Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!necntc!ames!hc!lanl!beta!hwe From: hwe@beta.lanl.gov (Skip Egdorf) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: History of personal computing (LONG) Summary: DG Nova architecture Message-ID: <21053@beta.lanl.gov> Date: 8 Aug 88 04:23:53 GMT References: <287@gecko.co.rmit.oz> Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory Lines: 20 In article <287@gecko.co.rmit.oz>, rcorf@gecko.co.rmit.oz (Roy Ferguson) writes: (regarding the DG Nova) > > I suppose you could say it was interesting but you wouldn't want > to program it in assembly language. > > Roy Ferguson, Dept. Communication & Electrical Eng., > Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. On the contrary, the only way to program the Nova WAS in assembly language! A good one-sentence statement of difference between the Nova and the PDP-11 was that the regularity of the 11's instruction set made life easier for compilers, while the tricks in the Nova instruction set were better suited for the true assembly language wizard. A major reason that the 11 outsold the Nova was that this better fit where the computer industry went in the 1970s. Skip Egdorf hwe@lanl.gov