines were
brought off-chip. There are actually 23 address pins (A1...A23), becuase
A0 is determined from the states of UDS/ and LDS/
-tony
12:17 p.m.
Why isn't the DEC Alpha (or any DEC chips) listed?
_________________________________________________________________
Create a cool, new character for your Windows Live? Messenger.
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9656621
12:38 p.m.
Tony Duell wrote:
Andrew Burton wrote:
Keeping in mind as well, that at the the time of the 68000 release ca. '79/80,
16MB=2^24 was a lot of memory. Going beyond 16-bit physical addressing was
warranted in terms of market/economics, the same could not be said for 32-bit
physical addressing for a microprocessor system. 24 bits was a practical
goldilocks solution.
The 32-bit initial architecture provided for future upgrade/compatibility, and
was addressed (pun) in later versions.
(Didn't the IBM 360 architecture vs. implementation take the same upgrade path?)
Thanks for the link, that was a very interesting
read.
However, isn't there a mistake in the Motorola 68000 description. Doesn't i=
t use 32-bit addressing and not 24-bit?
The addres _registers_ were 32 bits wide, but only 24 address lines were
brought off-chip. There are actually 23 address pins (A1...A23), becuase
A0 is determined from the states of UDS/ and LDS/ 
1:50 p.m.
On Sat, May 2, 2009 at 15:38, Brent Hilpert <hilpert at cs.ubc.ca> wrote:
Tony Duell wrote:
Keeping in mind as well, that at the the time of the 68000 release ca. '79/80,
16MB=2^24 was a lot of memory. Going beyond 16-bit physical addressing was
warranted in terms of market/economics, the same could not be said for 32-bit
physical addressing for a microprocessor system. 24 bits was a practical
goldilocks solution.
The 32-bit initial architecture provided for future upgrade/compatibility, and
was addressed (pun) in later versions.
Then of course there were those programmers that thought they were
clever, using the top 8 bits to store flags in pointers, etc. Royally
messed up when upgrading to 68020 and up.
Somehow this seemed only a problem on Macs - the "dirty" ROMs issue on
the SE30 and some others. I don't recall the Amiga ever having those
issues, and I have no clue about the Atari...
Joe.
--
Joachim Thiemann :: http://www.tsp.ece.mcgill.ca/~jthiem
3 May
3 May
6:19 a.m.
Joachim Thiemann wrote:
Then of course there were those programmers that
thought they were
clever, using the top 8 bits to store flags in pointers, etc. Royally
messed up when upgrading to 68020 and up.
Somehow this seemed only a problem on Macs - the "dirty" ROMs issue on
the SE30 and some others. I don't recall the Amiga ever having those
issues, and I have no clue about the Atari...
When you have a machine that only has 128K of RAM, every byte counts. I
wouldn't say that this was necessarily a bad idea given the situation.
Keep in mind that there are things such as deadlines to consider, so
quick and dirty tricks like those, look nasty in hindsight, and
certainly take a lot of time to clean up afterwards, but they do get the
job done for the moment. How many programming teams consider the long
run versus "just get it out the door"? Or I should say, how many
programmer's managers consider the long run? :-)
Individuals almost always care about their work and want to do a job
that will last, despite deadlines or pressure to cut corners. But
managerial pressure to do the wrong thing usually prevails.
The other great example of this is how enough address lines were snuck
into the original Mac to allow it to be expanded despite direct orders
to not allow expansion at all.
5:32 p.m.
Ray Arachelian wrote:
Keep in mind that there are things such as deadlines to consider, so
quick and dirty tricks like those, look nasty in hindsight, and
certainly take a lot of time to clean up afterwards, but they do get the
job done for the moment. How many programming teams consider the
long run versus "just get it out the door"? Or I should say, how many
programmer's managers consider the long run? :-)
Individuals almost always care about their work and want to do a job
that will last, despite deadlines or pressure to cut corners. But
managerial pressure to do the wrong thing usually prevails.
