[cctalk] Re: Intel 4004
what about that intel 3000 bit slice thing is it almost a microprocessor yes no and why? Ed# In a message dated 11/21/2023 3:34:03 PM US Mountain Standard Time, c.murray.mccullo...@gmail.com writes: There are 5 other possibilities for the honour:e or noe and why? No. 2: Texas Instruments applied for a “computing systems CPU” in 1971 and awarded a patent in 1973. The question though is: did TI have a functioning processor based on the TMS1000. Not sure if they did! No. 3: “In 1969 Four-Phase Systems built the 24-bit AL1, which used multiple chips segmented into 8-bit hunks, not unlike a bit-slice processor. In a patent dispute a quarter century later proof was presented that one could implement a complete 8-bit microprocessor using just one of these chips. The battle was settled out of court, which did not settle the issue of the first micro.” No. 4: Is this the first microprocessor? Here is a source: https://historydraft.com/story/microprocessor/pico-electronics-and-general-instrument-gi-introduced-their-first-collaboration-in-ics/425/6329 No. 5: "In 1969 Four-Phase Systems built the 24-bit AL1, which used multiple chips segmented into 8-bit hunks, not unlike a bit-slice processor. In a patent dispute a quarter century later proof was presented that one could implement a complete 8-bit microprocessor using just one of these chips. The battle was settled out of court, which did not settle the issue of the first micro." It seems the answer depends on what is a microprocessor...I suppose when it comes down to capitalism patents count more than anything else! Happy computing, Murray On Tue, Nov 21, 2023 at 5:00 PM ED SHARPE via cctalk wrote: I had heard something about a f14 chip pehS being first but not avail. To general public???Ed# Sent from AOL on Android On Tue, Nov 21, 2023 at 2:41 PM, Joshua Rice via cctalk wrote: On 21/11/2023 09:03, ED SHARPE via cctalk wrote: > So what are the other contenders and what do they bring to table The 4004 was definitely the first commercially available single-chip CPU on the market, but if you include multi-chip LSI designs, the lines get blurry.
[cctalk] Re: Intel 4004
On 11/21/23 18:18, Bob Rosenbloom via cctalk wrote: > On 11/21/2023 4:08 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: ISTR a 4004 on one of the boards of my DTC300 Hytype I daisy wheel printers. (or has unrefreshed wetware dynamic RAM lost its content?) > The Diablo high-speed screaming-loud dot matrix printer used three PPS8 (Rockwell QIL package) CPUs. We had one; I don't know if it was ever a commercial product. --Chuck
[cctalk] Re: Intel 4004
On 11/21/2023 4:08 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: ISTR a 4004 on one of the boards of my DTC300 Hytype I daisy wheel printers. (or has unrefreshed wetware dynamic RAM lost its content?) On Tue, 21 Nov 2023, Peter Wallace wrote: I think thats a 4040 Peter Wallace Sorry about that. Not sure whether to blame that on old-timers memory corruption, or on lysdexia. Actually, the DTC 300-S did use the 4004. I used to have one of these. I have the schematics for it. I can post them up on dvq.com if anyone's interested. Bob -- Vintage computers and electronics www.dvq.com www.tekmuseum.com www.decmuseum.org
[cctalk] Re: Intel 4004
The F14 flight control (CADC) computer was a chipset, with different functional aspects built into each chip. The design was done by Garrett AirResearch. The requirements of the system were quite arduous, and thus the computer was reasonably powerful for its time, especially considering its size and power supply requirements. Once the logic was all tried and true via bread boarding the system, The logic was given to American Micro-systems, Inc., (AMI) who laid out and fabricated the chips. At the time, AMI was one of the few companies that could make large scale MOS ICs. AMI did a lot of secret work for the US Government which is how it got its start in MOS LSI, and a lot of AMI's early history is somewhat shrouded in mystery because most of the work they did was secret. It appears that AMI's first MOS LSI calculator chipset was for Smith Corona Marchant (SCM), with an eight-chip set that was partitioned into two ROMs, a control chip that decoded the microcode in the ROMs into control signals, a digit parallel, serial in/out ALU, an input processing IC for scanning the keyboard, de-bouncing, and generating more signals going to the microcode control chip, an output chip that took in serial data representing a digit, decoded the BCD into 1-of-10 signals, sent that out to the common Nixie bus, and also strobed the appropriate digit, as well as keeping track of decimal point information, a register chip that contained three 68-bit serial-in/serial out (with perhaps one position 4-bit parallel out) shift registers that represented the storage for the working registers of the calculator, and lastly, a data routing chip that took care of gating serial data streams to/from the register chip, ALU