From: tnp@invalid.invalid   
      
   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.   
      
      
   --   
   “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the   
   other is to refuse to believe what is true.”   
      
   —Soren Kierkegaard   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)