[cctalk] Re: Intel 4004(sp?)

[ED SHARPE via cctalk]

Was there ever a COMPUTER using a 4004   that  you  cud  really  do  something 
or  did  tat finally arrive with the 8008  as  in the skelby shelby  sp? 8008 i 
now there  was an Intel   INTELIC 4 (?sp)    could n that  use 4004  or one of  
the  later 4000 numbered proc. We have an intelec 8 and 8 inch floppy  drives 
here at smecc musem  always  wanted  a 4!Ed#
In a message dated 11/21/2023 11:31:55 AM US Mountain Standard Time, 
dkel...@hotmail.com writes: 
There is little surviving software for the 4004. There are a few places with 
snippets of code to do things like add or subtract several digits but my 
searches of the internet have shown little actual code. The NBS has some code 
to track satellites and correct for time delays from their clocks ( think GPS 
).I'd had a spare 4004 and always wanted to do something with it. I found that 
the library for work done at the Navy Post Graduate School in Monterey 
California had 2 projects that students of Gary Kildall created. One was a load 
calculator for helicopters and the other was for calculating closest point of 
approach for ships. I'd been unsuccessful at down loading the helicopter code 
but was able to down load the ships document.I'd let the listing sit for 10's 
of years while always on the back burner. Over the years I'd acquired the 
needed parts. I did make a few substitutions, though. The original used 13 each 
1702A EPROMs. Since that exceed my budget for a PC board space, I chose the 
option of using a 4289 and a 2732 EPROM. I did use the original designs number 
of 4002s, as using RAM through the 4289 would have made significant changes to 
the software.The problem of the circuit needed to be dealt with. The document 
had a page labelled 'schematic' that turned out to be the keyboard layout and 
display layout( both of which I ignored and used my own layout that I though 
was better ).Before getting to the board design, I needed to get working 
software. The listing was done on a ASR33 with a deeply rutted platen, typical 
of hand-me-down things used by a school's command. Letters like R or P would 
look like F and 0 would look like C. Other letters were easy to figure out but 
still often had their right edge missing.After entering the list by hand, I'd 
feed it into my assembler and the tried to run it with my simulator.I'd make 
corrections as I got the code running.I need to create the circuitry for the 
keyboard decoder, that took 25 buttons to the 4 bit data bus input of the 4004. 
There was enough description in the document to create the LED display but I 
did missed one thing ( that I'll mention later ).I created the board with my 
typical incorrect wiring, requiring several extra cuts and jumpers. ( the 
concept was right but I got the pins of the 7402 mixed up.) The one thing that 
I'd missed was the order of the digit scan. I assumed left to right but the 
code was actually right to left. After so many cuts and jumpers to get the 
keyboard right, I dreaded more to fix the scan order so I made the one change 
to the original software to do right to left ( I still feel bad about that 
change ).I thought I'd talk a little about how a Closest Point of Approach 
Calculation is done. Normally it had been done by a graphical method of line 
drawing on what is called a plotting maneuver board. One used graphical 
calculations for the trig used. It was all done by pencil and parallel. It is 
so important that, I believe, that to this day a ship's pilot still needs to be 
able to do this calculation on a maneuver board, even though such graphical 
displays are capable of doing such, today. Large ships require significant 
knowledge of where they are relative to other fixed and moving objects in order 
to determine the safest path to proceed. A broken display is not time to learn 
how to do such a calculation.This 4004 calculator used a newly found way of 
doing tangent calculations, called the CORDIC method. One could clearly see the 
influence of Gary Kildall's hand in this code. It is noted that he wrote the 
division routine used and the organization of the code clearly shows the 
influence of a seasoned programmer. Bring such code back to life was almost as 
much as making a 4004 processor from discrete transistors but I felt was for me 
as part of my bucket list.Things I needed to do, included writing an assembler, 
writing a simulator, learn a PC board CAD, transcribing a poor quality listing, 
debugging the poorly transcribed listing, creating the keyboard decoder and 
instrumenting my simulator to be the calculator.Dwight   From: ED SHARPE via 
cctalk 
Sent: Tuesday, November 21, 2023 1:03 AM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts 
Cc: ED SHARPE 
Subject: [cctalk] Re: Intel 4004 So what are the other contenders and what do 
they bring to table


Sent from AOL on Android
 
  On Mon, Nov 20, 2023 at 9:06 PM, Adrian Stoness via 
cctalk wrote:   someone should build it in minecrsft

On Mon, Nov 20, 2023 at 7:01 P

[cctalk] Re: Intel 4004(sp?)