chip, and output chip. Technically, this chipset was kind of a 4-bit micro-coded engine that was microprogrammed to operate as a calculator, but with different I/O chips and microcode, it could have been micro-coded to be a small, general-purpose four-bit processor. The resulting calculator(s), the SCM Cogito 414 (introduced first on 23-April-1969), and it's little brother, the SCM Cogito 412 (identical chipset including ROMs, but has a jumper on the main board that limits the machine to 12 digits versus the 414's 14 digits - and introduced a bit later to allow sales of the 14-digit version to ramp up before introducing a lower-cost model with two fewer digits). Was that chipset developed for SCM a microprocessor chipset? That's really tough to say one way or the other. It could have fairly easily been turned into a small general purpose (probably decimal based rather than binary) computer with some different I/O chips and microcode, but does that count as a microprocessor, either as-is, or with modifications? There was also a chipset that was developed by an individual entrepreneur that was intended to function as the compute engine for a small portable computer. At the moment, I can't recall the name of the person. He claimed his design was truly the first "CPU on a chip". It had all of the requisite bits (excuse pun) in the design to make it a full processor.At some point fairly recently, after arguing his case for many years, it went to court, with his claim being that he beat Texas Instruments to implementation. TI had their single-chip microprogrammed "calculator" processor that only needed display drive electronics, an external clock generator, and a keyboard. The claim was that the chip that this guy had developed was a complete CPU, whereas the TI chip, in order to do anything other than serve as a calculator (with different mask-programmed microcode) would require additional support ICs to do anything really useful as a computer. A major point of the decision was that the engineer had some of the core CPU chips and determined that one of them was still working, and built a small demonstration computer using it. It was slow, but had a full keyboard and a LCD display and could do simple application-like functions. The court sided on the independent guy, although it was a very contentious decision. I'm sorry I don't have the details of this at hand at the moment, but there was quite a splash in the technical media regarding this decision. At least for now, as far as patent law is concerned, this was the first single chip microprocessor. So, technically, the CADC chipset for the F-14 was very likely the first general-purpose processor implemented in MOS on a reasonably small number of chips. The machine was a 20-bit machine, and had to do a lot of math, very quickly, so its math functions were heavily optimized for the types of calculators necessary for positioning the control surfaces of the F-14 in a "fly-by-wire" environment. There were dedicated multiplier and divider chips to do these calculations in hardware as quickly as possible. So, in some ways, the CADC, while it could likely be micro-coded to
[cctalk] Re: Intel 4004
On Tue, 21 Nov 2023, Brent Hilpert via cctalk wrote: . . . the same time-frame (measured in months) of the 4004. IIRC, there's some argument there about development vs production vs release vs availability dates. also, "announcement" (cf. vaporware) Hence, it makes sense to acknowledge a "tie" for multiple entries in any "first", that are close, but differ in which aspect of "first" applies. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com
[cctalk] Re: Intel 4004
> On Nov 21, 2023, at 7:13 PM, Antonio Carlini via cctalk > wrote: > > On 21/11/2023 23:14, Will Cooke via cctalk wrote: >> More information is here: >> https://firstmicroprocessor.com/?doing_wp_cron=1700608229.8666059970855712890625 >> >> I think that is the designers (Rod Holt?) website. Apparently he won a >> legal battle to use the term "first microprocessor" for whatever that is >> worth. > > Details were published in 1998 and the chip was available approximately never > (I presume, unless you were building a Tomcat) so I'm not sure you should > count it. Perhaps "first microprocessor, until someone else claims another > secret design that was even earlier" would be a more accurate claim? Remember the guy at the British spook agency (GCHQ?) who said he invented RSA a long time before Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman did? Perhaps so, but the fact that it was all secret means it didn't matter to the real world. This sort of thing happens a lot, in inventions or discoveries. There were types of telegraphs before S.F.B. Morse came along, but his design took over the world. There were Europeans who traveled to America before Columbus, but nothing came of those explorations and they were pretty much forgotten. And FM radio was first invented in 1919 by a Dutch engineer (Hanso Idzerda), not around 1930 by Edwin Armstrong -- but Idzerda's design was a technological dead end and disappeared from view by the late 1920s, while Armstrong's design became universal and remains so. So I tend to qualify "first to invent" (or "discover") as "first to invent and make it matter". paul
