Aaron Kulkis wrote:
James Knott wrote:
The Data General Eclipse line had a feature called "Writable Control Store", which could be used to add custom instructions to the CPU. The VAX 11/780 had it's microcode loaded from floppy at boot, but I don't recall if it was changeable in the same manner as the Eclipse WCS.
I remember coming across the "Writable Control Store" when reading something, and the first thing that came to my mind was, "Boy would that create utter chaos in even a multi-programming environment, let along a multi-user timesharing environment."
The systems we had didn't come with that option and so I don't know the details of using it. However, I can well imagine a need for it in specialized applications and with proper controls on who can change it and when, it shouldn't be an issue in those environments. -- Use OpenOffice.org http://www.openoffice.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org