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From: allyn@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU (Allyn Fratkin)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.misc,comp.lang.pascal
Subject: Re: pascal microengine...
Message-ID: <4516@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU>
Date: 20 Jan 88 19:34:01 GMT
References: <16946@gatech.edu>
Organization: U.C. San Diego
Lines: 39

In article <16946@gatech.edu>, ken@gatech.edu (Ken Seefried iii) writes:
> This may be a bit of ancient history...but does anyone remeber the 
> Pascal Microengine?  Who made it and what processor did it use?
> I used one back in the Dark Ages ( c. 1980 ).

the pascal microengine was from western digital.  quoting from the
march 1979 "WD/90 Pascal MICROENGINE Reference Manual",

"the WD/900 Pascal MICROENGINEtm Single Board Computer, an 8 by 16-inch board
containing containing a WD/9000 16-bit microprocessor that directly executes
UCSD's Pascal p-code, 64K bytes of memory, 2 RS-232 asynchronous serial
ports, 2 8-bit parallel ports, and a Floppy Disk Controller;"

"The WD/9000 processor is a hardware realization of UCSD's pseudo P-machine.
The processor is comprised of five LSI/MOS circuits, each contained in
a 40-pin package.  The individual circuits are:

  o The Data Chip, containing the microinstruction decoder, the arithmetic
	and logic unit (ALU), and the register file.
	
  o The Control Chip, containing the macroinstruction decoder, protions of
	the control circuitry, the microinstruction counter, and input/output
	control logic.
	
  o Three 22 by 512-bit MICROM chips, containing processor microinstructions."
  
there was even a special version of UCSD pascal (version III) for the
microengine.  i used one a little bit (we still have 3 sitting around unused)
but they were mostly useless because the disk format they used was
not compatible with our other machines.

if you have any other questions, let me know.

allyn fratkin,
pascal project, ucsd
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