28 Oct
2014
28 Oct
'14
1:42 p.m.
On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 8:22 AM, Ronald Natalie <ron(a)ronnatalie.com> wrote:
Problem with the 60 was it lacked Split I/D (as did
the 40's).
A problem was that it was 40 class processor and as you says that means it
was shared I/D (i.e. pure 16 bits) - so it lacked the 45 class 17th bit.
The 60 has went into history as the machine that went from product to
"traditional products" faster than any other DEC product (IIRC 9 months).
I'm always surprised to hear of folks that had them because so few were
actually made.
I've forgotten the details nows, but they also had some issues when running
UNIX. Steve Glaser and I chased those for a long time. The 60 had the HCM
instruction sequences (halt a confuse microcode) which were some what
random although UNIX seemed to hit them. DEC envisioned it as a commercial
machine and added decimal arithmetic to it for RSTS Cobol. I'm not sure
RSX was even supported on it.
Clem