Yes, Ray, that's vitally important. Good call.
A company I was with, Systems Research, Inc., made a Burroughs TD-830
Emulator terminal. When they were done with that, they had about 1 K
(Yes, 1 K) of ROM space, and wanted to know if the machine could ALSO be
programmed to be a regular ANSI terminal as well.
As it turns out, yes, it could.-- sort of. The first job was to take
the 31-K TD-830 code, and make it more efficient. That got about
another 4 K, and was politically very difficult, as the TD-830 people
were in a different group, and got huffy at us improving their code.
Then the TTY code was written with an INCREDIBLE number of "dirty
tricks." Of course, we called routines already written for the TD-830
whenever possible, and, truth be told, sometimes when it was NOT
possible. at one point, we hopped into a text message which terminated
(as did they all) with a byte of 00H, which is a NOP for the Z80, and
then fell into another routine. ASCII characters tend to be
register-to-register moves, we just loaded different registers with
input values, and used some of the effects to save a dozen or so bytes
of code. When all was said and done, it worked, an we had 5 extra
bytes, so we wrote a "LIFE" program. (Just kidding.) Anyway, the
project manager later said that we had used everything but the top half
of the blue bytes.
Also, by comparison, note that AT&T was prohibited from selling or
licensing Unix as a commercial product until about 1984, though thy DID
place it in universities. The point is that they did NOT have "market
pressures" for new releases, and because of that, produced a huge,
complex, quite possibly bug-free product that is a joy to use. And I'm
not sorry to sound like an evangelist -- Unix is the best software ever
written by humans. It was also originally conceived in the 1960s, and
made it into reasonable use in the early 1970s, so its OLD software, for
purposes of OT discussion. The Mac world has recently made a massive
improvement by going to an O/S based upon a flavor of Unix. Now, we
need to do that for the PC world, and normal progress can resume.
There's no need to be chipping new wheel designs out of stone when we
have an independent suspension chassis available, and can bolt on any
body we want. Let the programmers develop gee-gaws and new user
interfaces for it, but the core, the user and process handling and the
file system of Unix are WAY better than any other attempt so far. Linux
is a variant, and free. So.... "Not Invented Here" is the only reason
to use another base O/S, at least until something better comes along.
</sermon>
Peace,
Warren
7:10 p.m.
On May 3, 2009, at 8:32 PM, Warren Wolfe wrote:
As it turns out, yes, it could.-- sort of. The first
job was to
take the 31-K TD-830 code, and make it more efficient. That got
about another 4 K, and was politically very difficult, as the
TD-830 people were in a different group, and got huffy at us
improving their code. Then the TTY code was written with an
INCREDIBLE number of "dirty tricks." Of course, we called routines
already written for the TD-830 whenever possible, and, truth be
told, sometimes when it was NOT possible. at one point, we hopped
into a text message which terminated (as did they all) with a byte
of 00H, which is a NOP for the Z80, and then fell into another
routine. ASCII characters tend to be register-to-register moves,
we just loaded different registers with input values, and used some
of the effects to save a dozen or so bytes of code. When all was
said and done, it worked, an we had 5 extra bytes, so we wrote a
"LIFE" program. (Just kidding.) Anyway, the project manager later
said that we had used everything but the top half of the blue bytes.
Yow. That sounds like the innards of Intel's 8052AH-BASIC
interpreter. Have you ever read that source code? It's mind-
boggling. I spent days un-tricking it and documenting it. (my
application targeted processors with significantly more code space
than the 8052's 8KB)
Also, by comparison, note that AT&T was prohibited
from selling or
licensing Unix as a commercial product until about 1984, though thy
DID place it in universities. The point is that they did NOT have
"market pressures" for new releases, and because of that, produced
a huge, complex, quite possibly bug-free product that is a joy to
use. And I'm not sorry to sound like an evangelist -- Unix is the
best software ever written by humans. It was also originally
conceived in the 1960s, and made it into reasonable use in the
early 1970s, so its OLD software, for purposes of OT discussion.
