http://www.cpushack.com/2021/02/21/t...ocking-part-1/

A mixture of pictures and text Brian

I think sadly at the moment, Intel are falling behind on processor
development and its not a new problem. AMD seem to be running rings around
them on their own processors, and the new chips with different architecture
are now very powerful, the arm etc.
Brian

--

This newsgroup posting comes to you directly from...
The Sofa of Brian Gaff...

Blind user, so no pictures please
Note this Signature is meaningless.!
"Andrew" wrote in message
...
http://www.cpushack.com/2021/02/21/t...ocking-part-1/

A mixture of pictures and text Brian

On 22/02/2021 20:39, Andrew wrote:
http://www.cpushack.com/2021/02/21/t...ocking-part-1/

Doesn't half have some rabbit the author. Charles Darwin, complete with
picture?

I recall that early IBM PC ATs had a clock rate of 8MHz, and games of
the day were designed to run as fast as possible, so, when faster
machines were available, they became impossible to play. Some machines
had a button on the front to switch between 8MHz and the maximum, which
could be up to 66MHz. The button was usually labelled "Turbo" and you
pressed it for full speed.

--
Max Demian

On 23/02/2021 13:21, Max Demian wrote:
On 22/02/2021 20:39, Andrew wrote:
http://www.cpushack.com/2021/02/21/t...ocking-part-1/


Doesn't half have some rabbit the author. Charles Darwin, complete with
picture?

I recall that early IBM PC ATs had a clock rate of 8MHz, and games of
the day were designed to run as fast as possible, so, when faster
machines were available, they became impossible to play. Some machines
had a button on the front to switch between 8MHz and the maximum, which
could be up to 66MHz. The button was usually labelled "Turbo" and you
pressed it for full speed.

That started with the IBM PC clones. 4.77MHz Standard, 8MHz Turbo. AT
clones were 6MHz and 8MHz at the start , but got faster later.

Our first PC used an odd processor, the NEC V20 - which was pin and code
compatible with the 8088, but had extra instruction matching the 80186
and internal differences meant that it could sometimes do more per clock
cycle than the 8088.

It also could be switched in code to emulate an 8080 (so could run the
existing CPM-80 and applications, not that we ever did) and could run
mixed 8080 and 8086 code.

On Tue, 23 Feb 2021 14:08:01 +0000, Steve Walker wrote:

Our first PC used an odd processor, the NEC V20 - which was pin and code
compatible with the 8088, but had extra instruction matching the 80186
and internal differences meant that it could sometimes do more per clock
cycle than the 8088.

I had several PCs, and I switched all of them (V20 for 8088, V30 for
8086).

I also fitted turbo switches!

It also could be switched in code to emulate an 8080 (so could run the
existing CPM-80 and applications, not that we ever did) and could run
mixed 8080 and 8086 code.

Yes, I liked the idea but never used it in the end.



--
My posts are my copyright and if @diy_forums or Home Owners' Hub
wish to copy them they can pay me £1 a message.
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK: http://www.mirrorservice.org
*lightning surge protection* - a w_tom conductor

On 23/02/2021 14:08, Steve Walker wrote:

Our first PC used an odd processor, the NEC V20 - which was pin and code
compatible with the 8088, but had extra instruction matching the 80186
and internal differences meant that it could sometimes do more per clock
cycle than the 8088.

My first PC, was the 80186 co-processor module inside a BBC Master
computer running DOS+ and GEM, and MFM hard disks (from a skip at work).

Got bored waiting for it to boot, and the graphics were at best CGA with
limited colours (or none?). So went for an 80286 12MHz AT a large
Northern Telecom case from an auction, and then followed every release
of Intel CPU and Microsoft OS on the NT3.5/NT4/Win2000 side of things,
until Windows XP.

Bought many video cards, disk controllers, sound cards, motherboards. I
eventually worked in PC parts RMA for a trade distributor, found skills
in programming and application support - and now am happy to take a
corporate engineered box of the shelf, rather than build my own.

Most of my friends back then invested their work earnings in gaining
property. I sadly blew mine on what is now computer junk, and most of
that perished in a garage flood - so nil retro gains today on eBay.

Tech idiot consumers like me will no doubt be telling the same story to
others in time to come ...

--
Adrian C

On 23/02/2021 13:21, Max Demian wrote:
On 22/02/2021 20:39, Andrew wrote:
http://www.cpushack.com/2021/02/21/t...ocking-part-1/


Doesn't half have some rabbit the author. Charles Darwin, complete with
picture?