[ED SHARPE via cctalk]

Damn typos  sorry

Sent from AOL on Android 
 
  On Wed, Nov 22, 2023 at 1:51 AM, ED SHARPE via cctalk 
wrote:   Was there ever a COMPUTER using a 4004   that  you  cud  really  do  
something or  did  tat finally arrive with the 8008  as  in the skelby shelby  
sp? 8008 i now there  was an Intel   INTELIC 4 (?sp)    could n that  use 4004  
or one of  the  later 4000 numbered proc. We have an intelec 8 and 8 inch 
floppy  drives here at smecc musem  always  wanted  a 4!Ed#
In a message dated 11/21/2023 11:31:55 AM US Mountain Standard Time, 
dkel...@hotmail.com writes: 
There is little surviving software for the 4004. There are a few places with 
snippets of code to do things like add or subtract several digits but my 
searches of the internet have shown little actual code. The NBS has some code 
to track satellites and correct for time delays from their clocks ( think GPS 
).I'd had a spare 4004 and always wanted to do something with it. I found that 
the library for work done at the Navy Post Graduate School in Monterey 
California had 2 projects that students of Gary Kildall created. One was a load 
calculator for helicopters and the other was for calculating closest point of 
approach for ships. I'd been unsuccessful at down loading the helicopter code 
but was able to down load the ships document.I'd let the listing sit for 10's 
of years while always on the back burner. Over the years I'd acquired the 
needed parts. I did make a few substitutions, though. The original used 13 each 
1702A EPROMs. Since that exceed my budget for a PC board space, I chose the 
option of using a 4289 and a 2732 EPROM. I did use the original designs number 
of 4002s, as using RAM through the 4289 would have made significant changes to 
the software.The problem of the circuit needed to be dealt with. The document 
had a page labelled 'schematic' that turned out to be the keyboard layout and 
display layout( both of which I ignored and used my own layout that I though 
was better ).Before getting to the board design, I needed to get working 
software. The listing was done on a ASR33 with a deeply rutted platen, typical 
of hand-me-down things used by a school's command. Letters like R or P would 
look like F and 0 would look like C. Other letters were easy to figure out but 
still often had their right edge missing.After entering the list by hand, I'd 
feed it into my assembler and the tried to run it with my simulator.I'd make 
corrections as I got the code running.I need to create the circuitry for the 
keyboard decoder, that took 25 buttons to the 4 bit data bus input of the 4004. 
There was enough description in the document to create the LED display but I 
did missed one thing ( that I'll mention later ).I created the board with my 
typical incorrect wiring, requiring several extra cuts and jumpers. ( the 
concept was right but I got the pins of the 7402 mixed up.) The one thing that 
I'd missed was the order of the digit scan. I assumed left to right but the 
code was actually right to left. After so many cuts and jumpers to get the 
keyboard right, I dreaded more to fix the scan order so I made the one change 
to the original software to do right to left ( I still feel bad about that 
change ).I thought I'd talk a little about how a Closest Point of Approach 
Calculation is done. Normally it had been done by a graphical method of line 
drawing on what is called a plotting maneuver board. One used graphical 
calculations for the trig used. It was all done by pencil and parallel. It is 
so important that, I believe, that to this day a ship's pilot still needs to be 
able to do this calculation on a maneuver board, even though such graphical 
displays are capable of doing such, today. Large ships require significant 
knowledge of where they are relative to other fixed and moving objects in order 
to determine the safest path to proceed. A broken display is not time to learn 
how to do such a calculation.This 4004 calculator used a newly found way of 
doing tangent calculations, called the CORDIC method. One could clearly see the 
influence of Gary Kildall's hand in this code. It is noted that he wrote the 
division routine used and the organization of the code clearly shows the 
influence of a seasoned programmer. Bring such code back to life was almost as 
much as making a 4004 processor from discrete transistors but I felt was for me 
as part of my bucket list.Things I needed to do, included writing an assembler, 
writing a simulator, learn a PC board CAD, transcribing a poor quality listing, 
debugging the poorly transcribed listing, creating the keyboard decoder and 
instrumenting my simulator to be the calculator.Dwight   From: ED SHARPE via 
cctalk 
Sent: Tuesday, November 21, 2023 1:03 AM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts 
Cc: ED SHARPE 
Subject: [cctalk] Re: Intel 4004 So what are the other contenders and what do 
they bring to table


