OS's In ROM's (was: Re: Mac Classic prob (was Macintoshes..

From: Doug Yowza <yowza_at_yowza.com>
Date: Sun Jun 28 13:29:26 1998

On Sun, 28 Jun 1998, Pete Turnbull wrote:

> MIPS chips are MIPS chips. SGI own MIPS, but don't manufacture the
> devices. NEC, Philips, Toshiba, amongst others, do, but they didn't design
> them. The VR4xxx series that NEC use are derivatives of the standard R4000
> and R5000 series.

Didn't SGI recently re-spinoff MIPS as an independent concern? In any
case, while the core ISA should be the same, NEC developed the VR4101 and
VR4102 specifically for CE, and I doubt that you'll find the chips in any
SGI box. I got invalid links when I tried to look at the specs at NEC's
site, but I think the CE-specifics were probably in areas of power
management and on-chip peripherals.

I also looked at HP's specs for their handhelds, and their marketdroids
simply listed "RISC" processor in an effort to hide the fact that their
not using their own processors, I suppose.

> You're possibly right about ARM and CE, though. Several companies have
> licenced the technology, but most of the ARM-based devices (eg the Psion 5,
> Newton) use Psion's OS or JavaOS, not CE.

It's public knowledge that Microsoft added ARM support for WinCE 2.1, but
that version of the OS is not shipping for any platform. In fact, 2.1 was
still beta last I checked (a couple of weeks ago).

> > ObCC-Q: What was the first microprocessor-based box to run Unix?
> >
> > ObCC-A: The Z8000-based Onyx C8002 in 1980.
>
> What about the 11/23 systems Bell Labs were using in 1978?

I have to plead DEC-hardware ignorance. Did the 11/23 use a single-chip
micro (the LSI-11, according to Allison)? If so, then please add
"non-DEC" to my Q :-)

-- Doug
Received on Sun Jun 28 1998 - 13:29:26 BST