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

From: Pete Turnbull <pete_at_dunnington.u-net.com>
Date: Sun Jun 28 16:02:27 1998

On Jun 28, 13:29, Doug Yowza wrote:
> 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.

Yes, lots of companies like MIPS, Digital, ARM, Motorola, etc etc make the
core designs available for others to incorporate in their customised
processors, and I had no doubt that that's just what NEC did. Sometimes
the design owner does the customisation, sometimes the company who want the
custom version. NEC would have the experise to do it themselves, I'm sure.
 All I meant was that it would still basically be a MIPS core, with a
standard architecture and instruction set.

I hadn't heard about MIPS being separated again. Given what SGI are doing
at the moment, I wouldn't be surprised.

> 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).

I confess that I pay little attention to WinCE and even less to version
numbers :-)

> 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 :-)

Yes, the 11/23 used the F-11 chip, which is a single 40-pin package. There
are optional add-ons, but the basic processer is just one ceramic object --
though anyone who looks at it will immediately see that it's actually two
smaller packages (essentially, one for ALU and one for microcode) mounted
on a common carrier with a few chip capacitors for good measure.

I didn't mention the 11/03 because although it's often described as a
microprocessor, it's actually a set of 4 40-pin chips (5 with optional
EIS/FIS instructions) called a D-11. That's the one often called an
LSI-11, although strictly speaking LSI-11 refers to a particular processor
board. And I deliberately didn't give more detail about the unix systems,
because I can't remember what Bell called those little systems, and I don't
have the reprints of the AT&T Technical Journal to hand :-) I'm fairly
sure there was a stand-alone system using RX02s. Of course, you could also
count 11/23 systems running standard 7th Edition Unix (1979) on RL02s, like
the one I have here.

-- 
Pete						Peter Turnbull
						Dept. of Computer Science
						University of York
Received on Sun Jun 28 1998 - 16:02:27 BST

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