Re: [Simh] Simh Digest, Vol 145, Issue 52

[Mark Pizzolato]

On Tuesday, February 16, 2016 at 10:51 AM Johnny Billquist wrote:
> On 2016-02-16 17:54, li...@openmailbox.org wrote:
> > On Tue, 16 Feb 2016 17:49:27 +0100
> > Johnny Billquist  wrote:
> >
> >> On 2016-02-16 17:43, li...@openmailbox.org wrote:
> >> For a lot of embedded, low power stuff, it would have made more sense
> >> to use PDP-11s. But DEC had those chips as well, and was somewhat
> >> unwilling in that market too. Imagine if they had tries to really
> >> push for getting PDP-11s out there in all kind of devices, and made
> >> one or two more implementations to shrink and reduce power... That
> could have been nice.
> >
> > You're just saying that because you want to run an RSX-based
> > smartphone ;-)
> 
> Of course, that would be nice. :-)

Well, of course an RSX-based smartphone isn't going to happen, BUT
with an Android based phone you could run a simh PDP11 simulator 
running RSX and likely have it talk to the internet via your (Johnny's)
TCP/IP package.  I haven’t tried to build using the Android cross 
development tools for a couple of years, but the github makefile 
worked fine the last time I tried.  :-)

- Mark
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Re: [Simh] Simh Digest, Vol 145, Issue 52

[khandy21yo]

Like a RSTS watch?





 Original message 
From li...@openmailbox.org 
Date: 02/16/2016  9:54 AM  (GMT-07:00) 
To simh@trailing-edge.com 
Subject Re: [Simh] Simh Digest, Vol 145, Issue 52 
 
On Tue, 16 Feb 2016 17:49:27 +0100
Johnny Billquist <b...@softjar.se> wrote:

> On 2016-02-16 17:43, li...@openmailbox.org wrote:
> > On Tue, 16 Feb 2016 11:40:09 -0500
> > William Pechter <pech...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Actually, one of DEC's biggest mistakes was not OEMing the uVax
> >> chips... They would've killed the 68k had they had the uVaxII chipset
> >> available for early workstations.
> >
> > I'm not so sure about that. The 68k was used in an awful lot of devices
> > from handhelds (Palm) to TI calculators and a whole lot more than
> > workstations. Could handheld devices in that day run microVax chips?
> 
> For a lot of embedded, low power stuff, it would have made more sense to 
> use PDP-11s. But DEC had those chips as well, and was somewhat unwilling 
> in that market too. Imagine if they had tries to really push for getting 
> PDP-11s out there in all kind of devices, and made one or two more 
> implementations to shrink and reduce power... That could have been nice.

You're just saying that because you want to run an RSX-based smartphone ;-)

In all seriousness with today's FPGAs and microcontrollers you can probably
make just about any battery-powered device you could think up.
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Re: [Simh] Simh Digest, Vol 145, Issue 52

[Paul Koning]

> On Feb 16, 2016, at 11:49 AM, Johnny Billquist  wrote:
> 
> On 2016-02-16 17:43, li...@openmailbox.org wrote:
>> On Tue, 16 Feb 2016 11:40:09 -0500
>> William Pechter  wrote:
>> 
>>> Actually, one of DEC's biggest mistakes was not OEMing the uVax chips...
>>> They would've killed the 68k had they had the uVaxII chipset
>>> available for early workstations.
>> 
>> I'm not so sure about that. The 68k was used in an awful lot of devices
>> from handhelds (Palm) to TI calculators and a whole lot more than
>> workstations. Could handheld devices in that day run microVax chips?
> 
> For a lot of embedded, low power stuff, it would have made more sense to use 
> PDP-11s. But DEC had those chips as well, and was somewhat unwilling in that 
> market too. Imagine if they had tries to really push for getting PDP-11s out 
> there in all kind of devices, and made one or two more implementations to 
> shrink and reduce power... That could have been nice.

One complication was that, until around the 3rd generation Ethernet chip, DEC's 
inhouse chip business made chips that cost much, much more than anyone else's.  
There's a reason the networking products stuck to LANCE chips for quite some 
time.  I think it was the TGEC ("third generation Ethernet chip") that finally 
became cost-competitive (as well as being functionally superior to every 
alternative).

DEC got very seriously into low power with the StrongARM (SA110) chip, but that 
was much later.  It was quite amazing, though; I don't remember how much lower 
power per MHz than every other processor out there, but it was quite 
significant and set the stage for the lower power processor technology that 
enabled smartphones.

paul


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Re: [Simh] Simh Digest, Vol 145, Issue 52

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2016-02-16 17:43, li...@openmailbox.org wrote:

On Tue, 16 Feb 2016 11:40:09 -0500
William Pechter  wrote:


Actually, one of DEC's biggest mistakes was not OEMing the uVax chips...
They would've killed the 68k had they had the uVaxII chipset
available for early workstations.


I'm not so sure about that. The 68k was used in an awful lot of devices
from handhelds (Palm) to TI calculators and a whole lot more than
workstations. Could handheld devices in that day run microVax chips?


For a lot of embedded, low power stuff, it would have made more sense to 
use PDP-11s. But DEC had those chips as well, and was somewhat unwilling 
in that market too. Imagine if they had tries to really push for getting 
PDP-11s out there in all kind of devices, and made one or two more 
implementations to shrink and reduce power... That could have been nice.


Johnny


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Re: [Simh] Simh Digest, Vol 145, Issue 52

[William Pechter]

simh-requ...@trailing-edge.com wrote:
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> Today's Topics:
>
>1. Re:  VAX/VMS (Timothe Litt)
>
>
> --
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Tue, 16 Feb 2016 10:23:12 -0500
> From: Timothe Litt 
> To: simh@trailing-edge.com
> Subject: Re: [Simh] VAX/VMS
> Message-ID: <56c33ee0.3070...@ieee.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> On 16-Feb-16 10:16, Dave Wade wrote:
>> I
>>
>>
>> I think it is also interesting to compare the Intel architecture which
>> was designed to be economical with Silicon against the M6800, M6809
>> and the M68000 which were designed to be programmer friendly, and of
>> course note the similarities between the 68000 & S/360 with 16 general
>> purpose registers and orthogonal instruction set) and wonder where we
>> would be today had IBM chosen them for its PC rather than the 8086
>> which I assume was cheaper…
>>
>>
> I worked with IBM in Boca Raton at one point.  This is where the IBM PC
> was developed, and I talked with some of the originators.
>
> They told me that they considered the 8086, the 68000 & the T11 for the
> PC.  They really, really wanted the -11.  IBM had the largest population
> of -11 programmers in the world at one time.  They used the 11 for
> manufacturing and real-time.  There was a huge amount of software.  But
> DEC wouldn't sell the -11 to them.  So they went for price and that deal
> with Gates to write DOS.  Neither was supposed to last...
>
Boy -- that could've been a saving thing for DEC in '86 or so.   A lot
of $$$ for chip sales and maybe IBM second sourcing the T11.

Actually, one of DEC's biggest mistakes was not OEMing the uVax chips...
They would've killed the 68k had they had the uVaxII chipset
available for early workstations. 

That revenue could've given them the cash they needed to push the Alpha
and 64 bit computing.


Bill

-- 
Digital had it then.  Don't you wish you could buy it now!
pechter-at-gmail.com  http://xkcd.com/705/

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