Tony Duell wrote:
>
> >
> > It may be well to keep in mind that the Altair was certainly not designed to
> > be a computer. Only the determination of a fanatic made it into one.
>
> Then perhaps you could tell us just what it was designed as. And find a
> reasonable definition of 'computer' that excludes an 8080 + memory + a
> way to get data in/out of memory (the front panel).
>
> -tony
Or a PDP-8 with TTY for that matter. Infact I have a FPGA computer (on
my desk here under a pile of papers with a wopping 32 12 bit words of
memory and a serial port and FPGA cpu. Almost as fast a 8 too. :)
This is bare bones machine but it does have I/O , memory and a CPU. The
486 makes a OK tty emulator and the new 700 MHZ machine is just used
to download the software to the REAL Computer.
--
Ben Franchuk - Dawn * 12/24 bit cpu *
www.jetnet.ab.ca/users/bfranchuk/index.html
Received on Thu Apr 25 2002 - 17:41:24 BST