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Stolen designs

J

John Larkin

Jan 1, 1970
0
Might have been just before your time, when the 64 kbit chips made
semi memory really take off. IBM made an announcment that they
were the first with a 64k chip, but the silicon valley outfits'
chips were smaller/cheaper, faster, and only needed one power supply.
It looked (from outside) that that was the point where IBM realized
that they couldn't do it all by themselves, so they bought into Intel.
(I worked for a semi equipment manufacturer and we got a tour of
one of Intel's Oregon fab's back end (testing line) sometime in 1981.
All sort of guys with IBM badges on running around the front end (fab)
part of the plant).

The first ram I used was a TI 64-bit TTL part, used to make a 4-deep
subroutine return stack for the only CPU I ever designed. Then we
moved on the the AMI 1-k dynamic ram, for a color video display. That
was a cool chip: an analog mux tree fed a pair of pins directly to the
drains of a cross-coupled fet pair that was the memory cell. The user
had to provide the sense amps and regererate refresh back into the
cell.

Because the Japanese and Koreans were eating everybodies lunch...

Especially on quality.

John
 
K

krw

Jan 1, 1970
0
Might have been just before your time,

No, I've been around a lot longer than 64K memories. Drop the 'K'
and you're closer. ;-)
when the 64 kbit chips made
semi memory really take off. IBM made an announcment that they
were the first with a 64k chip, but the silicon valley outfits'
chips were smaller/cheaper, faster, and only needed one power supply.
It looked (from outside) that that was the point where IBM realized
that they couldn't do it all by themselves, so they bought into Intel.

They bought into Intel because Intel was in risk of going under.
IBM couldn't afford for that to happen (one of the unintended
consequences of the 8088 vs. 68K decision).

I remember the local (Poughkeepsie NY) Intel rep being quite happy
one day. He'd never done any real business with IBM, but Intel
desperately wanted to so they set his commission at 1% and set up
an office in P'ok (IBM's purchasing engineering group was in P'ok).
One day IBM dropped a memory order on his desk for $100M. Intel
wanted to renegotiate his contract. "No problem, you can do
anything you like, next year with whomever is here."

The memory (2102s, IIRC) never saw the light of day and everyone
(articles in EETimes, and such) wondered where it all went. Simple
answer; internal machines were stripped of IBM memory and that
ETNed and shipped to customers. It was decreed that if the Intel
memory were somehow inferior it would be the internal systems that
suffered. It wasn't.
(I worked for a semi equipment manufacturer and we got a tour of
one of Intel's Oregon fab's back end (testing line) sometime in 1981.
All sort of guys with IBM badges on running around the front end (fab)
part of the plant).

64K, in '81? The PC (5150) shipped with 16K DRAMs in '81.
 
E

Eric Smith

Jan 1, 1970
0
EE123 said:
The Motorola 68000 instruction set was an exact copy of the DEC Vax
system.

Maybe in some alternate universe. Not in this one. They both use
32-bit registers and have a program counter, but there's not a lot
of similarity in any of the details beyond that.

The National Semiconductor 32000 series (originally 16000 series)
is much more VAX-like than the Motorola 68000, but is also nowhere
close to being an exact copy.
 
E

Eric Smith

Jan 1, 1970
0
And Motorola took the 6800 guys to court. So they changed it into 6502
asfaik.

joseph2k said:
The Intersil (Siliconix?) 6500 line predates the Motorola 6800 line by over
a year. There should not have been any lawsuits between them, the designs
and instruction sets were far too different. I have used both.

The MOS Technology MCS6501 and MCS6502 came a year later than the
Motorola MC6800. 1975 vs. 1974.

There was in fact a lawsuit. MOS Technology dropped the MCS6501
(which was pin-compatible with the MC6800) as a result.

As you say, the instruction sets were rather different; there were
only minor superficial similarities.
 
E

Eric Smith

Jan 1, 1970
0
[email protected] says...
But the micro-channel bus that is found on them did.

krw said:

If you're claiming that the Microchannel bus was not a market failure,
by all means please show us some examples of its success.

Seems to me that all the latest computers are using PCI Express, PCI-X,
PCI, and AGP for their slots, not anything derived from Microchannel.
 
R

Roy L. Fuchs

Jan 1, 1970
0
I was driving a rented Ford Exploder for this last week. When I
wanted the head lights on, I turned on the rear wiper.

I think it is becoming a safety issue. We really need a standard for
where the important switches are.

We have one. It's called rent a fucking car that you are familiar
with.
 
K

krw

Jan 1, 1970
0
[email protected] says...



If you're claiming that the Microchannel bus was not a market failure,
by all means please show us some examples of its success.