Sent from AOL on Android
 
  On Mon, Nov 20, 2023 at 

[cctalk] Re: Intel 4004(sp?)

[Paul Koning via cctalk]

> On Nov 22, 2023, at 3:51 AM, ED SHARPE via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> Was there ever a COMPUTER using a 4004   that  you  cud  really  do  
> something or  did  tat finally arrive with the 8008  as  in the skelby shelby 
>  sp? 8008 i now there  was an Intel   INTELIC 4 (?sp)could n that  use 
> 4004  or one of  the  later 4000 numbered proc. We have an intelec 8 and 8 
> inch floppy  drives here at smecc musem  always  wanted  a 4!Ed

Don't know about commercial products.  But a classmate of mine got Honors in 
Independent Study for a project where he built a useable general purpose 
computer out of a 4004, plus a boatload of other stuff.  It filled a wire-wrap 
panel board about 8 x 10 inches.  He wrote some software for it as well, and 
took it to a summer internship at one of the National Labs (in the Midwest -- 
Argonne?) where as I understand it they liked it enough to ask him for a copy 
of the system.  He graduated in 1975, so the work was done in the year or so 
leading up to that.

One complication was the terminal I/O (Teletype 33); originally he had a 
bit-banging interface for that, which isn't easy on a 4004.  At some point he 
finagled a UART chip out of one of the DEC field service engineers, I think 
that was one of the first single chip UARTs, used in the earlier DEC PDP-11 
terminal adapters.

paul

[cctalk] Re: Intel 4004

[Carl Yoder via cctalk]

Please find someone who can take me off the mailing list.

Carl Yoder

hummer51...@gmail.com

On 11/21/2023 12:24 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
ISTR a 4004 on one of the boards of my DTC300 Hytype I daisy wheel 
printers.


(or has unrefreshed wetware dynamic RAM lost its content?)


--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com


--
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
www.avast.com

[cctalk] Re: Intel 4004(sp?)

[Steve Lewis via cctalk]

Haven't caught up on the whole 4004 discussion here,

but my understanding was that the 4004 and 8008 were effectively developed
at the same time?   And were announced or available about within one month
of each other?


On Wed, Nov 22, 2023 at 2:51 AM ED SHARPE via cctalk 
wrote:

