> Paul Williams skrev:
>
> >The Letters page of these magazines are as interesting as some of the
> >articles. Of course, when we're talking about over 20 years ago in a
> >hobbyist magazine, the letter-writers of one issue were quite likely to
> >write articles in the next.
>
> It's sad how utterly worthless PCW had become ten years later.
>
> >Two extracts for you.
>
> >>From David C. Broughton of Northwood, Middlesex, in the November 1978
> >issue:
>
> > Here is a little puzzle to test your readers' 8080 machine ingenuity:
>
> > "Imagine you possess an 8080 with 64K bytes of read/write memory
> > which you want to clear. Write a program that sets all 65536 bytes
> > to zero."
>
> Seemed like a piece of cake until it dawned upon me that the program has got
> to be stored somewhere. =/
>
> >>From P.F.T. Tilsley of Loughborough, Leics., in the May 1979 issue:
>
> > The choice of the Z80 for a home system at this time is perhaps a
> > little rash because of the choice of 16 bit processors making
> > their appearance. A better choice would probably be the Z8000
> > which is due to be available in the next few months.
>
> >Three years later, I still bought a Z80 system. Ho hum.
>
> Well, the definition of a home system had probably changed a lot during those
> three years. 1981 home systems were probably a lot cheaper and less involved
> than a 1978 one. And with a different target group, too, I think.
>
> Apart from the extremely short-lived Commodore 900, were there any other Z8000
> based systems? It seems odd to me how a company which was a giant in the 8-bit
> market didn't even make a dent in the 16/32-bit one.
The Z8000 included the Zilog (later Exxon Office Systems) Zeus office
automation Unix boxes...
They were SystemIII and used by the US Government's Internal Revenue
Service through 1993 or so.
They later adopted Pyramid multiprocessor RISC boxes.
Bill
---
Bill Gates is a Persian cat and a monocle away from being a
villain in a James Bond movie -- Dennis Miller
bpechter_at_shell.monmouth.com|pechter_at_pechter.dyndns.org
Received on Fri Aug 03 2001 - 20:16:47 BST