3 ms·

Yeah that's incredible. I'd no idea. I'd assumed that the chips on devices like this were essentially dumb "slaves" controlled by the CPU. I had some vague ide

Yeah that's incredible. I'd no idea. I'd assumed that the chips on devices like this were essentially dumb "slaves" controlled by the CPU. I had some vague idea that the chips had some autonomy (ie, when playing digital sound, they knew enough to request/fetch more data via interrupts, DMA, etc) but I'd never spent the time to really learn what was going on there.

segfaultbuserr 8y ago
Actually, having computer boards with their own CPUs was NOT a modern phenomenon due to excessive computing power. They have always been made, as early as in 1980 (without the s), and for good reasons. Some were even a bit unimaginable today: for example, we had Z-80 Softcard (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-80_SoftCard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-80_SoftCard), a Z80 expansion card made (by Microsoft!) for computers with 6502 CPUs (Apple ][) to run existing business applications written for CP/M, like WordStar. It can also be connected with a modem to utilize its additional processing power to run a BBS server. There were also cards that packed multiple CPUs to implement a poorman (home computer) version of parallel processing. The simplicity of single-task operating systems and hardware architectures of that time allowed multiple independent computers to shift control of a physical computer back and forth. Today it's - pretty much - impossible, but nobody needs it either, you can just run everything simultaneously.
- detaro 8y ago
  And depending how exactly you want to define it, in large computers this happened even earlier, e.g. the CPC 6600 had independent systems for IO handling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDC_6600#Peripheral_Processors_(PPs) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDC_6600#Peripheral_Processors...
- leoc 8y ago
  Indeed many 6502 systems had support for an optional Z80 (or indeed a built-in Z80, as on the Commodore 128) to run CP/M. Later there were one or two x86 boards for pre-Intel Macs. The Amiga platform's upgrade path made some later Amigas a tangled mess of different CPUs.
- IWeldMelons 8y ago
  There was a Soviet PC for high schools, semi-clone of PDP-11 which had 2 cpus clocked at 6 and 8 MHz respectively. It was called UKNC. Look it up, it is an interesting device.

segfaultbuserr 8y ago

Actually, having computer boards with their own CPUs was NOT a modern phenomenon due to excessive computing power. They have always been made, as early as in 1980 (without the s), and for good reasons. Some were even a bit unimaginable today: for example, we had Z-80 Softcard (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-80_SoftCard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-80_SoftCard), a Z80 expansion card made (by Microsoft!) for computers with 6502 CPUs (Apple ][) to run existing business applications written for CP/M, like WordStar. It can also be connected with a modem to utilize its additional processing power to run a BBS server. There were also cards that packed multiple CPUs to implement a poorman (home computer) version of parallel processing. The simplicity of single-task operating systems and hardware architectures of that time allowed multiple independent computers to shift control of a physical computer back and forth. Today it's - pretty much - impossible, but nobody needs it either, you can just run everything simultaneously.

detaro 8y ago
And depending how exactly you want to define it, in large computers this happened even earlier, e.g. the CPC 6600 had independent systems for IO handling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDC_6600#Peripheral_Processors_(PPs) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDC_6600#Peripheral_Processors...
leoc 8y ago
Indeed many 6502 systems had support for an optional Z80 (or indeed a built-in Z80, as on the Commodore 128) to run CP/M. Later there were one or two x86 boards for pre-Intel Macs. The Amiga platform's upgrade path made some later Amigas a tangled mess of different CPUs.
IWeldMelons 8y ago
There was a Soviet PC for high schools, semi-clone of PDP-11 which had 2 cpus clocked at 6 and 8 MHz respectively. It was called UKNC. Look it up, it is an interesting device.