Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!dcl-cs!aber-cs!athene!pcg From: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Tektronix shutdown & move away from 88k's?? Message-ID: Date: 30 Oct 90 19:19:23 GMT References: <1536@ftc.framentec.fr> <1990Oct19.120218.9450@canterbury.ac.nz> <15497@hydra.gatech.EDU> <2176@lupine.NCD.COM> <42310@mips.mips.COM> <42488@mips.mips.COM> Sender: pcg@aber-cs.UUCP Organization: Coleg Prifysgol Cymru Lines: 35 Nntp-Posting-Host: teachk In-reply-to: crisp@mips.COM's message of 29 Oct 90 21:00:54 GMT On 29 Oct 90 21:00:54 GMT, crisp@mips.COM (Richard Crisp) said: crisp> In article crisp> pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) writes: pcg> In the latest issue of Byte I read that BIT have *dumped* the R6000 pcg> development. Am I hallucinating? The justification given was that pcg> it is Incidentally: that piece of news I may have read on EDS actually. It seemed pretty definite -- apaprently the guys were quoting from some BIT source. On the other hand if John Mashey says this is not true, he probably knows better than me and whoever was the source. crisp> I also remember back in 1978 or 1979 that Byte stated that crisp> Motorola would offer a version of the 68000 that had the crisp> microcode in EPROM so that users could re-microprogram it for crisp> whatever instruction set they wanted! Haha. This piece of news at least was factually true. If you ordered enough of them you could ask Motorola to change the onchip microcode ROM mask for the 68k. I seem to remember that there were other cases, but the well known one was IBM, who actually reprogrammed the 68k to emulate a subset of the 370 architecture, and was able to run VM/370 on it (with some effort). The oddest thing was that the 370/68k was actually a coprocessor in a revamped IBM PC, alongside an 8088. Ah wonders of technology. As to other rumours, I read recently, again on Byte or on the net, that the 88k has enough spare die to also be able to store some interesting chunk of microprogram. This to me makes much less sense, but who knows? -- Piercarlo "Peter" Grandi | ARPA: pcg%uk.ac.aber.cs@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth | UUCP: ...!mcsun!ukc!aber-cs!pcg Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3BZ, UK | INET: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk