[rescue] Compaq Proliant 8000

[Dave McGuire]

On Apr 29, 2004, at 3:26 PM, Joshua Boyd wrote:
>>   But we were talking about the IBM PC, which was based on the 8088.
>> We were talking about when the machine "came out", which some of us
>> interpreted to mean "when it was designed" and others took it to mean
>> "when it first shipped".  We were talking about the PC architecture,
>> basically.
>
> I thought we were talking about the PC architecture, and it seems to me
> that the PC architecture is largely the 8088 archtecture.  Wasn't ISA
> virtually the same as the processor bus?  The same for IDE?
>
> Feel free to correct me, but I always tended to view the architecture 
> of
> the PC as the architecture of the 8086.

   The "8088 architecture" does not include things like an 8237 DMA 
controller, an 8259 interrupt controller, a D765 floppy controller at 
address 0x3f0, a pair of 8250 UARTs at 0x3f8 and 0x2f8, a 
Centronics-protocol parallel port at 0x378, etc etc.  The "PC 
architecture" is the systems architecture...not the processor 
architecture.

   For example, the Altos Series 1000 is a UNIX machine based on an 
80386.  It is so far away from implementing the PC architecture that it 
could NEVER run DOS or Windows in any sort of compatible way.  It is 
based on an 80386, but does not implement the PC architecture.

>>   If you want to talk exclusively about the x86 architecture, though,
>> that actually dates back to 1974, to the 8080.  The 8086 is largely a
>> 16-bit extension of the basic 8080 architecture, implementing
>> substantially the same internal structure, register set, and
>> instruction set.
>
> My originally comment about the seventies was made before you mentioned
> going further back to the 8080 or 4004.  I specifically didn't go back
> any further than the birth of the 8086 since I don't really know much 
> of
> anything about the 8080s and the 4004 other than they existed at some
> point of time and influenced things in some sort of way.

   The 8080 was actually quite different from both the 4004 and 8008.  I 
don't believe it'd be accurate to say that the 8080 evolved from either 
the 8008 or the 4004.  Just FYI.  The 8080 is what started the whole 
x86 mess.

         -Dave

--
Dave McGuire          "PC users only know two 'solutions'...
Cape Coral, FL          reboot and upgrade."    -Jonathan Patschke