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   On 31/08/2024 00:26, Chris Townley wrote:   
   > On 30/08/2024 22:53, The Natural Philosopher wrote:   
   >> On 30/08/2024 20:50, mm0fmf wrote:   
   >>> On 30/08/2024 15:45, The Natural Philosopher wrote:   
   >>>> On 30/08/2024 15:39, mm0fmf wrote:   
   >>>>> On 30/08/2024 14:28, John Aldridge wrote:   
   >>>>>> In article <20240829191334.570e88c7507598ffe5b28d87@eircom.net>,   
   >>>>>> steveo@eircom.net says...   
   >>>>>>>>>     Portable code should only rely on the standards not   
   >>>>>>>>> implementations, some very weird possibilities are legal within   
   >>>>>>>>> the   
   >>>>>>>>> standard.   
   >>>>>>>>   
   >>>>>>>> Heh, yes. I worked for several years on a machine where a null   
   >>>>>>>> pointer   
   >>>>>>>> wasn't all bits zero, and where char* was a different size to   
   >>>>>>>> any other   
   >>>>>>>> pointer.   
   >>>>>>>   
   >>>>>>>     That rings vague bells, what was it ?   
   >>>>>>   
   >>>>>> Prime. It was word, not byte, addressed, so a char* had to be bigger.   
   >>>>>>   
   >>>>> I used a Prime750 at Uni. But only undergrad tasks in Prime BASIC   
   >>>>> and some Fortran. It seemed quite fast at the time in timeshare   
   >>>>> mode with plenty of undergrads using it. But the CPU was only as   
   >>>>> fast as an 8MHz 68000!   
   >>>>>   
   >>>> That is the staggering thing. CPU performance in the mini era wasn't   
   >>>> that hot at all.   
   >>>>   
   >>>> I see someone has made a Pi PICO emulate a range of 6502 based   
   >>>> computers - apple II etc.   
   >>>>   
   >>>> I am fairly sure a PI Zero could outperform a 386 running SCO   
   >>>> Unix...and that was pretty comparable with - if not better than - a   
   >>>> PDP 11.   
   >>>>   
   >>>>   
   >>>   
   >>> The CPUs may not have had stunning performance but were generally   
   >>> quite a bit quicker than the Z80/6502s of the day. The real   
   >>> performance came from having disks and ISTR hardware assisted IO.   
   >>> i.e. the CPU didn't have to poll or handle IRQs from each UART but   
   >>> there was something helping. It's all so long ago now I forget the   
   >>> details. What I do remember was it was around 1985 when someone lit   
   >>> the blue touch paper and the performance of micros started   
   >>> rocketing.   Though if you started 10 years before me there will have   
   >>> been something that was when performance took off for you. I think   
   >>> everyone has some point in their memory when things started to go   
   >>> whoosh!   
   >>>   
   >>> In 1989 I was writing Z80 assembler to control medical gear. All the   
   >>> code took about 45mins to cross assemble and link on a Unix system   
   >>> running on a Vax 11/730. In 1990 we got a 25MHz 80386 running DOS and   
   >>> the same source took under 3mins to cross assemble and link.  The   
   >>> bottleneck went from the time to build the code to the time to erase,   
   >>> download and burn the EPROMS.   
   >>>   
   >> Yes. I was writing C and assembler for a 6809 cross complied on a PDP/11.   
   >> We had PCS as serial terminals and text editors.   
   >>   
   >> Compile was very slow compared to on a PC.   
   >>   
   >> The thing was that until the 386 Intel CPUs didn't have the big boy   
   >> features.  After that they did.   
   >>   
   >> Even an old IBM mainframe could be emulated under AIX on a PC.   
   >> I did some work on a Vax running Unix too. Better, but still pretty awful   
   >>   
   >   
   > Vaxen were much better running VMS!   
   >   
   Were they?   
   I dont think they got any faster..   
      
   --   
   "Anyone who believes that the laws of physics are mere social   
   conventions is invited to try transgressing those conventions from the   
   windows of my apartment. (I live on the twenty-first floor.) "   
      
   Alan Sokal   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
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