21 Mar
2018
21 Mar
'18
10:52 p.m.
Let's see how much this thread can drift...
The venerable PDP-8 was introduced in 1965 today (or tomorrow if you're on
the wrong side of the date line). It was the first computer I ever used,
back around 1970 (I think I'd just left school and was checking out the
local University's computer department, and played with BASIC and FOCAL).
And (hopefully) coincidentally the Pentium first shipped in 1993; the
infamous FDIV defect was discovered a year later (and it turned out that
Intel was made aware of it by a post-grad student a bit earlier), and what
followed next was an utter farce, with some dealers refusing to accept the
results of a widely-distributed program as evidence of a faulty FPU.
--
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU) "Those who don't understand security will
suffer."