if you hadn't already known this about the PDP-8

From: Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner <spc_at_conman.org>
Date: Thu Dec 13 21:23:17 2001

It was thus said that the Great Bill McDermith once stated:
>
> As an interesting side note, from my understanding, the MIPS
> processor doesn't have a stack in the same way as the pdp-8
> doesn't -- it has to be implemented "by hand", with stores
> through a register (stack pointer) with the register incremented
> or decremented... Of course, the MIPS has registers (note the
> plural), while the pdp-8 has an accumulator.

  Yes, on the MIPS, the return address is stored in a register so if the
routine you call makes further calls, that register needs to be saved, and
usually another register is used as the stack register but it's managed ``by
hand'' as it were.

  As this is on topic, as MIPS chips have been around for over 10 years ...

  -spc (did a bit of MIPS assembly at school ... )
Received on Thu Dec 13 2001 - 21:23:17 GMT