Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!super!rminnich
From: rminnich@super.ORG (Ronald G Minnich)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: HP/Rumors
Message-ID: <735@super.ORG>
Date: 15 Sep 88 11:48:15 GMT
References: <2921@ttrdc.UUCP> <670001@hpuamsa.UUCP>
Sender: uucp@super.ORG
Reply-To: rminnich@metropolis.UUCP (Ronald G Minnich)
Organization: Supercomputing Research Center, Lanham, MD
Lines: 15

Re: the way emacs uses the top 8 bits of a 32-bit address:
It is kinda funny how the wheel turns and turns. There was 
this machine called the 360, see, with 32 bit addresses but
really only 24 of them were used. So people avidly packed those 
upper 8 bits of state which were never gonna get used anyway, ...
until IBM went and used 'em. I never had to fix any of this 
stuff, but people told me at the time (ca. 1978 or so) that they
had heard those bits might go away in a few years and boy, they
weren't looking forward to it ...
   So just a few years later somebody was telling me how wonderful
this elegant GNU emacs was, and it used these upper 8 bits of the 
32-bit address for a tag mechanism, because they were 
there for the taking, and wasn't that neat, ... :-)
   Its not hard to believe that GNU Emacs would be a nightmare on the 500.
ron