[BULK]Re: What are the really unusual or weird computers?

[Kevin Handy]

Liam Proven wrote:
> On 24/06/07, Michael B. Brutman <mbbrutman-cctalk at brutman.com> wrote:
>
>> Single Level Store:
>>
>> - The operating system and all user processes share a single large
>> address space.
>>
>> - There is no filesystem: every database table, user profile, etc. is
>> addressed by a pointer in this very large address space.
>>
>>
>> This seems insane, but it works.  There are a few things that make it
>> work better:
>>
>> - database tables, user profiles, etc. are all well defined data
>> structures.  They are referred to 'objects', although I don't really
>> think it is object oriented.
>>
>> - There is a lot of pointer checking going on to prevent overruns and
>> accessing data that isn't yours.
>>
>> - Pointers are 'tagged' by the operating system to indicate if they are
>> legitimate (ie: blessed by the OS and secure).  If a user somehow
>> manages to change a pointer in a non-blessed way, the 'tag' is lost.
>>
>>
>> The old 48 bit CISC architecture (IMPI) was quite a weirdy compared to
>> modern architectures.
>
> Whooo! Now that is odd.
>
> Are there any emulators for these things knocking around, or are they
> still too commercial?
>
Sounds a lot like Palm/OS