I recall that early IBM PC ATs had a clock rate of 8MHz, and games of
the day were designed to run as fast as possible, so, when faster
machines were available, they became impossible to play. Some machines

The original IBM AT was 6MHz clock which meant that it was OK to export
to behind the Iron Curtain whereas later ones and Compaq & Dell clones
had a 8MHz clock speed and were not COCOM approved for export to Russia.

I recall one particular week when Computer Weekly had two news reports.
IBM salesman of the year gets award for sale of 2000 PC ATs to Moscow
State University juxtaposed by some West German business man jailed for
3 years for exporting 200 Beebons to East Berlin. Apparently the
graphics on it were just slightly too good and they stamped on him.

had a button on the front to switch between 8MHz and the maximum, which
could be up to 66MHz. The button was usually labelled "Turbo" and you
pressed it for full speed.

I still have my 486(TM) bronze key fob in daily use which has a defunct
chip from the early prototype failures epoxied to the front. The feature
size was just about perfect for decorative holographic effects.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

Martin Brown wrote:
I recall one particular week when Computer Weekly had two news reports.
IBM salesman of the year gets award for sale of 2000 PC ATs to Moscow
State University juxtaposed by some West German business man jailed for
3 years for exporting 200 Beebons to East Berlin. Apparently the
graphics on it were just slightly too good and they stamped on him.

There was a story that the US State Department prevented export of BBC
Micros to somewhere because they contained a US-built 6502 processor and
could something something munitions. Exporting the Apple II (same 6502
CPU) - no problem at all.

Theo

On 23/02/2021 23:19, Theo wrote:
Martin Brown wrote:
I recall one particular week when Computer Weekly had two news reports.
IBM salesman of the year gets award for sale of 2000 PC ATs to Moscow
State University juxtaposed by some West German business man jailed for
3 years for exporting 200 Beebons to East Berlin. Apparently the
graphics on it were just slightly too good and they stamped on him.

There was a story that the US State Department prevented export of BBC
Micros to somewhere because they contained a US-built 6502 processor and
could something something munitions. Exporting the Apple II (same 6502
CPU) - no problem at all.

A totally different area, but back in the '90s I worked for a large,
industrial compressor manufacturer. We sent 8 off, skidded, gas-pipeline
compressors, driven by 120 litre, V16 gas engines; along with all the
ancillaries, control panels, two control rooms (2 sites of 4 compressors
each); all the instrumentation, etc.; to Libya.

All properly approved and authorised by the Department of Trade or
whatever it was.

This was a (supposedly) 3 year project, so stuff was all over our
factory floor for years.

Half-way through the project, the top guy left our offices to become CEO
of European Operations and was replaced by an American. He lasted 3
days, before asking what all the green painted stuff on the shop floor
was, then jumping on the company jet back to the States when he heard it
was the "Libyan job", under fear of him being locked up, as he wasn't
allowed to have any dealings with Libya at all.

Despite being based in Manchester, our project team and the shop floor
guys working on it, all officially reported to the Aberdeen service
centre for the next couple of years, to get around the problem!

In article , Jethro_uk
writes
On Tue, 23 Feb 2021 23:19:35 +0000, Theo wrote:

Martin Brown wrote:
I recall one particular week when Computer Weekly had two news reports.
IBM salesman of the year gets award for sale of 2000 PC ATs to Moscow
State University juxtaposed by some West German business man jailed for
3 years for exporting 200 Beebons to East Berlin. Apparently the
graphics on it were just slightly too good and they stamped on him.

There was a story that the US State Department prevented export of BBC
Micros to somewhere because they contained a US-built 6502 processor and
could something something munitions. Exporting the Apple II (same
6502 CPU) - no problem at all.

Weren't larger computers also never bought, but leased ?

I vaguely recall a story about a University trying to sell a PDP-11 only
to discover that DEC could (and did) prevent the sale.
ICL sold a 4-70 mainframe to Russia but then someone in customs heard it
had a "clock" which hadn't been declared.
We had Russian engineers over for training complete with minders. Some
of them did a bunk to Canada.
There was a story they wanted a CDC and wanted to pay for it with Xmas
cards.
--
bert

On 24/02/2021 10:18, Jethro_uk wrote:
On Tue, 23 Feb 2021 23:19:35 +0000, Theo wrote:

Martin Brown wrote:
I recall one particular week when Computer Weekly had two news reports.
IBM salesman of the year gets award for sale of 2000 PC ATs to Moscow
State University juxtaposed by some West German business man jailed for
3 years for exporting 200 Beebons to East Berlin. Apparently the
graphics on it were just slightly too good and they stamped on him.

There was a story that the US State Department prevented export of BBC
Micros to somewhere because they contained a US-built 6502 processor and
could something something munitions. Exporting the Apple II (same
6502 CPU) - no problem at all.

Weren't larger computers also never bought, but leased ?

I vaguely recall a story about a University trying to sell a PDP-11 only
to discover that DEC could (and did) prevent the sale.

Systime (Of Leeds fame, with an indoor fountain) fell foul of US export
retrictions and had a death fight with DEC themselves because their
machine were based on DEC VAX. There were rumours of PDP-11's being
exported as juke boxes.

On 24/02/2021 14:23, Jethro_uk wrote:
On Wed, 24 Feb 2021 13:14:42 +0000, Andrew wrote:

On 24/02/2021 10:18, Jethro_uk wrote:
On Tue, 23 Feb 2021 23:19:35 +0000, Theo wrote:

Martin Brown wrote:
I recall one particular week when Computer Weekly had two news
reports.
IBM salesman of the year gets award for sale of 2000 PC ATs to Moscow
State University juxtaposed by some West German business man jailed
for 3 years for exporting 200 Beebons to East Berlin. Apparently the
graphics on it were just slightly too good and they stamped on him.

There was a story that the US State Department prevented export of BBC
Micros to somewhere because they contained a US-built 6502 processor
and could something something munitions. Exporting the Apple II
(same 6502 CPU) - no problem at all.

Weren't larger computers also never bought, but leased ?

I vaguely recall a story about a University trying to sell a PDP-11
only to discover that DEC could (and did) prevent the sale.

Systime (Of Leeds fame, with an indoor fountain) fell foul of US export
retrictions and had a death fight with DEC themselves because their
machine were based on DEC VAX. There were rumours of PDP-11's being
exported as juke boxes.

Wasn't there also a bunfight about the OS ? You could ship the hardware,
but not with a working OS ?

Kids today wouldn't believe you. This was the era when PGP was exported
as a paper file to be re-input (or OCRd) outside the US.

ISTR it being printed on tee-shirts too.

On 24/02/2021 14:23, Jethro_uk wrote:
On Wed, 24 Feb 2021 13:14:42 +0000, Andrew wrote:

On 24/02/2021 10:18, Jethro_uk wrote:
On Tue, 23 Feb 2021 23:19:35 +0000, Theo wrote:

Martin Brown wrote:
I recall one particular week when Computer Weekly had two news
reports.
IBM salesman of the year gets award for sale of 2000 PC ATs to Moscow
State University juxtaposed by some West German business man jailed
for 3 years for exporting 200 Beebons to East Berlin. Apparently the
graphics on it were just slightly too good and they stamped on him.

There was a story that the US State Department prevented export of BBC
Micros to somewhere because they contained a US-built 6502 processor
and could something something munitions. Exporting the Apple II
(same 6502 CPU) - no problem at all.

Weren't larger computers also never bought, but leased ?

I vaguely recall a story about a University trying to sell a PDP-11
only to discover that DEC could (and did) prevent the sale.

Systime (Of Leeds fame, with an indoor fountain) fell foul of US export
retrictions and had a death fight with DEC themselves because their
machine were based on DEC VAX. There were rumours of PDP-11's being
exported as juke boxes.

Wasn't there also a bunfight about the OS ? You could ship the hardware,
but not with a working OS ?

Kids today wouldn't believe you. This was the era when PGP was exported
as a paper file to be re-input (or OCRd) outside the US.

Back in the day when Demon was The Internet I needed to port a POP3
server to SCO unix.

The necessary Library - libcrypt.a - was not available in this country
due to it being deemed security sensitive,

The Berkeley source however was freely available on US sites so I
downloaded it and compiled it...

...I wish I had charged that **** Cliff Stanford for it...



--
If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will
eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such
time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic
and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally
important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for
the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the
truth is the greatest enemy of the State.

Joseph Goebbels

"Jethro_uk" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 23 Feb 2021 23:19:35 +0000, Theo wrote:

Martin Brown wrote:
I recall one particular week when Computer Weekly had two news reports.
IBM salesman of the year gets award for sale of 2000 PC ATs to Moscow
State University juxtaposed by some West German business man jailed for
3 years for exporting 200 Beebons to East Berlin. Apparently the
graphics on it were just slightly too good and they stamped on him.

There was a story that the US State Department prevented export of BBC
Micros to somewhere because they contained a US-built 6502 processor and
could something something munitions. Exporting the Apple II (same
6502 CPU) - no problem at all.

Weren't larger computers also never bought, but leased ?

Nope, that was only ever true of IBM.

I vaguely recall a story about a University trying to sell a PDP-11
only to discover that DEC could (and did) prevent the sale.

We bought all our DEC machines. Leasing was never
even possible and I was the one doing the buying.

