Bad iPhone autocorrect sigh... They all ran the AVTs on the TTL prototype. On Wed, Feb 3, 2021 at 8:14 PM Clem Cole wrote: > Hey John. Bad cut/paste. I did not say 1980. That was from Eds msg. I > said we got what would become X series parts in winter 79. As I > understand it from Les; he, Nick and Tom built try the TTL prototype in > Early 78 with Les and Tom turning it into Si later that year while Nick was > writing ucode and all of the writing AVTs we high ran against then TTL > system. > > Les says Tom did a masterful job of keeping management out of their hair > such they they stayed under the radar. > > From what I understand there was so much focus on countering the Z80 with > the 6809 that management thought they were just experimenting with a more > 16 bit 6809. But what they were doing was an AD experiment. The fact > that it worked was amazing. > > On Wed, Feb 3, 2021 at 7:41 PM John Gilmore wrote: > >> Clem Cole wrote: >> > > MC 68K was created in 1980 or thereabouts. >> >> Wikimedia Commons has a pic of a 1979 XC68000L: >> >> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:XC68000.agr.jpg >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:XC68000.agr.jpg >> >> After a USENET posting pointed me at them, I browsed the Sunnyvale >> Patent Library to bring home the patents for the Motorola 68000. They >> include a full listing of the entire microcode! I ended up copying it, >> taping the sheets together to reconstitute Nick Tredennick's >> large-format "hardware flowcharts", and hanging them in the hallway near >> my office at Sun. Fascinating! >> >> I never saw X68000 parts; Sun started in 1981, so Moto had production >> parts by then. But Sun did get early prototypes of the 68010, which we >> were very happy for, since we and our customers were running a swapping >> Unisoft UNIX because the 68000 couldn't do paging and thus couldn't run >> the BSD UNIX that we were porting from the Vax. Later, I was part of >> the Sun bringup team using the XC68020. We built a big spider-like >> daughterboard adapter that would let it be plugged into a 64-pin 68010 >> socket, so we could debug the 68020 in a Sun-2 CPU board while building >> 32-bit-wide boards for the Sun-3 bringup. We had it successfully >> running UNIX within a day of receiving it! (We later heard that our >> Moto rep was intending to give that precious early part to another >> customer, but decided during their meeting with us to give it to us, >> because we were so ready to get it running.) >> >> When the 68000 was announced, it was obviously head-and-shoulders better >> than the other clunky 8-bit and 16-bit systems, with a clean 32-bit >> architecture and a large address space. It seems like the designers of >> the other chips (e.g. the 8088) had never actually worked with real >> computers (mainframes and minicomputers) and kept not-learning from >> computing history. >> >> Some of my early experience was in APL implementation on the IBM 360 >> series. I knew the 68000 would be a great APL host, since its >> autoincrement addressing was perfect for implementing vector operations. >> In the process of designing an APL for it (which was never built), I >> wrote up a series of short suggestions to Motorola on how to improve the >> design. This was published in Computer Architecture News. For the >> 68010 they actually did one of the ideas, the "loop mode" that would >> detect a 1-instruction backward decrement-and-branch loop, and stop >> continually re-fetching the two instructions. This made >> memory-to-memory or register-vs-memory instruction loops run at almost >> the speed of memory, which was a big improvement for bcopy, bzero, >> add-up-a-vector-of-integers, etc. >> >> I'll append a USENET posting about the 68000 patents, followed by my >> addendum after visiting the Patent office. >> >> John >> >> From decwrl!decvax!harpo!npoiv!npois!houxm!houxa!houxk!tdl (T.LOVETT) Tue >> Mar 15 16:55:28 1983 >> Subject: 68000: 16 bits. With references >> Newsgroups: net.micro.68k >> >> With due respect to Henry Spencer I feel that I must correct >> some of his statements regarding the 68000. He is correct in >> saying that the 68000 is basically 16 bits wide; however, >> his explanation of the segmented bus is incorrect. >> >> The datapath of the 68000 is divided into three pieces, each of >> which has two busses, address and data, running through it. Six >> busses total. There are muxes