bit slice chips (was Re: Harris H800 Computer)

[William Donzelli]

There was a 29G01 offered for a short time. Worth several times their
weight in gold.

--
Will

On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 8:15 PM, Eric Smith <spacewar at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 21, 2016 at 12:07 AM, Raymond Wiker <rwiker at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I was a bit surprised to see that it used 2901 with a date code of 1985 -
>> the 2901 was introduced 10 years before.
>
> The 2901 was the workhorse bit-slice data path chip for many years.
> The A, B, and C suffix parts were progressively faster variants
> introduced later. Eventually there were CMOS versions, and 16-bit-wide
> versions.  While AMD introduced the 2903 and 29203 as functionally
> improved (but not directly compatible) 4-bit parts, they weren't
> nearly as widely used as the 2901.
>
> Most other bit-slice parts can be considered "also-ran" at best, with
> the Intel 3001 and 3002 probably being the next most successful.  MMI
> tried to beat AMD to market with the 5701/6701, which was very similar
> to (but not compatible with) the 2901, but they were late to market
> and AMD won.
>
> Motorola offered the MC10800 ECL bit slice series, which were
> significantly faster at introduction than the contemporary Am2900
> parts, but AMD kept introducing faster 2901s.  Some later 2901
> variants from AMD and National Semiconductor actually used ECL
> internally, but had normal TTL I/O, but the CMOS that followed were
> even faster than those.