Thanks! I wrote a fair bit of software over the years. Some may know me by the USQ or NSWP programs on CP/M, among others.
Back in 1983 or so, I was lusting after the NS32032, based on the instruction set - it seemed such a departure, for a kid that had only worked on z80/8080/8085/8086/80286 systems.
I joined the design team for the DSI-32 - one of the first co-processors for the IBM-PC. Porting the Green Hills compilers to the newly developed "operating system" I created for the 32032 was a joy. That project was published in
Byte magazine, and sold moderately well. I went on to work on other systems, doing various software ports, and later helped with the
PD32 and
PC-532 systems. I also have a couple of
ICM-3216 systems, and a
Heurikon 532.
Elsewhere on this forum, I see that someone took apart a laser printer (likely Canon branded) with an NS32CG16 processor in it. I worked for National Semiconductor for a while, and was on the team that designed that processor. I ended up writing some of the
microcode of that system, and many of the reference manuals and application notes. Oh yeah - it does not have a blitter in it - just software (in the form of microcode).
Today's systems operating at multi-GHz can certainly run faster than those 10-30 MHz systems - but I still enjoy the ease of programming in assembly for the 32k series. Even though I've done lots of work in the 68k, ARM and many, many other systems - I still favour the 32k.