The Mac world has recently made a massive improvement by going to
an O/S based upon a flavor of Unix. Now, we need to do that for
the PC world, and normal progress can resume. There's no need to
be chipping new wheel designs out of stone when we have an
independent suspension chassis available, and can bolt on any body
we want. Let the programmers develop gee-gaws and new user
interfaces for it, but the core, the user and process handling and
the file system of Unix are WAY better than any other attempt so
far. Linux is a variant, and free. So.... "Not Invented Here" is
the only reason to use another base O/S, at least until something
better comes along.
Agree 100%. Loudly.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL
6:14 p.m.
On Sat, May 2, 2009 at 4:50 PM, Joachim Thiemann
<joachim.thiemann at gmail.com> wrote:
Then of course there were those programmers that
thought they were
clever, using the top 8 bits to store flags in pointers, etc. ?Royally
messed up when upgrading to 68020 and up.
I remember reading a warning against such practices the original Mac
system manuals (the "hernia manuals"), but faced with 128K of RAM,
early programmers did not universally heed the warning.
Somehow this seemed only a problem on Macs - the
"dirty" ROMs issue on
the SE30 and some others. ?I don't recall the Amiga ever having those
issues, and I have no clue about the Atari...
I don't know about the Atari either, but I think Amiga folks learned
from the mess in the Mac world, or perhaps there were
more experienced
68K programmers a year or two later who didn't feel the need to
break
things like that, or perhaps it was because the base Amiga 1000 came
with twice the memory as the first Mac and was trivial to upgrade to
four times the memory of the original Mac.
-ethan
5 May
5 May
3:17 p.m.
New subject: 32-bit clean SE30 ROMs (was Re: Chips that changed the world)
On Sat, 2 May 2009, Joachim Thiemann wrote:
Somehow this seemed only a problem on Macs - the
"dirty" ROMs issue on
the SE30 and some others. I don't recall the Amiga ever having those
issues, and I have no clue about the Atari...
So speaking of the SE30, I've got one but not a 32-bit clean ROM for it.
What model Mac do I need to borrow a ROM from to make it 32-bit clean?
Alexey
3:43 p.m.
New subject: 32-bit clean SE30 ROMs (was Re: Chips that changed the world)
Somehow this
seemed only a problem on Macs - the "dirty" ROMs issue on
the SE30 and some others. I don't recall the Amiga ever having those
issues, and I have no clue about the Atari...
So speaking of the SE30, I've got one but not a 32-bit clean ROM for it.
What model Mac do I need to borrow a ROM from to make it 32-bit clean? 
4:24 p.m.
New subject: 32-bit clean SE30 ROMs (was Re: Chips that changed the world)
On Tue, 5 May 2009, Cameron Kaiser wrote:
While we're on the subject of diddling around with old Mac one-piece
machines, would someone please tell me where I can get some replacement
chassis screws?
--
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu
A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
So speaking of
the SE30, I've got one but not a 32-bit clean ROM for it.
What model Mac do I need to borrow a ROM from to make it 32-bit clean?
A IIsi should do, but good luck finding one with a ROM SIMM. Use MODE32 and
be happy. It should be downloadable from all kinds of places.
http://lowendmac.com/daystar/pages/dsd_products/support/ts_mode32.html 
9:58 p.m.
New subject: 32-bit clean SE30 ROMs (was Re: Chips that changed the world)
David Griffith wrote:
On Tue, 5 May 2009, Cameron Kaiser wrote:
While we're on the subject of diddling around with old Mac one-piece
machines, would someone please tell me where I can get some
replacement chassis screws?
From what model, and which screws ? I received a parts SE30 at one point
(broken tube, damage case (from a drop)). I think I may have the screws
around
(if I can find them).
