*BSD News Article 82925


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From: dwight@micron.net (Dwight Tovey)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.misc,comp.unix.bsd.misc,alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Small Computers (was Re: On the Naming of UNIX Things)
Date: 15 Nov 1996 14:10:14 GMT
Organization: Wish I had some
Lines: 37
Message-ID: <56htk6$d72@is05.micron.net>
References: <328386bc.112278367@news.ov.com> <steve.847913388@fastnet.prd.co.uk> <E0v6zG.1oC@cwi.nl> <56fdha$r9i@verdi.nethelp.no> <56hhqk$5kj@polo.demon.co.uk>
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Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.misc:26439 comp.unix.bsd.misc:1509 alt.folklore.computers:124632

In article <56hhqk$5kj@polo.demon.co.uk>, john@polo.demon.co.uk (John Winters) writes:
|> In article <56fdha$r9i@verdi.nethelp.no>,
|> Steinar Haug <sthaug@nethelp.no> wrote:
|> >[Dik T. Winter]
|> >
|> >|    > Next we'll be hearing from people who know what it was like to have no
|> >|    > more than 100K 36-bit words to do real programming in.
|> >|   
|> >|   Does 32K 27-bit words count?
|> >
|> >How about 64K 16-bit words? Are we trying to set a new record here? :-)
|> 
|> How about 1K 8-bit bytes (and that included the display memory)?  :-)
|> 
|> John
|> 
|> (Yes, yes, I know.  We're talking about real computers, not things
|> that make even an IBM PC look sophisticated.)
|> -- 
|> John Winters.  Wallingford, Oxon, England.

My first "computer" had 256 bytes of ram.  Had one register to hold a return
address, so the call stack was only one deep.  The program code had to live in
rom, so the code had to be tight to save space.  If you wanted to add something,
you first had to go through the existing code to see if you could do something in
fewer instructions so that you could make room for the addition.

The thing was used to generate line-printer test patterns.  Barely qualifies as a
computer, but it was an interesting way to learn programming.
	/dwight
-- 
Dwight N. Tovey              H&W Computer Systems, Inc.
Software Specialist III      12438 W. Bridger St.  Suite 100
   dwight@hwcs.com           Boise, ID.  83713
or dwight@micron.net         (208)377-0336
I didn't claw my way to the top of the food chain to eat vegetables!!