slick bits in computers (WAS: VAXen Rule!)

[Sean Conner]

It was thus said that the Great Dave McGuire once stated:
> Scott Quinn wrote:
> > The second part was the general question, which I guess was a bit too specific. What computers have you come across that are 
> > really neat and why. OK.- System/3{60,70,90,z} is neat for it's processor instruction set, PERQs for the user-microcode.
> > SGI Origin 2000's are neat for their CRAYlink/NUMAlink interconnect system, AXPs for the PALcode idea (sort of a takeoff of the PERQ). 
> > If you saw a computer that has a serial port implementation that is so elegant that it struck you as a thing of beauty throw that in ...
> >  I'm just interested in getting a feel for what's out there that members feel is neat. I was kind of thinking hardware to start with, 
> > but it could be extended to software. 
> 
>   I like the fact that, from the programmer's perspective, plugging
> boards into a PDP-8 essentially adds device-specific instructions to the
> CPU.  I don't think it's the cleanest or most elegant way of doing
> things, but I like how different (from today's stuff) it is, and I think
> it's clever.

  The Motorola 68k series did something like that.  Not every device, but
there was a method of extending the instruction set through external devices
mapped to certain addresses in "CPU" space.  Similar I'm guessing.

  -spc (I always liked the 68k architecture)