> Was there ever a COMPUTER using a 4004   that  you  cud  really  do
> something or  did  tat finally arrive with the 8008  as  in the skelby
> shelby  sp? 8008 i now there  was an Intel   INTELIC 4 (?sp)could n
> that  use 4004  or one of  the  later 4000 numbered proc. We have an
> intelec 8 and 8 inch floppy  drives here at smecc musem  always
> wanted  a 4!Ed#
> In a message dated 11/21/2023 11:31:55 AM US Mountain Standard Time,
> dkel...@hotmail.com writes:
> There is little surviving software for the 4004. There are a few places
> with snippets of code to do things like add or subtract several digits but
> my searches of the internet have shown little actual code. The NBS has some
> code to track satellites and correct for time delays from their clocks (
> think GPS ).I'd had a spare 4004 and always wanted to do something with it.
> I found that the library for work done at the Navy Post Graduate School in
> Monterey California had 2 projects that students of Gary Kildall created.
> One was a load calculator for helicopters and the other was for calculating
> closest point of approach for ships. I'd been unsuccessful at down loading
> the helicopter code but was able to down load the ships document.I'd let
> the listing sit for 10's of years while always on the back burner. Over the
> years I'd acquired the needed parts. I did make a few substitutions,
> though. The original used 13 each 1702A EPROMs. Since that exceed my budget
> for a PC board space, I chose the option of using a 4289 and a 2732 EPROM.
> I did use the original designs number of 4002s, as using RAM through the
> 4289 would have made significant changes to the software.The problem of the
> circuit needed to be dealt with. The document had a page labelled
> 'schematic' that turned out to be the keyboard layout and display layout(
> both of which I ignored and used my own layout that I though was better
> ).Before getting to the board design, I needed to get working software. The
> listing was done on a ASR33 with a deeply rutted platen, typical of
> hand-me-down things used by a school's command. Letters like R or P would
> look like F and 0 would look like C. Other letters were easy to figure out
> but still often had their right edge missing.After entering the list by
> hand, I'd feed it into my assembler and the tried to run it with my
> simulator.I'd make corrections as I got the code running.I need to create
> the circuitry for the keyboard decoder, that took 25 buttons to the 4 bit
> data bus input of the 4004. There was enough description in the document to
> create the LED display but I did missed one thing ( that I'll mention later
> ).I created the board with my typical incorrect wiring, requiring several
> extra cuts and jumpers. ( the concept was right but I got the pins of the
> 7402 mixed up.) The one thing that I'd missed was the order of the digit
> scan. I assumed left to right but the code was actually right to left.
> After so many cuts and jumpers to get the keyboard right, I dreaded more to
> fix the scan order so I made the one change to the original software to do
> right to left ( I still feel bad about that change ).I thought I'd talk a
> little about how a Closest Point of Approach Calculation is done. Normally
> it had been done by a graphical method of line drawing on what is called a
> plotting maneuver board. One used graphical calculations for the trig used.
> It was all done by pencil and parallel. It is so important that, I believe,
> that to this day a ship's pilot still needs to be able to do this
> calculation on a maneuver board, even though such graphical displays are
> capable of doing such, today. Large ships require significant knowledge of
> where they are relative to other fixed and moving objects in order to
> determine the safest path to proceed. A broken display is not time to learn
> how to do such a calculation.This 4004 calculator used a newly found way of
> doing tangent calculations, called the CORDIC method. One could clearly see
> the influence of Gary Kildall's hand in this code. It is noted that he
> wrote the division routine used and the organization of the code clearly
> shows the influence of a seasoned programmer. Bring such code back to life
> was almost as much as making a 4004 processor from discrete transistors but
> I felt was for me as part of my bucket list.Things I needed to do, included
> writing an assembler, writing a simulator, learn a PC board CAD,
> transcribing a poor quality listing, debugging the poorly transcribed
> listing, creating the keyboard decoder and instrumenting my simulator to be
> the calculator.Dwight   From: ED SHARPE via cctalk 
> Sent: Tuesday, November 2

[cctalk] Re: Intel 4004

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

In the headers of the mail that you sent is a line:
List-Unsubscribe: 
If you already tried THAT and it did not work, then that would be 
important to know.



On Wed, 22 Nov 2023, Carl Yoder via cctalk wrote:


Please find someone who can take me off the mailing list.

Carl Yoder

hummer51...@gmail.com

On 11/21/2023 12:24 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
> ISTR a 4004 on one of the boards of my DTC300 Hytype I daisy wheel 
> printers.

>
> (or has unrefreshed wetware dynamic RAM lost its content?)
>
>
> -- 
> Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com


--
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
www.avast.com

[cctalk] Nice 32 dollar goodie to display your 4004 in!

