From: Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org>
To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society <tuhs@tuhs.org>
Subject: Re: [TUHS] 68k prototypes & microcode
Date: Fri, 5 Feb 2021 08:55:19 +1100 (EST) [thread overview]
Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.2102050819320.70858@aneurin.horsfall.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20210204013356.GA16541@mcvoy.com>
On Wed, 3 Feb 2021, Larry McVoy wrote:
>> The 68K always reminded me of the VAX.
>
> I'm not sure if that is a compliment or not.
The 68K was fairly clean; the VAX not so much... I got the impression
that it was designed by a committee i.e. everybody wanted to have their
own instruction/feature, and it showed. I do admit though that paging the
page tables was a stroke of genius.
> The NS320XX always reminded me more of the PDP-11 (which is by *far*
> my favorite assembler, so uniform, I had a TA that could read the octal
> dump of a PDP-11 like it was C). I wasn't that good but I could sort of
> see what he was seeing and I never saw that in the VAX. 68K was closer
> but I felt like the NS320xx was closer yet. Pity they couldn't produce
> bug free chips.
I used to be a whiz on the 360 :-) As part of our final CompSci exams
we had to hand-assemble and disassemble some code, and I hardly ever referred
to the "green card".
> Someone mentioned Z80000, I stopped at Z80 so I don't know if that was
> also a pleasant ISA.
The Z80 was quite nice; I wrote heaps of programs for it, and I even found
an ANSI C Compiler for it (Hi-Tech as I recall; BDS-C was, well, you could
barely call it "C")[*]. I compiled a number of Unix programs...
> The x86 stuff is about as far away from PDP-11 as you can get. Required
> to know it, but so unpleasant.
The x86 architecture is utterly brain-dead; I mean, what's wrong with a
linear address space? I think it was JohnG who said "segment registers
are for worms".
> I have to admit that I haven't looked at ARM assembler, the M1 is making
> me rethink that. Anyone have an opinion on where ARM lies in the pleasant
> to unpleasant scale?
I've been looking at the ARM; it seems quite nice at first glance.
> --lm who misses comp.arch back when CPU people hung out there
Indeed. I gave up on USENET when the joint got flooded by spammers; I
still have my "cancel" script somewhere.
[*]
I think it was Henry Spencer who said (in an unrelated matter): "Somehow
to be called a C compiler, I think it ought at least be able to compile
C".
-- Dave, who ran aus.radio.amateur.*
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2021-02-04 21:55 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 54+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2021-01-29 10:49 [TUHS] AT&T 3B1 - Emulation available Arnold Robbins
2021-01-29 13:49 ` Ronald Natalie
2021-01-29 14:37 ` Clem Cole
2021-01-31 7:57 ` arnold
2021-01-31 8:41 ` Rich Morin
2021-02-03 7:53 ` emanuel stiebler
2021-02-03 7:59 ` arnold
2021-02-03 8:53 ` Ed Bradford
2021-02-03 8:58 ` arnold
2021-02-03 10:13 ` Ed Bradford
2021-02-03 14:58 ` Clem Cole
2021-02-03 15:33 ` Henry Bent
2021-02-03 16:53 ` Clem Cole
2021-02-04 0:41 ` [TUHS] 68k prototypes & microcode John Gilmore
2021-02-04 0:52 ` Al Kossow
2021-02-04 1:10 ` Arthur Krewat
2021-02-04 1:33 ` Larry McVoy
2021-02-04 1:47 ` Al Kossow
2021-02-04 1:57 ` Al Kossow
2021-02-04 7:23 ` Arno Griffioen
2021-02-04 11:28 ` Toby Thain
2021-02-04 15:47 ` Arthur Krewat
2021-02-04 16:03 ` emanuel stiebler
2021-02-04 21:55 ` Dave Horsfall [this message]
2021-02-04 22:11 ` Steve Nickolas
2021-02-04 22:39 ` Adam Thornton
2021-02-04 22:47 ` Henry Bent
2021-02-05 14:42 ` Michael Parson
2021-02-04 22:56 ` Richard Salz
2021-02-04 23:14 ` Steve Nickolas
2021-02-04 1:35 ` Clem Cole
2021-02-04 2:18 ` Dave Horsfall
2021-02-04 15:53 ` Arthur Krewat
2021-02-05 2:16 ` Dave Horsfall
2021-02-05 2:53 ` Larry McVoy
2021-02-04 1:14 ` Clem Cole
2021-02-04 1:20 ` Clem Cole
2021-02-04 14:56 ` John Cowan
2021-02-03 15:20 ` [TUHS] AT&T 3B1 - Emulation available emanuel stiebler
2021-02-03 16:48 ` Doug McIntyre
2021-02-03 10:46 ` emanuel stiebler
2021-02-03 11:13 ` arnold
2021-02-05 12:44 ` Sergio Pedraja
2021-02-07 7:32 ` arnold
2021-02-17 16:07 ` emanuel stiebler
2021-02-17 22:00 ` Ed Carp
2021-02-17 22:14 ` Larry McVoy
2021-02-18 1:30 ` Ed Carp
2021-02-18 7:59 ` arnold
2021-02-18 18:07 ` Brad Spencer
2021-02-13 1:06 [TUHS] 68k prototypes & microcode Jason Stevens
2021-02-13 2:30 ` Gregg Levine
2021-02-13 4:34 Jason Stevens
2021-02-13 6:05 ` Toby Thain
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