Linux and the 'clssic' computing world
Paul Koning
paulkoning at comcast.net
Wed Sep 29 08:31:56 CDT 2021
> On Sep 28, 2021, at 8:32 PM, ben <bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> wrote:
>
> On 2021-09-28 2:24 p.m., Paul Koning wrote:
>
>>> ...
>>> More I play with my designs, I come to the conclusion that
>>> 32 bits is not ample for a general purpose computer.
>> I think Von Neumann would agree; he picked 40 bits as I recall. There are all sorts of interesting word lengths out there; the strangest I've worked with is 27 bits one's complement.
> Was that a drum machime?
Not a drum machine. Core memory, all solid state -- one of the first, and as far as I know the first commercial product with interrupts standard. Electrologica X1, from 1958. Also its successor the X8, around 1964. The X8 had a drum as a peripheral device, used in the THE operating system for paging virtual memory (512 k words).
paul
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