Which Dec Emulation is the MOST useful and Versatile?

Noel Chiappa jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu
Sun Oct 29 13:27:10 CDT 2017


    > From: Jon Elson

    > I'm not sure the original DEC PDP-10 (KA-10) used microcode

No, it didn't; in part because it pre-dated fast, cheap ROMs (the development
of which was a considerable task in the /360 project - the wonderful "IBM's
360 and Early 370 Systems" covers this is some detail). The KA10 is built out
of FLIP CHIPs which carried individual transistors.

Another fun KA10 fact: it used 'hardware subroutines' - i.e. a clock pulse
would get to a certain point, and get conditionally diverted through some
other circuitry, later to come back and continue where it left off. Whee!

	Noel


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