RS6000, PS/2, FWIT zSeries, not to mention about 40 other companies
that used it at one time or another. It was certainly more of a
success than that hunk-o-junk that was designed to compete against
it; EISA.
Seems to me that all the latest computers are using PCI Express, PCI-X,
PCI, and AGP for their slots, not anything derived from Microchannel.

Hmm, No air force uses P51s anymore either. They weren't a
success?
 
R

Richard Henry

Jan 1, 1970
0
krw said:
RS6000, PS/2, FWIT zSeries, not to mention about 40 other companies
that used it at one time or another. It was certainly more of a
success than that hunk-o-junk that was designed to compete against
it; EISA.


Hmm, No air force uses P51s anymore either. They weren't a
success?

P51s were very successful once. in addition, their technological advances
carried forward into other aircraft.

Now tell us about Microchannel.
 
J

Jim Thompson

Jan 1, 1970
0
[email protected] says... [snip]
Amen! I started out doing Spice 2G6 on a VAX780, all text-based :-(

I started out doing circuit sim on an engineering model of a 360/85
with a 2741 (Selectric style) terminal with a 134.5baud acoustical
coupler.

You had an acoustic coupler? We had to whistle each bit into the
telephone and keep track of the framing in our heads.


Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany

My first modem design (~1977) was an acoustic coupler type at 1200
Baud.

But I cheated. To get good outbound distortion I didn't use acoustic
drive to the carbon microphone, I drove the earpiece magnetically.

First try I did a loopback test from Phoenix to Louisville and back.
Worked great!

...Jim Thompson
 
S

Spehro Pefhany

Jan 1, 1970
0
I started out doing circuit sim on an engineering model of a 360/85
with a 2741 (Selectric style) terminal with a 134.5baud acoustical
coupler.

You had an acoustic coupler? We had to whistle each bit into the
telephone and keep track of the framing in our heads.


Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany
 
If you're claiming that the Microchannel bus was not a market failure,
by all means please show us some examples of its success.

Seems to me that all the latest computers are using PCI Express, PCI-X,
PCI, and AGP for their slots, not anything derived from Microchannel.
IBM was still using microchannel on the RS/6000 products long after
the PS/2 products went away.
It was just not a consumer, low cost product. Structured system
customers still loved it because you didn't get in those IRQ wars and
products didn't stomp over each other like PC stuff strill does.
 
J

John Larkin

Jan 1, 1970
0
We have one. It's called rent a fucking car that you are familiar
with.


Hello Hertz? I want a 1993 VW Golf, manual transmission, starting next
Tuesday. Pickup 9 AM in Riverton, Wyoming. Oh, it has to be red.

John
 
D

Don Lancaster

Jan 1, 1970
0
Jim said:
[snip]
Amen! I started out doing Spice 2G6 on a VAX780, all text-based :-(

I started out doing circuit sim on an engineering model of a 360/85
with a 2741 (Selectric style) terminal with a 134.5baud acoustical
coupler.

You had an acoustic coupler? We had to whistle each bit into the
telephone and keep track of the framing in our heads.


Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany


My first modem design (~1977) was an acoustic coupler type at 1200
Baud.

But I cheated. To get good outbound distortion I didn't use acoustic
drive to the carbon microphone, I drove the earpiece magnetically.

First try I did a loopback test from Phoenix to Louisville and back.
Worked great!

...Jim Thompson

The trick in that era was to intentionally add some third harmonic that
cancelled out the carbon microphone distortion.

--
Many thanks,

Don Lancaster voice phone: (928)428-4073
Synergetics 3860 West First Street Box 809 Thatcher, AZ 85552
rss: http://www.tinaja.com/whtnu.xml email: [email protected]

Please visit my GURU's LAIR web site at http://www.tinaja.com
 
J

Jim Thompson

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hello Hertz? I want a 1993 VW Golf, manual transmission, starting next
Tuesday. Pickup 9 AM in Riverton, Wyoming. Oh, it has to be red.

John

I like red, also, but it won't do over 100MPH, I tried one on the
autobahn ;-)

...Jim Thompson
 
R

Roy L. Fuchs

Jan 1, 1970
0
You had an acoustic coupler? We had to whistle each bit into the
telephone and keep track of the framing in our heads.

Ha ha ha... very funny. You probably didn't know what a packet
was.
 
K

krw

Jan 1, 1970
0
You had an acoustic coupler? We had to whistle each bit into the
telephone and keep track of the framing in our heads.

You were framed? We didn't get too many PHBs until the '80s.
 
K

Ken Smith

Jan 1, 1970
0
We have one. It's called rent a fucking car that you are familiar
with.

I had no option of doing that. The Ford Exploder was needed because of
the large boxes we had to carry.
 
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