CPU UP

The ET-3400 micro circa 1977

Finally, that last word in CS/EE middle aged crisis must haves! Or one of 'em at least. How does it rate against an HP XW4400 Quad Core2 Extreme - heaps more fun!

• 512 bytes of RAM. Fully populated! You need to lash out now and again. I look around the house wondering if anything has less, maybe the microwave?

• 1MHz clock. No need for logic analysers, just hook the LEDs (middle left) to the bus and you can check by eye.

• The formidable 6800 mpu. Worried about processor verification and errata? not with this baby. Even the HCF instruction was by design.

Yes, those were the days. Back when men were men. Back in my day, even seven segment displays were luxury lad, we had to debug by putting tongue on bus and taste the binary stream. Mass storage? huh! I spit on mass storage, we trained like piano masters to store code in the muscle memory of our hands. A second or so and our deft but flashing fingers would have the boot loader in and running. Yes within seconds we could calculate the ..er, .. well we could calculate, and you had to debounce the keyboard with your fingertips!
Yers young'uns are spoilt today.

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