DIYbanter - View Single Post - Do you use any computer based tool for doing project layout?

Robert Bonomi

In article ,
zzzzzzzzzz wrote:
On Mon, 12 Apr 2010 20:07:05 -0500, (Robert
Bonomi) wrote:

In article ,
Morris Dovey wrote:
On 4/12/2010 8:24 AM, wrote:

I'm not sure when they were introduced into the 370s, but yeah, they
were used for /158 microcode. I remember interviewing at CDC in early
'74. They had a /158 with its covers off, with a bunch of people
reverse-engineering the floppy drive. The /158 was their pride and
joy, which I thought odd. The whole place was "odd" and I told them
so before I left (didn't get an offer .

You're right - I went digging and found that there had been a /Minnow/
R/O floppy drive with diminished capacity released in 1972. I'm guessing
it was an early /Igar/ prototype.

Yuppers on the oddness - my impression was that the CDC management team
had never quite been able to decide what they wanted to do when they
grew up. At one point they were even in the windmill business.

And they built computers that couldn't add!

They faked addition by 'complement and subtract'. (true!!)

That's not unusual at all. Subtraction *is* adding the negative (complement).

I agree that subtraction, GENERALLY, "*is* adding the negative".

Now go back and read what _this_ machine actually did. grin

I repeat, this multi-million-dollar super-computer "couldn't ADD".