Re: The Apple II is crap

[salfter@salfter.dyndns.org (Scott Alfter)]

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In article <%bW_a.8674$CN.110@nwrddc03.gnilink.net>,
Sam Gillett <samgillett@msn.com> wrote:
>Scott Alfter wrote ...
>>The IBM PC was never an 8-bit machine.  It had an 8-bit expansion bus, but
>>the 8088 was a 16-bit processor with an 8-bit data bus (like the 65816).
>>Later processors with a bus width less than the machine word size were the
>>386SX and 486SLC, which were 32-bit processors with 16-bit data buses.
>
>The IBM PC, PC/XT, and similar computers based on the Intel 8088
>microprocessor work with a 16-bit word size but use an 8-bit data bus. For
>this reason, they are sometimes considered one step above 8-bit machines and
>one step below 16-bit machines. However, generally such machines are called
>8-bit machines because the size of the data bus limits the machine's overall
>speed.

I've never heard _anybody_ call them 8-bit machines.  That my PC/XT is about
as sluggish as my unaccelerated IIe (maybe even more so) is irrelevant.  If
the IBM PC and PC/XT are "8-bit machines" on account of the width of the
expansion bus and/or processor data bus, then the TI-99/4A (connection to
the PEB is 8-bit) and Apple IIGS (same expansion bus as other IIs) must also
be 8-bit machines.  I think you'll find that more than a few people
(including me) would object to those characterizations.

As somebody else posted, it's the programming model presented by the
processor that's relevant.  The 6502, 6800, 8080, etc. provided a few 8-bit
registers, so you were limited to working with 8 bits at a time.  The 8088,
9900, and 65816 offered 16-bit registers and let you work with twice as much
data at once as the 8-bit registers.  That the 8088 and 65816 used two reads
on an 8-bit bus to fill a register is irrelevant...it might be a bit slower
than reading 16 bits at once, but it doesn't change how your code works. 
(The 65816 even used the data bus to latch the upper 8 bits of a 24-bit
address into an external register; it's how the '816 was shoehorned into a
40-pin package not much different from the 6502.)

  _/_   Scott Alfter
 / v \  salfter@salfter.dyndns.org
(IIGS(  http://alfter.us            Top-posting!
 \_^_/  pkill -9 /bin/laden         >What is the most annoying thing on Usenet?

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