Mail Archives: geda-user/2015/07/07/00:38:18
On 07/06/2015 08:02 PM, John Doty wrote:
>>>> More history: In the early 80s, IBM first went to Gary Kildall
>>>> of CP/M for their IBM-PC DOS. CP/M did have several PL/M
>>>> modules (pip for one). If Gary had not ignored IBM and go
>>>> sailing instead of meeting with the IBM execs, IBM PC-DOS may
>>>> have had some PL/M in it. However, we got ms-dos instead. As
>>>> I understand it, Kildall used a DEC PDP minicomputer running a
>>>> PL/M cross compiler in order to develop CP/M.
>>>
>>> Must have been one of the bigger DEC machines. He wrote the PL/M
>>> cross compiler in Fortran, and it needed at least a 32 bit
>>> machine. PDP-10, PDP-20, or VAX maybe.
>>
>> Please pardon me for butting in, but someone mentioned PDPs, so..
>> ;)
>>
>> The PL/M was done on a PDP-10 (DECsystem-10), a 36-bit machine.
>
> I assume you mean the original development. The actual code was
> supposed to run on any Fortran with a big enough word size. The code
> certainly looked very friendly to IBM Fortran IV, but I can’t say I
> tried it in that environment. I certainly didn’t encounter any use
> of the peculiar DEC Fortran extensions I’ve seen in other code.
Duh, wow, I don't know what illiterate part of my brain caused me to
type that. What I meant was "the CP/M development", not "the PL/M".
Please re-eval the sentence with that correction. ;)
>> The VAX was announced about five years after Kildall began CP/M
>> development.
>
> That's right, I wasn’t thinking. 70’s, 80’s, it’s all a blur...
I know what ya mean..
>> (Nit: there's no such thing as a PDP-20, but there are
>> DECsystem-20s, which are PDP-10s.)
>
> I’d forgotten that nit, but now my three remaining brain cells are
> saying yes.
Yup. I have a few here. =)
>> Aren't the "FinFETs" in modern microprocessors not the same thing
>> that Bokor et al developed more recently?
>
> As with all inventions, the origins are murky if you look closely
> enough, and there are variations. I recall the idea of surrounding
> the channel with gates from an early description of FET technology
> from the 1960’s. It was part of a pedagogical presentation, which
> then went on to explain that real FETs used a planar structure. Jeff
> was certainly involved in the revival of this idea, but I’m not
> straying any farther into the territory of patent lawyers ;-)
Hmm ok. Well from the industry buzz, they're clearly onto something
big! I'll have to read up on it one of these days.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
- Raw text -