commodorejohn
Veteran Member
I like how "software synthesis mixing multiple channels down to a single-channel DAC" equals "a built-in polyphonic sound generator" in Apple marketing-speak...
This is how the systems were commonly viewed historically. The CPU was not the defining factor.
This wasn't what was originally stated, though. The statement was "None of them were marketed as such" which is untrue. They were most definitely marketed as such.
Istr that my Amiga box literature referred to the 68000 as a 16/32-bit system, and I'm Real certain Atari saw it that way as well (since ST is short for sixteen thirty-two).
Regardless I've always thought of a machines bitness as the word size the processor could support, rather than the data bus width.
Oh and the humble 386DX25
No, they were not, the statement is still true.
Both examples merely mention the *microprocessor*, not the *system* (I know this distinction is hard to understand for people who grew up on PCs and have no clue about other systems, but that doesn't make it any less true).
Also, if PC/XT systems were marketed as being 16-bit, then clearly the common view would not have been that they were 8-bit, historically.
You're making an irrelevant distinction. In the PC/XT era, the CPU was effectively the entire machine because it did all the work.
Except for specialized industrial applications, there were no dedicated graphics processors or DSP chips.
There was no local bus for devices to "talk" to each other; everything was interrupt driven.
Hard drive controllers didn't have DMA
So for all intents and purposes, if a computer could run 16-bit code and could access more than 64K of RAM without bank switching, it was a fully 16-bit machine, as Gary Kildall attested.
It became a much different ballgame when machines like the Macintosh and Amiga came along with highly specialized custom chipsets that offloaded much of the work from the CPU. That's when the speed and word length of the CPU's external data bus really started to become important.
As primitive as the PC may be, it DOES have quite a few components connected to the bus, such as the MDA/CGA card, PIT, PIC, and DMA controller, ROM, RAM, floppy controller etc.
And these all have to be 8-bit. Which means they perform like an 8-bit class machine. Which is why a 4.77 MHz PC struggles to keep up with a 1 MHz C64.
And these all have to be 8-bit. Which means they perform like an 8-bit class machine. Which is why a 4.77 MHz PC struggles to keep up with a 1 MHz C64.
Indeed. Of course anyone with a bit of nouse would go for a hdd which is quite trivial to do with a PC.Not in terms of floppy drive performance!
By that logic, an 8088 would be equivalent to an 8086. Which it clearly is not.
So for all intents and purposes, if a computer could run 16-bit code and could access more than 64K of RAM without bank switching, it was a fully 16-bit machine, as Gary Kildall attested.
... and, yeah, back on topic, that Kickstarter was exceedingly painful. (I lost it *way* before they even got to the NASCAR cross promotion and then... wow.) It may actually be even more painful than the Commodore PET smartphone, and that takes a lot of work. Should Commodore fans take it as a complement that people keep dragging pieces of the corpse out of the crypt to crudely desecrate in desperate attempts to wring just a little more money out of the franchise? Because, well, it kinda doesn't feel like one.
This is kind of a pointless and/or silly argument really. Using this logic a modern PC is an 8-bit machine because the simplest peripherals connected to the LPC bus are 8-bit only.
I tend to agree with Trixter though... having witnessed many of these discussions over the years I think you will not arrive at any significant level of consensus and the discussion will quickly devolve into a flamewar.
Yes it is, as the 8088 runs the same software as the 8086.
(For tasks like calculating a spreadsheet the original Macintosh-through-Mac Plus was often right in the same ballpark as the 8088-based IBM PC, and if you threw an 8087 into the PC you could potentially run rings around said Mac. Granted, some of that is due to the DMA overhead of the Mac's video system, which was excessive enough to merit a redesign in the 1987-vintage SE, but at a design level the 68000 is still solidly 8086-era technology. The Amiga looks so good almost *entirely* because of all the goo around the CPU, not the CPU itself.)
my point was only that I have never seen an IBM PC/XT marketed as a 16-bit machine. I have yet to see evidence to the contrary.