One from the 'believe it or not' file...

From: William Donzelli <william_at_ans.net>
Date: Sun Nov 16 14:20:57 1997

> The 3B2 line use the Western Electric 32000 series processors. Good for
> making phone switches, adequate for some database engines, sucks rocks
> for general purpose computing. IMAO.

I once met a Bell engineer that was part of the early days of the 32x00
processors, and he said the thing was obsolete the day it was released.
Apparently the floating point was really bad, even worse than Motorolas.

The 32100 (the first generation) came in a unique package - a non-square
PGA, with rows of pins. Typical WE, do things the weird way.

William Donzelli
william_at_ans.net
Received on Sun Nov 16 1997 - 14:20:57 GMT