[cctalk] Re: Intel 4004
> On Nov 21, 2023, at 6:14 PM, Will Cooke via cctalk > wrote: > > More information is here: > https://firstmicroprocessor.com/?doing_wp_cron=1700608229.8666059970855712890625 > > I think that is the designers (Rod Holt?) website. Apparently he won a legal > battle to use the term "first microprocessor" for whatever that is worth. The website makes it clear he's talking about a chipset: control chip, multiplier, divider, and some other stuff. Sounds a bit like a 2901/2910 combination. As for the term, was that a copyright or trademark dispute? That doesn't have any connection to who was first actually to create something. Consider for example the guy (a failed political candidate, of all things) in MA who claims to have invented Email. His argument for this is that the US Copyright Office accepted the registration of a publication, the source code of that program, and that the title of the work was "email". That doesn't say anything about whether others did it before; it only says that he created something with that name and recorded that fact at that time. That one, actually, was even feebler than a trademark or a domain name registration, because domain names are unique and while trademarks need not be, they are at least supposed to be unique within a particular commercial category. paul
[cctalk] Re: Intel 4004
On 21/11/2023 23:14, Will Cooke via cctalk wrote: More information is here: https://firstmicroprocessor.com/?doing_wp_cron=1700608229.8666059970855712890625 I think that is the designers (Rod Holt?) website. Apparently he won a legal battle to use the term "first microprocessor" for whatever that is worth. Details were published in 1998 and the chip was available approximately never (I presume, unless you were building a Tomcat) so I'm not sure you should count it. Perhaps "first microprocessor, until someone else claims another secret design that was even earlier" would be a more accurate claim? Antonio -- Antonio Carlini anto...@acarlini.com
[cctalk] Re: Intel 4004
ISTR a 4004 on one of the boards of my DTC300 Hytype I daisy wheel printers. (or has unrefreshed wetware dynamic RAM lost its content?) On Tue, 21 Nov 2023, Peter Wallace wrote: I think thats a 4040 Peter Wallace Sorry about that. Not sure whether to blame that on old-timers memory corruption, or on lysdexia.
[cctalk] Re: Intel 4004
More information is here: https://firstmicroprocessor.com/?doing_wp_cron=1700608229.8666059970855712890625 I think that is the designers (Rod Holt?) website. Apparently he won a legal battle to use the term "first microprocessor" for whatever that is worth. Will > On 11/21/2023 2:56 PM CST Brent Hilpert via cctalk > wrote: > > > On 2023-Nov-21, at 1:03 AM, ED SHARPE via cctalk wrote: > > On Mon, Nov 20, 2023 at 7:01 PM ben via cctalk > > wrote: > > > On 2023-11-20 5:36 p.m., Murray McCullough via cctalk wrote: > > > > On Nov. 15, 1971 Intel commercially released the 4004 microprocessor > > > > which > > > > some consider to be the first. Nonetheless, even if not in agreement, it > > > > made possible the instrument which drives the classic-computing > > > > industry or > > > > at the very least our hobby! > > > > > > > > Happy computing. > > > > > > > > Murray > > > https://retrocomputingforum.com/t/swiss-physicist-builds-complete-intel-4004-computer-out-of-smd-transistors/3738 > > > THE DIY VERSION > > So what are the other contenders and what do they bring to table > > A claim is made for the first microproc being the CADC processor of an early > flight-control system for the F-14, made by Garrett AiResearch ~ 1969. I > haven't looked into it in depth - or I don't know of detailed info being > available - but apparently it was a CPU made up of several LSI chips. In my > opinion that disqualifies it, but it's all into the mug's game of specifying > 'first at what?' If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. Antoine de Saint-Exupery
[cctalk] Re: Intel 4004
I had heard something about a f14 chip pehS being first but not avail. To general public???Ed# Sent from AOL on Android On Tue, Nov 21, 2023 at 2:41 PM, Joshua Rice via cctalk wrote: On 21/11/2023 09:03, ED SHARPE via cctalk wrote: > So what are the other contenders and what do they bring to table The 4004 was definitely the first commercially available single-chip CPU on the market, but if you include multi-chip LSI designs, the lines get blurry.
[cctalk] Re: Intel 4004
On 21/11/2023 09:03, ED SHARPE via cctalk wrote: So what are the other contenders and what do they bring to table The 4004 was definitely the first commercially available single-chip CPU on the market, but if you include multi-chip LSI designs, the lines get blurry.
