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"minicomputers" with 256kb ram and a cpu running at ~10mhz? How would you differentiate them from today's embedded devices? ;)
by e12e 8y ago
"minicomputers" with 256kb ram and a cpu running at ~10mhz?
How would you differentiate them from today's embedded devices? ;)
- pjmlp 8y agoModern embedded devices are more powerful that the computer I had on high school to play Defender of the Crown on the computer club. Amstrad PCW 1512 vs ESP32. If I could use high languages in MS-DOS when performance wasn't critical enough to warrant being written in Assembly, so can we in our modern embedded devices. The exception being micro-controllers like PICs.
- zokier 8y ago> How would you differentiate them from today's embedded devices? ;) Intent and usage type. Minicomputers were still "general-purpose" computers, expected to run varying user code while embedded devices are more or less fixed-function. From a more technical perspective, one difference is the expectation of (hard) real time control. While I have no doubt that some genius has put PDP-11 into industrial process control loop or something, generally UNIX (and C by extension) was not designed for real-time applications
- monocasa 8y agoThrowing out there that PDP-11/20s were borderline running the entire manufacturing sector for a decade or so there. Parts are still super expensive because some ancient steel mill or something will buy them up as soon as they're on ebay or what have you. But yeah, those weren't running UNIX for the most part, but probably RT-11 if their developers were sane.