Altair - A different perspective

From: Jeff Kaneko <jeff.kaneko_at_ifrsys.com>
Date: Wed Aug 26 16:27:57 1998

At 01:18 PM 8/26/98 -0500, you wrote:
>
>< Now *that's* historic! Western Digitals first (and last) CPU effort, th
>< first HLL ever implemented as an instruction set on a chip (afaik, anywa
>< rare as hen's teeth (I'll bet it's scarcity is on the order of the Apple
>< not to mention that it was a *very* early 16-bit system that was actuall
>< available to mere mortals.
>
>BZZT!!! first the PDP-11/03 is the WD chipset, the alpha microsystems
>s100 crate used the same WD chipset. The WD chip set alloed you to create
>your own microcode based cpu. It was the only whole computer WD marketed.

Hm, interesting. I had always thought that DEC made all of their own silicon.
Does anybody know when DEC started rolling their own?

>It didn't run pascal it ran the compiled result P-code which was a stack
>machine.

OIC. Silly Me.

>Scarce, they did make a few. They were expensive though.
>
>< It was a good idea; but as is so common in this business, the old axiom
>< held true:
>< No good deed goes unpunished.
><
>< I think WD lost their shirt on this one . . .
>
>About right. It's was not cheap and hard to expand. However the sales
>of the chipsets to outside producers (DEC and AMS) made them a bundle.

Kinda reminds me of the Moto 88000. The original 88k never gained a
following, and Mot lost their shirt. But much of the 88k's technology
went into the PowerPC, which was a little more successful.

>I'd love to see a manual for the chipset and microcode information.

I think the burning question would be: How does one debug somehting
like this?

Jeff

>
>Allison
>
Received on Wed Aug 26 1998 - 16:27:57 BST

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Fri Oct 10 2014 - 23:30:45 BST