Beehive terminals

[Tony Duell]

> 
> > I find it a great pity that now that transistors have become so cheap
> > (particularly when in ICs), most people don't care how many are used,
> > and most modern designs use far too many of them.
> 
> "Too many" in what sense? :)

To many in the sense that the job can be done with _significant;y_ less. 
I am really moaning about the so-called designers who want to use an 
embedded PC-type-thing with <n> megs of RAM for a problem that could be 
solved with a little hardwired logic (say about 50 transsitors).

> 
> > It's amazing what could be done with 2 or 3 of the things, but those
> > clever designs have been mostly forgotten.
> 
> Yes...at least in part because they tend to need a pile of other
> things, like capacitors and inductors, which are difficult to stick

That is true. I was thinking of perhaps the most elegant design I've ever 
had the good fortune to work on -- the HP9100. The 2 main ROMs in that 
are inductive (core-on-a-rop, that multi-layer PCB ROM), which could not 
be made in a chip. And to make ROMs with similar capacity in a chip would 
use a fair numebr of transistors.

-tony