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From: fwb@demon.siemens.com (Frederic W. Brehm)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: History of PCs
Keywords: history, pc, workstation
Message-ID: <1015@siemens.UUCP>
Date: 9 Aug 88 13:29:17 GMT
References: <5946@venera.isi.edu> <5458@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> <1876@looking.UUCP> <17589@glacier.STANFORD.EDU> <668@stcns3.stc.oz> <5491@nsc.nsc.com>
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Reply-To: fwb@demon.UUCP (Frederic W. Brehm)
Organization: Siemens Research and Technology Laboratories
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In article <5491@nsc.nsc.com> stevew@nsc.UUCP (Steve Wilson) writes:
>Another comment on the COSMAC.  As I recall (memory dims with old age!)
>the 1802 was fabbed with RCA's SOS (Silicon On Saphire) technology which
>is where the rad hard feature of the 1802 used in space type applications
>really came from. 

The 1802 came in bulk CMOS and SOS versions.  The bulk CMOS version was
used in most applications and by Chrysler in every one of their cars for
several model years (are they still using them?)  The SOS version was used
for rad-hard applications.  I'm not sure that the bulk version wasn't used
in some space applications.  It could tolerate more radiation than most, if
not all, NMOS and PMOS processors of its time.

And now for some more COSMAC trivia:

Do you know why each instruction takes 8 clock cycles?  Because the ALU is
1-bit wide and each clock pushes one more bit through it.  Contrast this
with present technology which is sometimes wider inside than outside (like
Intel's 8088 and 80386SX or whatever they call it).

>Steve Wilson (alias KA6S)
>National Semiconductor

Fred (no alias)
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