From: news@cct-net.co.uk   
      
   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!   
      
   --   
   Chris   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)