> > Now, beeing a 6502 Geek from the beginning and a long
> > time 8086 assembly programmer, I can't realy follow
> > that. The 8086 is in my eyes one of the finest designs
> > around. What I realy dislike is the Z80 ... if there
> > was ever a CPU with an instruction set designed using
> > a random number generator, it's the Z80!
> I dislike them both, but both CPU's have the 8080 as the
> founding father. As a 16 bit CPU the 8086 is great,it
> is/was the stupid memory management that they used was
> the killer for me.
Ben, in fact to me it's the way the memory is handled
that makes the 8086 the great CPU it is - and of course
the co processor concept (and some insructions), which
is more like a mainframe than the usual microprocessor.
While the 8080 is realy not the worlds greatest design,
the similarities between 8080 and 8086 are rether marginal.
To me, as long time /370 programmer, the segment registers
always apeared as base registers ... The 8086 is a pure
16 Bit Design, no halfways includes 32 or whatever length
operations. Shure, the design is build around special purpose
registers, but the result is an incredible simple hardware
design with an exceptional low gate count (from todays
view) way lower than most other rivaling CPUs (68K, 16K).
And at least the 4 main registers are general purpose (ok,
AX is still priviledged in speed/code size). If I had to
choose a CPU to be used in an embedded project, a x86 or
a 6502 would be first choice. They take up amlost no space,
are easy to programm and quite powerfull.
Gruss
H.
--
VCF Europa 5.0 am 01./02. Mai 2004 in Muenchen
http://www.vcfe.org/
Received on Thu Nov 13 2003 - 06:38:04 GMT