[ih] Intel 4004 vs the IMP

[Clem Cole]

On Mon, Nov 15, 2021 at 10:41 AM Jorge Amodio <jmamodio at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> Just as a time reference the first Proteon router, the p4200 was released
> in 1986, can't find now what processor they used, same year Cisco released
> the AGS, in those days the sexiest micro was the Motorola 68000 line.
>
Yep ... a 10MHz 68000 would have been fine.    The 386 proved sufficient
for a number of cheap routers shortly thereafter also, in fact, Proteon
made one using a cheap wintel frame and putting ISA cards into it [I used a
one of these at one point].

>
> I doubt that anything in the line of the 6500/6800/8080 could match the
> HW316 or any of the other microcomputer CPU's at the time.
>
Maybe, and part of my gut reaction is to agree with you, and then I think
about what Atari, Nintendo and the like did with the 6502.  Someone like
Dave Hayne would be a better judge I suspect.  He and his peeps did some
really amazing stuff with those early processors in those days.

Hey, I love the 6502, it one of my favorite ISA's and had a ball with it in
the mid-1970s programming it at CMU, but I would not have wanted to try it
for an IMP replacement.   Hey, we used LSI-11's at CMU for the distributed
front-end in '76/'77,.  Version two (after I left) used a 8086 in a Multbus
in 1979/80, and that version was in many ways the prototype that Andy took
to Stanford for what would become the Stanford University Network Terminal.
The SUN Terminal, of course, with it's multibus chassis is what Cisco used
for the AGS a couple of years later.

So I think we all agree, but the time of the full 16-processors like the
8086/Z8000/68000, running on semiconductor memory, and IMP like replacement
was quite feasible.  But having looked at some of the IMP code that has
leaked out, and again the existence proof of the game controllers made
using a 6502, I have a general belief that if someone has wanted to do it
and *had the right motivation*, folks like Dave and co, would have found a
way.

That motivation is still also an open question.  The game control folks
were driven to keep costs as low as possible, while offering
acceptable/good performance.  Something like an IMP and later a router,
less so.   Performance, I would have expected to be the high order bit and
cost would have been important, but people would pay for it.   Hey, the
early AGC's from Cisco were many, many thousands.
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