-- Curt
So
speaking of the SE30, I've got one but not a 32-bit clean ROM for
it.
What model Mac do I need to borrow a ROM from to make it 32-bit clean?
A IIsi should do, but good luck finding one with a ROM SIMM. Use
MODE32 and
be happy. It should be downloadable from all kinds of places.
http://lowendmac.com/daystar/pages/dsd_products/support/ts_mode32.html
6 May
6 May
2:04 p.m.
New subject: 32-bit clean SE30 ROMs (was Re: Chips that changed the world)
On Wed, 6 May 2009, Curtis H. Wilbar Jr. wrote:
David Griffith wrote:
I'm not sure about the model. I need the screws that go under the handle.
--
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu
A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
On Tue, 5 May 2009, Cameron Kaiser wrote:
While we're on the subject of diddling around with old Mac one-piece
machines, would someone please tell me where I can get some replacement
chassis screws?
From what model, and which screws ? I received a parts SE30 at one
point (broken tube, damage case (from a drop)). I think I may have the
screws around (if I can find them). So
speaking of the SE30, I've got one but not a 32-bit clean ROM for it.
What model Mac do I need to borrow a ROM from to make it 32-bit clean?
A IIsi should do, but good luck finding one with a ROM SIMM. Use MODE32
and
be happy. It should be downloadable from all kinds of places.
http://lowendmac.com/daystar/pages/dsd_products/support/ts_mode32.html
5 May
5 May
9:56 p.m.
New subject: 32-bit clean SE30 ROMs (was Re: Chips that changed the world)
Alexey Toptygin wrote:
On Sat, 2 May 2009, Joachim Thiemann wrote:
The IIsi ROM... but most IIsi's had the rom soldered on the mainboard.
The IIfx ROM is what you'll need... more common then IIsi ROMs... but
still not
very common to find.
-- Curt
Somehow this seemed only a problem on Macs - the
"dirty" ROMs issue on
the SE30 and some others. I don't recall the Amiga ever having those
issues, and I have no clue about the Atari...
So speaking of the SE30, I've got one but not a 32-bit clean ROM for
it. What model Mac do I need to borrow a ROM from to make it 32-bit
clean?
Alexey
6 May
6 May
6:09 a.m.
New subject: 32-bit clean SE30 ROMs (was Re: Chips that changed the world)
Curtis H. Wilbar Jr. wrote:
The IIsi ROM... but most IIsi's had the rom
soldered on the mainboard.
The IIfx ROM is what you'll need... more common then IIsi ROMs... but
still not
very common to find.
Don't forget there is also Mode/32 which will fix the issue.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MODE32, so it'll save you some hassle
finding ROMs.
2 May
2 May
12:44 p.m.
Ahhh, I see. Thanks for clearing that up.
Regards,
Andrew B
aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk
--- On Sat, 2/5/09, Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
From: Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Chips that changed the world
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Date: Saturday, 2 May, 2009, 6:36 PM
Thanks for the link, that was a very interesting read.
However, isn't there a mistake in the Motorola
68000 description. Doesn't
i=
t use 32-bit addressing and not 24-bit?
The addres _registers_ were 32 bits wide, but only 24
address lines were
brought off-chip. There are actually 23 address pins
(A1...A23), becuase
A0 is determined from the states of UDS/ and LDS/
-tony 
4:35 p.m.
They forgot to include our chip, the MAX232!
Randy
Date: Sat, 2 May 2009 08:49:10 -0400
From: rcini at optonline.net
Subject: Chips that changed the world
To: midatlanticretro at yahoogroups.com; cctalk at classiccmp.org
All:
For those interested, IEEE has an article about the 25 chips that
changed the world. The NE555 is #1 and the 6502 is #2.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/may09/8747
Rich
--
Rich Cini
Collector of Classic Computers
Build Master and lead engineer, Altair32 Emulator
http://www.altair32.com
http://www.classiccmp.org/cini
_________________________________________________________________
Hotmail? goes with you.
http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/Mobile?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutoria…
19 Nov
19 Nov
4:51 p.m.
