Donations

[Gary C]

So Joe has dumped a large pile of donations onto the floor for me to sort through

An Acorn System 5 is now restored to working, just need some software

but wait, whats this

A 32016 Second processor and a copy of PANOS with all the manuals and languages/compilers ?

Playtime coming up !

 

[stepleton]

Between this and the Tek 6130 thread, it's an NS32k summer here on vcfed! BTW, if anyone has recollections of writing graphical programs for the Oriel windowing system on the Whitechapel MG-1 and successors, please let me know; I'm running into some roadblocks trying to get something to work.

There's that Steve Furber interview on YouTube, the one where he describes the ARM as arising from dissatisfaction with the CISCy microprocessors of the time (286, 68k, NS32k). I'm probably wrong, but AFAIK the NS32k is the primary "big '80s commodity CISC" chip that Acorn actually shipped*, so I've always liked to assume that this chip was the source of most of their extremely inspiring frustration. Your PANOS experience might help confirm that.

* I see there was a 186 in the Master 512 and a 286 in the ABC 300, both second processors.

 

[g4ugm]

There's that Steve Furber interview on YouTube, the one where he describes the ARM as arising from dissatisfaction with the CISCy microprocessors of the time (286, 68k, NS32k). I'm probably wrong, but AFAIK the NS32k is the primary "big '80s commodity CISC" chip that Acorn actually shipped*, so I've always liked to assume that this chip was the source of most of their extremely inspiring frustration. Your PANOS experience might help confirm that.

I always find it a little disconcerting to find he bought 68000 CISC Workstations to design the first RISC chips...
... does that mean the 68000 was hand designed, or done on a mainframe...