On Wednesday, Mar 31, 2004, at 07:50 US/Pacific, Bob Ammerman wrote:

>> Yes, it is a thing of beauty!  I still have my PDP11 manuals!
>
> Indeed, it is probably my favorite assembly language.

The PDP-10 was nicer. 20 more bits to play with.  Lots of no-ops. Skip
never, jump never, test and skip never. Unimplemented User  Operations.
   Sigh.  (microcode now available to turn your linux system into a
PDP-10.  Somewhat faster than Dec's mainframes ever were.)  All
summarizable on a a single sheet of 8x10 paper without resorting to
tiny type.  ( http://www.ultimate.com/phil/pdp10/instructionset.jpg
)Brilliantly orthogonal.

The PDP-11 was more elegant, though.

So why haven't more of the historically significant processors become
microcontrollers as technlogy has made it possible?  Zilog seems to be
about the only company that has managed to do this with the Z80.  I
noticed that WDC is still pushing 6502s, but I don't think there are
full micrcontrollers base on it...  Is it JUST the IP messiness?  Or do
the people who spend the bucks not look on history with such fondness?

BillW

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