On 23/02/2021 21:56, Martin Brown wrote:
On 23/02/2021 13:21, Max Demian wrote:
On 22/02/2021 20:39, Andrew wrote:
http://www.cpushack.com/2021/02/21/t...ocking-part-1/



Doesn't half have some rabbit the author. Charles Darwin, complete
with picture?

I recall that early IBM PC ATs had a clock rate of 8MHz, and games of
the day were designed to run as fast as possible, so, when faster
machines were available, they became impossible to play. Some machines

The original IBM AT was 6MHz clock which meant that it was OK to export
to behind the Iron Curtain whereas later ones and Compaq & Dell clones
had a 8MHz clock speed and were not COCOM approved for export to Russia.

I recall one particular week when Computer Weekly had two news reports.
IBM salesman of the year gets award for sale of 2000 PC ATs to Moscow
State University juxtaposed by some West German business man jailed for
3 years for exporting 200 Beebons to East Berlin. Apparently the
graphics on it were just slightly too good and they stamped on him.

My first computing job was at Redifon Computers in Crawley.
They made key-to-disk data-entry systems based on a DCC copy of a data
general 16 bit mini.
Because of licensing restrictions they were limited to
the UK and eastern europe. They had to write tape-emulators to suite
a whole range of iron-bloc computer systems, which were typically
heavily modified locally built copies of western computers.
The Redifon software had to handle this in addition to
multiple eastern european languages for programming screens and
manuals. I don't remember any talk of restrictions other than the
data general operating system license which limited them to those
countries, though the modified CPU boards etc all made from scratch
at Crawley probably wouldn't run pure the pure DG Nova operating
system because they altered the address MSB to access a full 64K
bytes, while on a DG nova this would give multi-level indirect
addressing (I think, brain is rusty).

On Mon, 22 Feb 2021 20:39:03 +0000, Andrew
wrote:

http://www.cpushack.com/2021/02/21/t...ocking-part-1/

A mixture of pictures and text Brian

The first PC I assembled myself was a 486. I remember when the cpu was
first released there were reports of it overheating which implied that
Intel had cocked up big time. Intel's response 'It's OK, put a fan on
the cpu to cool it' was initially greeted with some scepticism I
recall.

On 23/02/2021 09:44, Jethro_uk wrote:
On Mon, 22 Feb 2021 20:39:03 +0000, Andrew wrote:

http://www.cpushack.com/2021/02/21/t...-the-birth-of-
overclocking-part-1/

A mixture of pictures and text Brian

Whatever happened to Sinclairs idea of intelligent fault-tolerant wafers
that simply blew the links to duff dies and worked as entire assemblies
of chips ?

I think The Borg picked up on that. ;-)

--

Jeff

On 23/02/2021 09:44, Jethro_uk wrote:
On Mon, 22 Feb 2021 20:39:03 +0000, Andrew wrote:

http://www.cpushack.com/2021/02/21/t...-the-birth-of-
overclocking-part-1/

A mixture of pictures and text Brian

Whatever happened to Sinclairs idea of intelligent fault-tolerant wafers
that simply blew the links to duff dies and worked as entire assemblies
of chips ?

Probably yields improved and the amount crammed into a tiny section of
the wafer made it unnecessary - his original intention was for the 512KB
RAM pack for the QL to be wafer scale, but we have moved so far past
that that it is perhaps unnecessary.

Jethro_uk wrote:
On Mon, 22 Feb 2021 20:39:03 +0000, Andrew wrote:

http://www.cpushack.com/2021/02/21/t...-the-birth-of-
overclocking-part-1/

A mixture of pictures and text Brian

Whatever happened to Sinclairs idea of intelligent fault-tolerant wafers
that simply blew the links to duff dies and worked as entire assemblies
of chips ?

Chips have long been fault tolerant - parts get configured based on what
works and what doesn't, and one design is sold as multiple SKUs at different
price points based on functionality and measured performance.

It's easier to manipulate chips rather than wafers though, and they're more
compact. Flash memory chips like micro SD cards are a stack of maybe 32
dice wired together. That's equivalent to a wafer, but you get to throw
away the terrible ones.

Even with all this, keeping everything in a wafer means you're still
susceptible to major faults eg if somewhere on the wafer is a power supply
short you can't just set a configuration bit to disable it.

These days silicon is used like a PCB, and chips are made from a substate of
silicon with wiring and multiple dies (from different fabs/processes) bonded
on top.

The main place we still use wafer scale chips is solar cells, where we
aren't too fussy about minor defects and area counts most of all.

Theo

On 23/02/2021 15:36, Jethro_uk wrote:
I vaguely remember the original spec was that the 486 was the 386+387
maths co processor as a standard offering.

I vaguely remember only the '486 had a cache. But ICBA to check.

Andy