From: jl@glen--canyon.com
On Fri, 13 Feb 2026 02:42:14 +0100, Gerhard Hoffmann
wrote:
>Am 13.02.26 um 01:09 schrieb john larkin:
>> On Fri, 13 Feb 2026 00:38:43 +0100, Gerhard Hoffmann
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Am 12.02.26 um 23:12 schrieb john larkin:
>>>> On Thu, 12 Feb 2026 21:05:53 +0100, Lasse Langwadt
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On 2/12/26 19:19, john larkin wrote:
>>>>>> The internal stack-oriented architecture of Focal-8 inspired the cool
>>>>>> PDP-11 architecture which in turn inspired the 68K.
>>>>>
>>>>> how did stack-oriented inspire architectures with lots of orthogonal
>>>>> registers, by showing how it should not be done?
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Stack-oriented inspired stack-oriented. In the PDP-11, any of the
>>>> registers could be used as a stack pointer.
>>>
>>> That does not make it stack-oriented. It had registers and nice
>>> addressing modes with pre-decrement and post increment etc.
>>> Nice for string handling, too.
>>
>> I called it stack oriented!
>>
>> A couple of people made real stack machines, hyper-CISC things with
>> advanced instructions. HP and Intel as I recall. They were pig slow
>> and didn't last.
>
>That was the iAPX432. HP's brainchild, Intel prepared the
>mass production, which never really happened. We had a
>Multibus board with one 432 in our processor zoo at the Tech Univ
>Berlin, but nobody adopted it to the point that it did useful
>work. The entry cost was just too high. With today's cache
>technology it might make more sense.
>It had nothing to do with stack machines.
Memory used to be slow and expensive, so it sort of made sense to have
every instruction do lots of complex stuff, like evaluate poynomials.
Tons of microcode.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_3000
But cheap fast dram and cache changed everything and made RISC more
sensible.
John Larkin
Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center
Lunatic Fringe Electronics
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