[vcf-midatlantic] Working on a historical microprocessor exhibt

Jameel Akari jakari at bithose.com
Tue Feb 11 12:20:39 EST 2020


On 2020-02-11 11:51, Ethan Dicks via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 9, 2020 at 11:45 AM Adam Michlin via vcf-midatlantic
> <vcf-midatlantic at lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
>> VCF is working on a historical exhibit of CPUs (not really support 
>> chips
>> at this point). Literally just the CPUs.
> 
> Cool.
> 
>> What should we have at the bare minimum? 4004, 8008, 8088, 8086, 6502,
>> Z80, 6800, 6809...?
> 
> 1802.
> 
>> What should we have if we have more space? 80x86, 680x0, Sparc, MIPS,
>> Power, Alpha, ARM, Itanium...?

Is the exhibit meant to be microprocessors, or CPUs in general?  If the 
latter, I think you need separate "tracks" based maybe on market 
segment.  I second the notion that this is liable to become cluttered if 
not limited in scope and/or separated into categories.

Like, I can donate or loan an early POWER or a VAX 6000 CPU board (they 
are both awesome looking artifacts) but now you've got large things next 
to very small things. ;)

My $0.02 : If this is going to run alongside the 6502 theme of VCF East, 
focus on microprocessors including the 6502, ending somewhere around the 
80386 or early RISC timeframe, and then fast-forwarding from there to 
near present day.  You can fill it and grow it out later, but with 
literal exponential growth it's hard to take in the entirety of 50 years 
in one go.


-- 
Jameel Akari


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