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Is there actually such a thing as a non-general-purpose computer? | 428 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Simple fictions and usefulness
Authored by: Wol on Monday, June 17 2013 @ 11:45 AM EDT
Surely in that case you could turn an early IBM PC into a new machine just by
sticking a floppy in the drive. Without even switching it on!!!

(for those who remember the twin-floppy days - one for the program, one for the
data :-)

Cheers,
Wol

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Simple fictions and usefulness
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, June 17 2013 @ 02:21 PM EDT
>A major problem with the new machine idea is that all general purpose
computers are explicitly designed to have software installed on them.

Yes. And cars are designed to be steered around curves.

If I am the first person to steer a car down a new section of interstate
highway, do I get a patent for the sequence of steering-wheel moves required to
keep the car on that road?

After all, it doesn't stop innovation. Anyone else can drive down other routes,
build their own road, or pay me a license fee.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Is there actually such a thing as a non-general-purpose computer?
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, June 17 2013 @ 05:36 PM EDT
One might think of embedded controllers. 'Big' computers are
as far as i know *all* general purpose.

I've soldered together many an embedded controller system in
my days (8048/8051/80196/6800/63B03/i960/68000, you name it.
If i could get my hands on it, i've made a play-with-me
computer board with it). Even then, an EPROM (today: a flash
prom) can hold and run any program that fits in the bytes.
With a little debugger/downloader program, and making some
RAM mapped as (part of) the program memory, i could
download/'install'/run most any program i wanted on those
embedded controllers.

Single-chip versions of ROM-ed embedded controllers where
programmed at factory. That would seem to make them quite
non-general-purpose. But: nearly all of them have 'external
address' facilities, that can be used to make the same chip
general-purpose again.

My point: From experience, i think there is no such thing as
a non-general-purpose computer. Being general-purpose is the
very point of computers: Standardize the hardware to achieve
low hardware cost, and -very late in the design process- you
can decide what the -once-programmed- computer will do.

I remember one story from the days of the dawn of those small
computers, where a design team applied an off-the-shelf
single-board embedded controller system in the context of
folk who where used to doing all of functionality in
hardware. They reported way before 'deadline' of the project
that: 'The device is ready, now please tell us what precisely
you want the thing to do'.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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