4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery

[Roy J. Tellason]

On Saturday 13 October 2007 05:13, Brent Hilpert wrote:
> Can't remember where I read it, but it seemed plausible for the time the
> 4004 was being developed (1970), also that it was compounded by
> management's perceptions that the 4004 was a little business on the side
> and not willing to invest much in it, memory chips still being the focus.
> On the other hand, I wonder what packages the original Busicom designs
> utilised - that Intel would otherwise have been obligated to produce - one
> would expect, or typically, they would be larger. (The 4040 would go to a
> larger package, of course.)

Having heard of the 4004 of course,  I know basically nothing about it.  
Except that it's the part that was supposed to have started all this...   And 
the 4040?  I've only seen mention of it now and then.

(Snip)
> Perhaps not speed as an issue but you were wired into the small family of
> chips that understood the highly specific machine/bus cycle, at least
> until the 4008/9 came along that broke out the address/data busses.

4008/9?  First I've heard of these at all.

Can you give any sort of a general overview of what those parts were all 
about?

I remember very little about the 8008,  it having appeared in that 
Radio-Electronics article way back when.

I do remember,  even after the 8080 article in Popular Electronics came out,  
not thinking very much of microprocessors for quite a while.  They seemed 
limited,  it appeared that you had to really go through a lot to fit your 
thinking and way of doing things to what they could handle,  and it took me 
quite a while before I got to the point where I got a really good grip on the 
tradeoffs involved,  like low package count,  etc.  :-)

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
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