which can be switched so that all >> address busses are connected and all data busses are connected. >> The three sections of the datapath are the data section >> (includes low 16 bits of all data registers and ALU), the >> "low" section (contains the low 16 bits of address registers and >> the low half of the Address Adder(AAU)), and the "high" section >> (contains high 16 bits of all address and data registers and >> the upper half of the AAU). >> >> Theoretically they could do 6 16 bit transfers simultaneously, >> but in looking through the microcode I don't remember seeing more >> than three transfers at a time. The "low" and "high" sections can >> be cascaded to provide a 32 bit arithmetic unit for address >> calculations. 32 bit data calculations must be done in two passes through >> the ALU. >> >> For the masochists out there, you can learn more than you ever wanted >> to know about the 68000 by reading Motorola's patents on it. They are >> available for some nominal fee (~ one dollar) from the Office >> of Patents and Trademarks in Arlington. The relevant patents are: >> >> 1 - #4,307,445 "Microprogrammed Control Apparatus Having a Two >> Level Control Store for Data Processor", Tredennick, et al. >> >> First design of 68000 which was scrapped? >> >> 2 - #4,296,469 "Execution Unit for Data Processor using Segmented >> Bus structure", Gunter, et al. >> >> All about the 16 bit data path >> >> 3 - #4,312,034 "ALU and Condition Code Control Unit for Data Processor", >> Gunter, et al. >> >> Boring. >> >> 4 - #4,325,121 "Two-Level Control Store for Microprogrammed Data >> Processor", >> Gunter et al. >> >> Bonanza! Full of block diagrams and everything you ever wanted >> to know. Includes complete listing of microcode with >> Tredennick's "hardware flowcharts". >> >> Hope this clears things up. >> >> Tom Lovett BTL Holmdel harpo!houxk!tdl 201-949-0056 >> >> >> My [gnu] notes on additional 68000 patents: >> >> Pat # Appl # Filed date Issued date Inventors >> >> 4,338,661 041,201 May 21, 1979 Jul 6, 1982 >> Tredennick & Gunter >> Conditional Branch Unit for Microprogrammed Data Processor >> >> 4,342,078 041,202 May 21, 1979 Jul 27, 1982 >> Tredennick & Gunter >> Instruction Register Sequence Decoder for Microprogrammed >> Data Processor and Method >> >> 4,312,034 041,203 May 21, 1979 Jan 19, 1982 >> Gunter, Hobbs, Spak, Tredennick >> ALU and Condition Code Control Unit for Data Processor >> >> 4,325,121 041,135 May 21, 1979 Apr 13, 1982 >> Gunter, Tredennick >> Two-Level Control Store for Microprogrammed Data Processor >> Bonanza! Full of block diagrams and everything you ever >> wanted >> to know. Includes complete listing of microcode with >> Tredennick's "hardware flowcharts". >> >> 4,296,469 961,798 Nov 17, 1978 Oct 20, 1981 >> Gunter, Tredennick, McAlister >> Execution Unit for Data Processor Using Segmented Bus Structure >> All about the 16 bit data path >> >> 4,348,722 136,845 Apr 3, 1980 Sep 7, 1982 >> Gunter, Crudele, Zolnowsky, Mothersole >> Bus Error Recognition for Microprogrammed Data Processor >> >> 4,349,873 136,593 Apr 2, 1980 Sep 14, 1982 >> Gunter, Zolnowsky, Crudele >> Microprocessor Interrupt Processing >> >> 4,524,415 447,721 Dec 7, 1982 Jun 18, 1985 >> Mills, Moyer, MacGregor, Zolnowsky >> Virtual Machine Data Processor >> 68010 changes to 68000 >> >> 4,348,741 169,558 Jul 17, 1980 Sep 7, 1982 >> McAlister, Gunter, Spak, Schriber >> Priority Encoder >> Used to decode the bit masks for MOVEM. >> >> XXXXXXXXX 446,801 Dec 7, 1982 >> Crudele, Zolnowsky, Moyer, MacGregor >> Virtual Memory Data Processor >> >> XXXXXXXXX 447,600 Dec 7, 1982 >> MacGregor, Moyer, Mills Jr, Zolnowsky >> Data Processor Version Validation >> About how bus errors store a CPU mask version # to >> prevent their being restarted on a different CPU mask >> in a multiprocessor system >> >> XXXXXXXXX 961,796 Nov 17, 1978 >> Tredennick et al >> Microprogrammed Control Apparatus for Data Processor >> (continued into 4,325,121, probably never issued) >> >> XXXXXXXXX 961,797 Nov 17, 1978 >> McAlister et al >> Multi-port RAM Structure for Data Processor Registers >> >> 4,307,445 961,796 Nov 17, 1978 >> Tredennick, et al >> Microprogrammed Control Apparatus Having a Two Level >> Control Store for Data Processor >> First design of 68000 which was scrapped? >> >> -- > Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual > -- Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual