Personal computing discussed
Moderators: renee, Flying Fox, morphine
Captain Ned wrote:Can't really say, as I don't think the DEC PDP-8 had a discrete CPU as such.
Without that PDP-8 in my high school circa 1978, I doubt I'd be the geek I am now.
just brew it! wrote:Just because it wasn't a discrete chip doesn't mean it wasn't a "CPU".
Captain Ned wrote:just brew it! wrote:Just because it wasn't a discrete chip doesn't mean it wasn't a "CPU".
We have become somewhat conditioned by Moore's Law, n'est-ce pas?
10 PRINT "By the time you read this the DECWriter will be out of paper"
20 GOTO 10
99 END
just brew it! wrote:(I'd also heard -- though never observed first hand -- that you could get the paper to fly out of the printer in an arc several feet high by sending output consisting *entirely* of lines with just a single '1' in the first column.)
Captain Ned wrote:To think that most of the posters here will never have the joy of collecting/recollating hundreds of pages of output spewed all across the floor because one page of tractor-feed didn't refold the way it was supposed to.
thegleek wrote:I'm in the minority group that has seen and lived through those horrid days!
Captain Ned wrote:thegleek wrote:I'm in the minority group that has seen and lived through those horrid days!
You'd be astounded by how much of the financial world still relies on tractor-feed line-printed green-bar.
just brew it! wrote:I still have a box of tractor-feed paper. It doesn't have any green bars on it though...
just brew it! wrote:Captain Ned wrote:thegleek wrote:I'm in the minority group that has seen and lived through those horrid days!
You'd be astounded by how much of the financial world still relies on tractor-feed line-printed green-bar.
I still have a box of tractor-feed paper. It doesn't have any green bars on it though...
SonicSilicon wrote:I'm amazed the 6502 wasn't mentioned earlier. There's a chip that was used extensively and spawned many other widely used MPs.
drfish wrote:Tough call, I've loved all my carefully chosen CPUs
LoneWolf15 wrote:drfish wrote:Tough call, I've loved all my carefully chosen CPUs
Ditto. I can't pick just one.
If I had to create a short list, it'd be the following:
AMD 486DX4-120MHz
AMD K6-233MHz
Intel Celeron 300A (Mendocino), clocked to 450MHz
Motorola PowerPC 604ev 300MHz (as found in the Power Macintosh 8600/300)
Athlon XP-M 2500+ (Barton), clocked to 2.4GHz
Athlon 64 X2 3800+
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
There are others I've been fond of, but all of the above are pretty innovative in one way or another, or really fast for their time.
vargis14 wrote:!st cpu was a pentium 60 that i upgraded to a p120 overdrive deal