[cctalk] Re: Intel 4004
On 2023-Nov-21, at 1:03 AM, ED SHARPE via cctalk wrote: > On Mon, Nov 20, 2023 at 7:01 PM ben via cctalk wrote: >> On 2023-11-20 5:36 p.m., Murray McCullough via cctalk wrote: >>> On Nov. 15, 1971 Intel commercially released the 4004 microprocessor which >>> some consider to be the first. Nonetheless, even if not in agreement, it >>> made possible the instrument which drives the classic-computing industry or >>> at the very least our hobby! >>> >>> Happy computing. >>> >>> Murray >> >> https://retrocomputingforum.com/t/swiss-physicist-builds-complete-intel-4004-computer-out-of-smd-transistors/3738 >> THE DIY VERSION > > So what are the other contenders and what do they bring to table A claim is made for the first microproc being the CADC processor of an early flight-control system for the F-14, made by Garrett AiResearch ~ 1969. I haven't looked into it in depth - or I don't know of detailed info being available - but apparently it was a CPU made up of several LSI chips. In my opinion that disqualifies it, but it's all into the mug's game of specifying 'first at what?' There's also the TMS-1000 series of calculator chips which were single-chip programmed processors and came in the same time-frame (measured in months) of the 4004. IIRC, there's some argument there about development vs production vs release vs availability dates. Also to note, there were multi-chip programmed-processor calculator chip-sets in that time-frame, not sure of the exact timing relative to the 4004. The microproc was simply a development whose time had come. It was a predictable, 'in-the-air' idea brought to fruition with increasing integration capabilities. In reality the 4004 was/would-be awkward to use for a general-purpose system. The 4004 CPU was tailored for use with mask-programmed ROM chips and RAM chips, all specific to the MCS-4 family. IO was also in those MCS-4 chips. To make a system with off-the-shelf ROM/RAM/IO chips required going through other special MCS-4 family chips for that purpose. Or put another way, it was a multi-chip CPU by the time you tried to make a system with standard RAM/ROM/IO chips. I have two embedded systems using 4004s: - an M900 PROM programmer. This system does have interfacing for use of off-the-shelf ROM (1702s) and RAM. The manual for this includes the firmware source code listing. - the remnants of the PLL control from an avionics transceiver. An example of a 'proper' MCS-4 system, as it was intended to be used, with 4004 CPU, 4001 ROMs, 4002 RAM & 4201 clock-gen. http://madrona.ca/e/4004Monument/index.html
[cctalk] Re: Intel 4004
> > Subject: [cctalk] Re: Intel 4004 > > > > ISTR a 4004 on one of the boards of my DTC300 Hytype I daisy wheel > printers. > > > > (or has unrefreshed wetware dynamic RAM lost its content?) > > > > > > -- > > Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com > > > > I think thats a 4040 > > Peter Wallace > My IMI 1010 eProm burner has a 4040 https://vintagecomputer.net/imi/ Bill
[cctalk] Re: Intel 4004
On Tue, 21 Nov 2023, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2023 11:24:09 -0800 (PST) From: Fred Cisin via cctalk To: dwight via cctalk Cc: Fred Cisin Subject: [cctalk] Re: Intel 4004 ISTR a 4004 on one of the boards of my DTC300 Hytype I daisy wheel printers. (or has unrefreshed wetware dynamic RAM lost its content?) -- Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com I think thats a 4040 Peter Wallace
[cctalk] Re: Intel 4004
ISTR a 4004 on one of the boards of my DTC300 Hytype I daisy wheel printers. (or has unrefreshed wetware dynamic RAM lost its content?) -- Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com
[cctalk] Re: Intel 4004
There is little surviving software for the 4004. There are a few places with snippets of code to do things like add or subtract several digits but my searches of the internet have shown little actual code. The NBS has some code to track satellites and correct for time delays from their clocks ( think GPS ). I'd had a spare 4004 and always wanted to do something with it. I found that the library for work done at the Navy Post Graduate School in Monterey California had 2 projects that students of Gary Kildall created. One was a load calculator for helicopters and the other was for calculating closest point of approach for ships. I'd been unsuccessful at down loading the helicopter code but was able to down load the ships document. I'd let the listing sit for 10's of years while always on the back burner. Over the years I'd acquired the needed parts. I did make a few substitutions, though. The original used 13 each 1702A EPROMs. Since that exceed my budget for a PC board space, I chose the option of using a 4289 and a 2732 EPROM. I did use the original designs number of 4002s, as using RAM through the 4289 would have made significant changes to the software. The problem of the circuit needed to be dealt with. The document had a page labelled 'schematic' that turned out to be the keyboard layout and display layout( both of which I ignored and used my own layout that I though was better ). Before getting to the board design, I needed to get working software. The listing was done on a ASR33 with a deeply rutted platen, typical of hand-me-down things used by a school's command. Letters like R or P would