[ED SHARPE via cctalk]

https://www.ebay.com/itm/276167634394?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=J2IlG_4zQZS&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=8osaXa5ZQwi&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=MORE
Sent from AOL on Android

[cctalk] Re: Intel 4004(sp?)

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Wed, 22 Nov 2023, ED SHARPE via cctalk wrote:

Was there ever a COMPUTER using a 4004   that  you  cud  really  do  something 
or  did  tat finally arrive with the 8008  as  in the skelby shelby  sp? 8008 i 
now there  was an Intel   INTELIC 4 (?sp)    could n that  use 4004  or one of  
the  later 4000 numbered proc. We have an intelec 8 and 8 inch floppy  drives 
here at smecc musem  always  wanted  a 4!Ed#


An absurd argument:
It could be argued that the 8085, rather than being designed from scratch 
was simply a modification of the 8080.  Perhaps significant 
modifications, but nevertheless modifications, not redesign from scratch.


If we accept arguments such as that, then we could argue that Pentium is 
a modified 80486,

which is a modified 80386,
which is a modified 80286,
which is a modified 80186,
which is a modified 8086,
...
all the way down to the 4004  :-)

Most of those modifications were necessary for subsequent software, . . .
For example, Win3.00 could run on 8088/8086, but Win3.10 demanded A20, 
etc.


Therefore, it could be argued that Win11 can be run on a "heavily modified modified 
4004"


Motorola tended to redesign from scratch, whereas Intel would modify their 
previous design.


[I warned you that it was absurd]

[cctalk] Re: Intel 4004(sp?)

[Paul Koning via cctalk]

> On Nov 22, 2023, at 6:06 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> ...
> Motorola tended to redesign from scratch, whereas Intel would modify their 
> previous design.

Which might explain why the x86 ISA is such a convoluted tangle.

Moto did those things too in various places, though: consider the 68k family.  
The 68040 is clearly a derivative design but with a pile of things added.

Come to think of it, creating an ISA once and extending it N times is standard 
industry practice, from PDP11 to VAX to Alpha to MIPS to Power, not to mention 
earlier examples like CDC 6000/170/180 series, various IBM families, 
Electrologica...  I'd say it is probably harder to come up with singleton 
designs, especially several of them from a single company, than families.

The value of N tends to depend on how well conceived the original architecture 
is (which is why N is smaller for PDP11 and VAX and MIPS than it is for x86) 
and also on the longevity of the family.  So while Intel made a very large 
family starting with the 4004, they made very small families out of the i960, 
iAPX432, and various others.

paul

[cctalk] Re: Intel 4004(sp?)

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

Motorola tended to redesign from scratch, whereas Intel would modify their 
previous design.


On Wed, 22 Nov 2023, Paul Koning wrote:

Which might explain why the x86 ISA is such a convoluted tangle.


Although redesign from scratch will tend to produce a better product, 
modifying previous design, with kludge on top of kludge, can provide 
upwards compatability.  Segment/Offset is a hassle, but it meant that 8 
bit (16 address bits) software can work with it.


When the 5150 came out, the CP/M software companies, such as MicroPro 
(Wordstar) and Sourcim (Supercalc), were able to port their products to it 
much faster than anybody could port stuff to Macintosh.  Though, Apple was 
smart enough to include a "usable" word processor, so that nobody had to 
wait for Word, etc., before using the machine.


--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com

[cctalk] Re: Intel 4004(sp?)

[Chuck Guzis via cctalk]

On 11/22/23 15:06, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
> Therefore, it could be argued that Win11 can be run on a "heavily
> modified modified 4004"

Certainly possible, if not incredibly silly.

--Chuck

[cctalk] Re: Intel 4004(sp?)

[Chuck Guzis via cctalk]

On 11/22/23 16:47, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:

> When the 5150 came out, the CP/M software companies, such as MicroPro
> (Wordstar) and Sourcim (Supercalc), were able to port their products to
> it much faster than anybody could port stuff to Macintosh.  