New subject: Divesting
All,
I have some things I need to clear out.
-----------------
I have a 10Mbs Canary 8-port 10base-T ethernet hub (not a switch) with BNC (thinnet
10base2) and AUI (to work with ethernet 10base5) connections with power adapter and bnc
thinnet 50 ohm terminator.
The last time I used it years ago, it worked, though it's been even longer since I
used the BNC and AUI interfaces. Sorry I don't have any ethernet or thinnet coax or
vampire taps.
----------------
Micropolis 1325 ST506 disk.? This 85MB "Disk Memory Unit" was pulled from a Sun
3/160 around 1995, if I remember the date correctly.? It was working at the time, though I
don't have the set up to test it now.? C. 1986
-----------------
Clearpoint SNXRAM 8MB memory board with sockets for up to 12MB. It is a 9U VME board
(about 15"x16") with lots of MCM6256BP12 chips (256K x 1 bit).? Four MB is
directed mounted and 4MB is socketed (last 4MB sockets are empty).? This also was pulled
from a Sun 3/160 around 1995, if I remember the date correctly. C. 1986
-----------------
Sun 501-1208 4MB system card (9U VME, ~15"x16") pulled from a working Sun 3/160
about 1995 (yeah, yeah, if I remember the date correctly). It's a has Motorola MC68020
CPU and MC68881 floating point processor.?? Board has 4MB memory and ports for ethernet
(AUI port), video (DB9), keyboard (DB15) and 2 serial ports (DB25). C. 1986
--------------
Please contact me off list.
Thank you,
Scott
10 Mar
10 Mar
11:20 a.m.
New subject: Needs a good home.
All,
I still have some things I need to clear out.? I HATE to just throw these out.
-----------------
I have a 10Mbs Canary 8-port 10base-T ethernet hub (not a switch) with
BNC (thinnet 10base2) and AUI (to work with ethernet 10base5)
connections with power adapter and bnc thinnet 50 ohm terminator.
The last time I used it years ago, it worked, though it's been even
longer since I used the BNC and AUI interfaces. Sorry I don't have any
ethernet or thinnet coax or vampire taps.
----------------
Clearpoint SNXRAM 8MB memory board
with sockets for up to 12MB. It is a 9U VME board (about 15"x16") with
lots of MCM6256BP12 chips (256K x 1 bit).? Four MB is directed mounted
and 4MB is socketed (last 4MB sockets are empty).? This also was pulled
from a Sun 3/160 around 1995, if I remember the date
correctly. C. 1986
-----------------
Sun
501-1208 4MB system card (9U VME, ~15"x16") pulled from a working Sun
3/160 about 1995 (yeah, yeah, if I remember the date correctly). It's a
has Motorola MC68020 CPU and MC68881 floating point processor.?? Board
has 4MB memory and ports for ethernet (AUI port), video (DB9), keyboard
(DB15) and 2 serial ports (DB25). C.
1986
--------------
Please contact me off list.
Thank you,
Scott
4431
days inactive
5474
days old
23 comments
17 participants
participants (17)
-
alexeyt＠freeshell.org -
aliensrcooluk＠yahoo.co.uk -
ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
dgahling＠hotmail.com -
dgriffi＠cs.csubak.edu -
ethan.dicks＠gmail.com -
hilpert＠cs.ubc.ca -
joachim.thiemann＠gmail.com -
jules.richardson99＠gmail.com -
lists＠databasics.us -
mcguire＠neurotica.com -
ray＠arachelian.com -
rcini＠optonline.net -
rdawson16＠hotmail.com -
rescue＠hawkmountain.net -
spectre＠floodgap.com -
us21090＠yahoo.com