Totally off the Subsurface topic.

[Lubomir I. Ivanov]

On 14 December 2013 08:46, Willem Ferguson
<willemferguson at zoology.up.ac.za> wrote:
> On 14/12/2013 01:01, Dirk Hohndel wrote:
>>
>>
>> I used to work for S.u.S.E., err SuSE, err SUSE... Now I work for Intel.
>> Not sure what that says about me.
>>
>
> I should write this privately, but seeing Tomaz and Thiago are part of the
> audience, I do it this way.
>
> Intel is an exceptional company in many ways. Since back in the late
> seventies even though intel was competing with several other cpu
> manufacturers it has consistently had exceptional user relationships. The
> time period from the release of the 4040 cpu until the 8088 was the time
> when a non-engineer could still build a computing system from component
> level. In this, Intel supplied manuals and application notes in profusion,
> mighty thick books that must have cost a lot to print. I still have an
> entire book shelf with manuals and app notes that I got free of change from
> the local Intel representatives and that I keep for sentimental reasons and
> that has travelled with us for 30 years. That is still my lasting impression
> of the company. The very fact that intel has an open-source division
> indicates that it is open to the world out there, interacting with that
> world, facilitating in many cases (as in Subsurface). I hope this helps so
> you can see what that says about you.
>

4040 was quite old at the time i started, but while 8080 and 8088 were
fast they were also expensive and difficult to find, so wasn't an
option at all.
i guess you were luck to have access to those intel models.

so someone did build me one with the 6052 and i got it around `84 with
a manual and some books on assembly and basic.
but it took me a long time to actually make something out of it,
because all that was way over my head...

also never really understood everything about the MOS / LSI and all
the different gates and stuff...it was already quite complicated for a
CPU.

here is an interesting article on how the signed addition overflow
works "at the silicon level":
http://www.righto.com/2013/01/a-small-part-of-6502-chip-explained.html

lubomir
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