Speed now & then (Space and time?)

[Jon Elson]

On 03/29/2018 04:24 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
>
>> I posited that 2 decades ago in a wired article.  My CP/M 
>> machine booted
>> in seconds while waiting for
>> the winders box to decide if it would/could.
>
> "The new machine is so much faster, that it can almost get 
> out of its own way!"
>
>
 From 1978 or so, I had a Z-80 CP/M system running on the 
S-100 bus. In about 1980, I got a Memorex Winchester drive 
on it.  It really made CP/M fly.

In 1982-1984 or so, I was trying to build a 32-bit machine 
very loosely patterned after an IBM 360, but would have used 
a 360 user-level instruction set.  It became obvious that it 
would take years to have an OS, compilers, utilities, etc.  
(I did not know about Unix 360, which I almost certainly 
could have gotten a copy of, we had a PDP-11 Unix license at 
the university.)

So, I cloned a Logical Microcomputer Co. Genix system with 
the Nat. Semi 16032 chip.  It was an absolute DOG!  It took 
several minutes for Emacs to load.  Even vi (which I 
detest!) was horribly slow, like 10X slower than the CP/M 
editor.

Then, in 1986, I bought a MicroVAX-II CPU board from a 
broker, and a bunch of 3rd party peripherals, and made a 
copy of VMS 4.7 (Might have used something earlier for a time.)
I was in 7th heaven!  A REAL computer at LAST!

Jon