What to download for a PDP-8 (was Re: That poor system/36)

[woodelf]

Jules Richardson wrote:

> For a math copro to be called as such, does it have to integrate itself 
> with the CPU's instruction set - or does some sort of box of tricks 
> sitting on an I/O port and accessed through normal CPU instructions 
> count? I'm not sure what the correct definition is.

It does tricks, but then with only 8 opcodes defined on the PDP-8
what do you expect.

> What do you mean by 'smallest computer' by the way? Smallest in terms of 
> spec? I'm pretty sure some of the 1950's stuff had optional floating 
> point hardware available, although it wouldn't have been physically 
> small :)

True, but then they had longer word lengths than a tiny 12 bits.
You are comparing apples and oranges here -  late 50's
and 70's

> cheers
> 
> Jules
Ben.