discrete transistors

From: Allison J Parent <allisonp_at_world.std.com>
Date: Mon Oct 19 21:22:10 1998

< What amazes me is that no one has ever marketed a mainframe-like
< machine out of modern processors. Someone mentioned they had made

What like the VAX 4000 or 6000 series, HP3000, PDP-11/23 or later. The
list could be very long.

< one out of a 286 and some z80s, but why did no single company ever
< sell any? I would think such machines could be very useful. OTOH, it
< makes more money to sell 1000 machines than 3 machines and 1000 dumb

Lessee, I have a Compupro 8/16 (8085/8088) s100 crate that also has a
MPX1 an 8085 board used to do IO independent of the main cpu. A later
version of the machine was made with 186, 286 and even 386 cpus. Some
of the VME and multibus crates were cpu intensive as well. NCR in '91
had a killer four 486 cpu box. The DEC VAX6250 and 6400 were two and
four cpus systems. The point being companies DID. They made money.
They were too specialized(some cases) and difficult(some cases) to
program compared to simpler single cpus.

PCs have at least several CPUs, the 486 I'm running has an 8042 (keyboard
interface), one in the tape backup, one in the SCSI CDrom, several
8051s(each scsi drive) and even one in the keyboard. no doubt I may have
missed one or two.

< terminals...sometimes I wish capitalism was never invented...

Oh dear, here we go again. You are unaware on Connection machines,
DEC LAVCs, Transputers and lots of other multiple processor
configurations. The reason this is not usually done is it's expensive
when it can be reduced to one primary cpu.

Allison
Received on Mon Oct 19 1998 - 21:22:10 BST