Yup.  I have vivid memories of the Intel rep telling us that not only
was the 8086 compatible with the 8085, conversion could be automated
through their ISIS-II based conversion program--and it would result in a
smaller (memory footprint) program.

I decided to take them up on those claims.  I brought, as a sample, a
floating-point math package with a small program to compute the value of
pi to 12 or so places.  No macros, nothing funny--plain old ASM80 code.
We met at the (San Jose?--I don't recall) sales office, together with
"Fast Eddie", Intel's outside sales rep.   Confidently, he took my disk,
stuck it in the MDS and confirmed that it assembled and ran.  The he
said "watch this", and started up the conversion program.

After about a half-hour, he suggested that we might want to go to lunch,
Intel's treat.  That took another hour.  We came back, fairly well
lubricated, and found the thing was still cranking.   Ed suggested that
maybe we should take the rest of the afternoon off and that he'd get
back to us the next day.

Well, the next day passed, then the next...  About 2 weeks later, he
said the that the development team had gotten on the problem and finally
had a working binary.   It ran with the correct result, naturally.
However it was nearly half-again as large.

The guys at Sorcim wrote not only their own converter, but their own x86
assembler.  Building the PC versions of SuperCalc was a very involved
procedure, involving a VAX 11/730, a Compupro box with an 8085/88 CPU
card and an IBM 5150.  Martin Herbach was apparently the one who could
confidently master the process, so he was kept on when Sorcim was
puchased by CA.

Ah, the old days...
Chuck

[cctalk] Re: Intel 4004(sp?)

[ben via cctalk]

On 2023-11-22 6:53 p.m., Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:

On 11/22/23 16:47, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:



Yup.  I have vivid memories of the Intel rep telling us that not only
was the 8086 compatible with the 8085, conversion could be automated
through their ISIS-II based conversion program--and it would result in a
smaller (memory footprint) program.

To be fair to Intel,I think they did good job of encoding the 
instruction set
for the most common sequences being shorter. 8 bit bytes only give space 
for byte or word instructions, not both. Prefix bytes are good 
compromise with the segmented 64K memory space. Data and code space are
optimized for 16 bits. You want 32 bits, buy a 432. Still only 64Kb 
segments.

Ben.

[cctalk] Re: Intel 4004(sp?)

[dwight via cctalk]

The Intlec 4 was no more or less a computer than the Altiar or IMSAI was. It 
didn't typically have as much RAM but one could write and run code on it.
As for the F14 processor. For the purpose used, it was likely a DSP. More 
intended to do matrix multiplication using adds and shifts. This would be 
similar to Intel's early try at a DSP.
The F14 processor was said to control the flight surfaces. Like the Intel 2920 
( not to be confused with the AMD bit slice part) it likely ran tight loops of 
signal processing operations using tables of lookup coefficients.
Dwight

[cctalk] Re: Intel 4004(sp?)

[ED SHARPE via cctalk]

Ibad an intellectual 4 offered to me one time that had a 4040 in it. Is t a 
4040 like a 5 but more of the aux chips integrated? Is instruction set the same?

Sent from AOL on Android 
 
  On Wed, Nov 22, 2023 at 8:34 PM, dwight via cctalk 
wrote:   The Intlec 4 was no more or less a computer than the Altiar or IMSAI 
was. It didn't typically have as much RAM but one could write and run code on 
it.
As for the F14 processor. For the purpose used, it was likely a DSP. More 
intended to do matrix multiplication using adds and shifts. This would be 
similar to Intel's early try at a DSP.
The F14 processor was said to control the flight surfaces. Like the Intel 2920 
( not to be confused with the AMD bit slice part) it likely ran tight loops of 
signal processing operations using tables of lookup coefficients.
Dwight

  

[cctalk] Re: Intel 4004(sp?)

[Chuck Guzis via cctalk]

On 11/22/23 19:08, ben via cctalk wrote:

> for the most common sequences being shorter. 8 bit bytes only give space
> for byte or word instructions, not both. Prefix bytes are good
> compromise with the segmented 64K memory space. Data and code space are
> optimized for 16 bits. You want 32 bits, buy a 432. Still only 64Kb
> segments.