look like F and 0 would look like C. Other letters were easy to figure out but still often had their right edge missing. After entering the list by hand, I'd feed it into my assembler and the tried to run it with my simulator. I'd make corrections as I got the code running. I need to create the circuitry for the keyboard decoder, that took 25 buttons to the 4 bit data bus input of the 4004. There was enough description in the document to create the LED display but I did missed one thing ( that I'll mention later ). I created the board with my typical incorrect wiring, requiring several extra cuts and jumpers. ( the concept was right but I got the pins of the 7402 mixed up.) The one thing that I'd missed was the order of the digit scan. I assumed left to right but the code was actually right to left. After so many cuts and jumpers to get the keyboard right, I dreaded more to fix the scan order so I made the one change to the original software to do right to left ( I still feel bad about that change ). I thought I'd talk a little about how a Closest Point of Approach Calculation is done. Normally it had been done by a graphical method of line drawing on what is called a plotting maneuver board. One used graphical calculations for the trig used. It was all done by pencil and parallel. It is so important that, I believe, that to this day a ship's pilot still needs to be able to do this calculation on a maneuver board, even though such graphical displays are capable of doing such, today. Large ships require significant knowledge of where they are relative to other fixed and moving objects in order to determine the safest path to proceed. A broken display is not time to learn how to do such a calculation. This 4004 calculator used a newly found way of doing tangent calculations, called the CORDIC method. One could clearly see the influence of Gary Kildall's hand in this code. It is noted that he wrote the division routine used and the organization of the code clearly shows the influence of a seasoned programmer. Bring such code back to life was almost as much as making a 4004 processor from discrete transistors but I felt was for me as part of my bucket list. Things I needed to do, included writing an assembler, writing a simulator, learn a PC board CAD, transcribing a poor quality listing, debugging the poorly transcribed listing, creating the keyboard decoder and instrumenting my simulator to be the calculator. Dwight From: ED SHARPE via cctalk Sent: Tuesday, November 21, 2023 1:03 AM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Cc: ED SHARPE Subject: [cctalk] Re: Intel 4004 So what are the other contenders and what do they bring to table Sent from AOL on Android On Mon, Nov 20, 2023 at 9:06 PM, Adrian Stoness via cctalk wrote: someone should build it in minecrsft On Mon, Nov 20, 2023 at 7:01 PM ben via cctalk wrote: > On 2023-11-20 5:36 p.m., Murray McCullough via cctalk wrote: > > On Nov. 15, 1971 Intel commercially released the 4004 microprocessor > which > > some consider to be the first. Nonetheless, even if not in agreement, it > > made possible the instrument which drives the classic-computing industry > or > > at the very least our hobby! > > > > Happy computing. > > > > Murray > > >
[cctalk] Re: Two items for RSTS/E
> On Nov 20, 2023, at 10:05 PM, Tim Sneddon via cctalk > wrote: > > On Tue, 21 Nov 2023 at 06:13, Paul Koning via cctalk > wrote: > >> I just pushed two additions to https://github.com/pkoning2/decstuff : >> >> In "patches" a new patch for the DEUNA driver. This fixes a problem seen >> when doing user (as opposed to DECnet) I/O, as well as two errors that show >> up when using units beyond the first. >> >> Directory "ntp" is new. This is a simple NTP protocol client for RSTS, >> which will synchronize the system clock with an NTP server on the LAN. It >> includes handling of timezone rules, so the right thing will happen at >> daylight savings time (summer time) boundaries. The clock is maintained to >> the full RSTS resolution -- typically 1/50th or 1/60th second, but can be >> as low as 10 ms if the KW-11/P clock is used. >> > > This is awesome! Thanks, Paul. Glad you like it. Comments welcome. When I first posted this I still had trouble with the QNA driver. Those are now fixed (patch file patches/xhdvr.cmd) so it now works on both UNA and QNA devices. I've tested this in SIMH. I would expect it to work on real hardware too, but I don't have any to try, so reports on actual machines would be particularly interesting. paul
[cctalk] Re: Intel 4004
So what are the other contenders and what do they bring to table Sent from AOL on Android On Mon, Nov 20, 2023 at 9:06 PM, Adrian Stoness via cctalk wrote: someone should build it in minecrsft On Mon, Nov 20, 2023 at 7:01 PM ben via cctalk wrote: > On 2023-11-20 5:36 p.m., Murray McCullough via cctalk wrote: > > On Nov. 15, 1971 Intel commercially released the 4004 microprocessor > which > > some consider to be the first. Nonetheless, even if not in agreement, it > > made possible the instrument which drives the classic-computing industry > or > > at the very least our hobby! > > > > Happy computing. > > > > Murray > > > https://retrocomputingforum.com/t/swiss-physicist-builds-complete-intel-4004-computer-out-of-smd-transistors/3738 > THE DIY VERSION > >
