LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Daryl Tester <dt@picknowl.com.au>
  To  : Mike Andrew <mikero@norfolk.nf>
  Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2000 08:31:45 +0930

Re: More space required

Mike Andrew wrote:

> This was a disastrous decision by Intel during the 8085 

Don't you knock the 8085!  (hugs his Model-100, and covers its little ears
so it doesn't hear what the nasty list says about him behind his back).
(also realises that he hasn't powered it up since the century rolled
over ...)

> (nothing to do with
> PC's) where they , unbelievebly, specified interrupts active high.

Yes, I discovered this first hand when adding a Z80 SCC to it ...

> Look at the ridiculous design of the Pentium II, a circuit board smothered in
> plastic with a bloody great fan. And, idiots that we are, we pay premiums for
> ones with bigger, noiser fans, because they run faster. I think that's called
> sharp end technology.

I think it's called marketing winning out over technology.  There were better
CPUs at the time (the 68000 was out, the '008 was around the corner for 8 bits
o' strappin' fun, I can't remember when Zilog released the Z800 & Z8000, TI
had their TMS9900 onto a single CMOS chip ...)

> Zilog used a vectored single low interrupt line for 256, minimum, devices.

Ah, that's right, the vector interrupt latch.  That was a funky bit of
engineering.

> The INS8051 serial uart.

8251?  The 8051 is an even more ubiquitous processor :-).

> Put out by Nat Semi originally. Even they were embarrassed by it.

Ah, good ol' Nasti Semis.  From memory, a "neat" "feature" of that UART
(I'm not sure if it was ever rectified) was that if CTS was dropped during
character reception while hardware flow control was enabled, the chip would
discard that character, period.  So you couldn't enable hardware flow control,
and had to do it in software (and as you stated, you couldn't actually do
that properly anyway ...).

> Short answer? No, the good guy rarely wins, it's the ones who have the
> marketing hype that win the day. I've no fite with anyone needing to make a
> buck, but crap wrapped up in pink plastic, is stil crap.

TISM's "You can't polish a turd" has always been a favourite of mine.  "And
you tell the youngsters of today that, and they don't believe you."


Thank you - I thought it was just me that thought like this. :-)


Regards,
  Daryl Tester

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