If we're talking technical merits among contemporary designs, I'd say
that the Zilog Z8000 was the better choice compared to the 8086 (both
were introduced within months of one another).  But Zilog was operating
under the Exxon mis-management at the time, and nobody was sure about
the company's survival.  There were translation programs from Z80 to Z8000.

-Chuck

[cctalk] Re: Intel 4004(sp?)

[ED SHARPE via cctalk]

- What were the key differences between the Intelec 4 and  our Intelec 8?
- What are the possible  accessories  for Intelec 8? We have a dual floppy 
cabinet is all.
 Years I saw  an Intel blue colored standalone paper tape punch and reader(we 
would like one!)
Is there a good site that addresses  all and lots about  intelec systems anyone 
can recommend?
Thanks in advance!
Ed Sharpe archivist for SMECC MUSEUM PROJECT Glendale AZ 

Sent from AOL on Android 
 
  On Wed, Nov 22, 2023 at 8:34 PM, dwight via cctalk 
wrote:   The Intlec 4 was no more or less a computer than the Altiar or IMSAI 
was. It didn't typically have as much RAM but one could write and run code on 
it.
As for the F14 processor. For the purpose used, it was likely a DSP. More 
intended to do matrix multiplication using adds and shifts. This would be 
similar to Intel's early try at a DSP.
The F14 processor was said to control the flight surfaces. Like the Intel 2920 
( not to be confused with the AMD bit slice part) it likely ran tight loops of 
signal processing operations using tables of lookup coefficients.
Dwight

  

[cctalk] Re: Intel 4004

[Sellam Abraham via cctalk]

As the one who helped Ray introduce the F14A CADC microprocessor to the
public back in 1998, I'm intimately familiar with the story of its creation
as well as its capabilities.

Ray officially announced the CADC at VCF 2.0 in 1998.  He was the keynote
speaker.  He brought along prototypes of the chips that he kept from his
time working at Garrett Air Research.  Ray first attempted to publish the
design in Computer Design magazine in 1971 but the military stepped in and
classified the project and prohibited him from disclosing anything.  As a
result the article was pulled.  In the mid-1990s he began an effort to have
the design de-classified so that he could finally talk about it, something
he'd been wanting to do since the early 1970s when they completed the
project successfully, under budget and with time to spare.  With the help
of his local assemblywoman, Zoe Lofgren (Santa Clara) he was able to get
the project de-classified (probably because the F14A is no longer produced,
and the CADC was only used in the F14A, so maybe Iran still has an interest
in CADC technology).

Ray actually approached me, contacting me by phone, I think.  He found me
by way of the Vintage Computer Festival and asked if I would be interested
in helping to bring disclosure to the CADC.  I wasn't sure what to make of
him at first as I already had some experience with hucksters promoting
themselves as having done the first this or that, but upon meeting Ray for
lunch he brought the goods (the prototype chips) and had the story and the
facts to back up what he said.  So we made an agreement to debut the CADC
officially at VCF 2.0.

