On Mon, 13 May 2002, John Foust wrote:
> And how many 8086s do they really need, and how many
> have they found? I would guess "not too many" and "lots",
> respectively. I think the article mentioned that their
> booster testers used them. I doubt the process is
> destructive to the 8086. So how many booster testers
> do they have, and how many have failed in the CPU?
>
> It's got to be minimal. Even if they tested a pair
> of boosters for every launch and the 8086s were
> destroyed, I'm sure they've found enough long ago.
My guess is that the reporter failed to grasp that they are probably
looking for milspec parts, as opposed to the common stuff found in PCs and
whatnot. These of course would be far harder to find in quantity.
I don't doubt that they are also looking for regular parts for test
systems as well. I know they are using a lot of older systems. Last year
I did a data recovery job for them where the data was 8080 assembly code.
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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Received on Mon May 13 2002 - 12:07:15 BST