[vcf-midatlantic] Revised, My take on "what is vintage computing"

[David Gesswein]

On Mon, Dec 21, 2020 at 02:17:50PM -0500, Neil Cherry via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
> 
> I'd love to see more about things like the 4 bit computers and bit slicers. What is a bit slice
> computer?
> 

"Bit slicing is a technique for constructing a processor from modules of 
processors of smaller bit width, for the purpose of increasing the word length."

The bit slice I have some knowledge of executed microcode the designer
created to implement the instruction set desired or the microcode directly 
implemented the desired functionality for special hardware. Should be able 
to find more online.

Most use it for referring to machines using the couple chips intended for 
this purpose such as the AM290x. I thought it was neat that Tek used the 
290x chips in the 4052 to make a faster upgrade of the 4051 which used a 
6800. They made a faster 6800 than you could buy as a microprocessor. They 
also added new floating point instructions since it wasn't as fast as they
hoped.
https://w140.com/tekwiki/wiki/4052