[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: The Apple II is crap



Scott Alfter wrote:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

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 doesn't mean that it wasn't.

Some haven't heard the 68000 called a 32 bit chip.
At the time of it's release, the PC was called a 16 chip machine, but the 386SX was called a 16 bit chip as opposed to the 32 bit 386(DX). Only after "true" 16 bit chips and buses where used (AT and later) was the PC referred to as an 8 bit machine. 


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.


And yet the TI 99/4a was lumped with 8 bit machines like the Apple II.
The only thing "16 bit" about the //gs is the internal registers of the 65816 in native mode. 



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, 

Because it was 8 bit, as opposed to a "true" 16 bit machine.


but it doesn't change how your code works.
Well, there are two ways of looking at it: software perspective, or hardware. Woz wrote Sweet16, and the II also ran UCSD Pascal, so I suppose you could call the II a 16 bit machine.... 

Roy


(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?

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.2 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQE/PP38VgTKos01OwkRAg1TAKD11Da5q3o/pdkj+7MbBcxmOgcM5wCgklaH
UHxA/7354Twl6K5mp9HWgH0=
=Vyaa
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----




-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
-----==  Over 100,000 Newsgroups - 19 Different Servers! =-----