Anders Johansson wrote:
On Friday 15 April 2005 01:26, Hans Witvliet wrote:
At introduction of 6809 (motorola's first true 16-bit machine) and the 68000 (32 bits). Nice cpu with orthogonal instruction set. No compiler or even assembler needed ...
I don't believe any CPU needs an assembler - certainly not a compiler - since all these tools do is to translate text files into binary code. If you know the machine language, and have a masochistic streak, you can program any computer directly in it
If you meant the machine language was so nice you could use it easily without the help of these tools, well, we obviously have different definitions of fun :) At least my brain needs the text to get an overview. A list of numbers to me is just a list of numbers.
I've read claims that Seymore Cray wrote the first OS for his supercomputer directly in machine language, and in octal code at that. I'm not sure I can force myself to believe that
... or that he designed his first computer during a Superbowl game :-) CDC instructors taught us that octal was much easier than hexadecimal. One maintenance engineer could could print your name on a 3600 system line-printer, one letter at a time w/ octal codes from the console. Look at the 8080/8086 command set; it was orderly when listed in octal groupings.