[OT] Old kit

Joel Jaeggli joelja at bogus.com
Fri Mar 26 17:23:42 UTC 2010



On 03/26/2010 10:16 AM, Owen DeLong wrote:
> 
> On Mar 26, 2010, at 8:45 AM, Lamar Owen wrote:
> 
>> On Wednesday 24 March 2010 05:24:39 pm Michael Dillon wrote:
>>> For comparison look at the z-80 CPU which powered the early desktop
>>> computers. When the IBM PC came out, people thought that the Intel 8086
>>> would make the Z-80 obsolete. But it didn't. The Z-80 just disappeared
>>> into all sorts of electronic
>>> devices where it serves as a controller for some function, perhaps the
>>> video display or the disk drive servos. And you can still buy them.
>>
>> Lots of DVD drives use embedded Z80's as controllers, including the
>> dual-layer
>> drive in my laptop.  Never thought that my teenage years spent hacking
>> Z80
>> machine code on a TRS-80 could produce a currently marketable skill....
>>
>> Quick, Z80 joke coming.... Addr: 0000:21 00 00 01 FF FF 11 01 00 ED
>> B0.......Will it finish?
>>
>> Same is true of MIPS and PowerPC, though.  There are far more MIPS
>> chips in
>> routers than ever saw desktop use in SGI workstations; and while it
>> might take
>> a little while for Cisco's PowerPC driven routers' CPU's to outnumber
>> all the
>> PowerMacs our there, one day it will happen.
>>
>> And then all those PowerMac assembly language gurus might prove useful
>> in the
>> router side of the house.....
> 
> The Juniper SRX-100 appears to have a MIPS or MIPS-like chip in it called
> an Octeon.

Cavium is mips arch... so are npu's or control plane processors from
RMI, Broadcom, Atheros, Marvell etc.

> Owen
> 
> 




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