Before we shopped the story around to the press, I decided that we should
first meet with Ted Hoff to show him the CADC design and let him know we
were going to make this public announcement that it beat out the 4004 by a
couple years (and by quite a bit in terms of capability).  The reasoning
being I didn't want him to feel slighted or to create animosity if we were
going to upend the history of microprocessors/microcomputing, which I felt
this story would do.  I was able to arrange a meeting with Hoff at his
office in Menlo Park or something (it's been many long and sometimes hard
years since 1998 so forgive me if I forget some minor details).  Ted was
cordial and then got right down to business, asking Ray a bunch of
questions about the design of the CADC.  And it came down to this: the CADC
was designed to be a multi-processing system.  While it was polling the
pilot's joystick (first fly-by-wire aircraft I believe), it was also
computing air speed/pressure, and using that to control the sweep (sorry
that I don't know the proper technical term) of the wings, while also
monitoring the weapons systems, etc.  It was processing something like 8
different tasks simultaneously, in a round-robin fashion.  Each sub-process
was contained on its own ROM chip.  The CADC central processor would
execute so many cycles of code on each ROM and then move onto the next.
The CADC had no program counter: since it was designed from its inception
to be a multi-processing (multi-threading?) system, it made sense to build
a program counter onto each ROM.  Therefore, when the CADC switched back to
that ROM to continue executing instructions, the program counter on that
ROM told the CADC where it was supposed to fetch the next instruction.
Once it became clear to Ted that the CADC did not have an integrated
program counter (though it easily could have) he pooh-poohed the entire
thing as not qualifying as a single-chip microprocessor and we spent the
rest of our time with him discussing other topics until it was time to wrap
up.  Ray and I both came out of the meeting somewhat bewildered at his
reaction and response, but in hindsight it was obvious that a gigantic part
of Ted Hoff's legacy is as "inventor of the 'first' microprocessor" and so
it made sense that he would be quick to protect that legacy rather than so
easily give it up to this nobody from out of nowhere with this fantastical
claim of a microprocessor before the 4004 that made the 4004 look like the
silly little calculator chip that it was.  I guess we were expecting him to
be more interested in the historical significance of Ray's disclosure and
welcome it but that was obviously naive.

Once that was out of the way, I began shopping the story around to the
press.  I first approached the San Jose Mercury News tech editor (Dan
whats-his-name), which would have been a natural fit all around, but he
just could not be bothered to return my messages.  I also pitched it to
Katie Hafner and/or (can't remember for sure) John Markoff at the New York
Times, and to Dan Kawasaki at the Wall Street Journal.  It was Dan Kawasaki
who actually got back to me and expressed a definite interest in the CADC
and Ray's story.  After an initial conversation with me and Ray, Dan asked
for an exclusive on the story and we granted it to him.  We had also (I
guess tentatively) agreed it wo

[cctalk] Re: Intel 4004(sp?)

[Smith, Wayne via cctalk]

Not a COMPUTER but I have a Pro-log M900 EPROM burner that has a second source 
INS4004 on the board.  This isn't my M900 (my INS4004 is white/gold), but here 
is a view of the board/chip:  
http://www.wolfgangrobel.de/programmer/img_m900/m900_06.jpg 

-W

Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2023 09:36:19 -0500
From: Paul Koning 
Subject: [cctalk] Re: Intel 4004(sp?)
To: ED SHARPE , "cctalk@classiccmp.org"

Message-ID: <7ecb8a1c-db41-45e7-9416-f71ad3289...@comcast.net>
Content-Type: text/plain;   charset=us-ascii



> On Nov 22, 2023, at 3:51 AM, ED SHARPE via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> Was there ever a COMPUTER using a 4004   that  you  cud  really  do  
> something or  did  tat finally arrive with the 8008  as  in the skelby shelby 
>  sp? 8008 i now there  was an Intel   INTELIC 4 (?sp)could n that  use 
> 4004  or one of  the  later 4000 numbered proc. We have an intelec 8 and 8 
> inch floppy  drives here at smecc musem  always  wanted  a 4!Ed

Don't know about commercial products.  But a classmate of mine got Honors in 
Independent Study for a project where he built a useable general purpose 
computer out of a 4004, plus a boatload of other stuff.  It filled a wire-wrap 
panel board about 8 x 10 inches.  He wrote some software for it as well, and 
took it to a summer internship at one of the National Labs (in the Midwest -- 
Argonne?) where as I understand it they liked it enough to ask him for a copy 
of the system.  He graduated in 1975, so the work was done in the year or so 
leading up to that.

One complication was the terminal I/O (Teletype 33); originally he had a 
bit-banging interface for that, which isn't easy on a 4004.  At some point he 
finagled a UART chip out of one of the DEC field service engineers, I think 
that was one of the first single chip UARTs, used in the earlier DEC PDP-11 
terminal adapters.

paul