New answers tagged design-choices
2
votes
Was there any computer since about 1960 without interrupt support?
Yeah, the higher perfromance CP/M computers (either an 8080 or Z80 processor) had interrupts but some had to poll the devices. These used a BIOS so your CP/M applications could access the screen, disk(...
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6
votes
Was there any computer since about 1960 without interrupt support?
The Parallax Propeller processor for quadcopters has (I write has because it's in production today for its intended purpose) no interrupts, and this is an advertised feature (so that execution ...
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8
votes
Was there any computer since about 1960 without interrupt support?
The Atari 2600 Video Computer System draws its entire screen using techniques that on other systems would be accomplished via raster interrupts, but its 6502 die is in a 28-pin package that omits both ...
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26
votes
Accepted
Was there any computer since about 1960 without interrupt support?
The Wang 2200 series of minicomputers (Apr 1973 to Jul 1989) was implemented without hardware interrupts. All peripheral interaction was handled via polling.
These machines were fitted with a BASIC ...
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23
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Was there any computer since about 1960 without interrupt support?
The first microprocessor, the Intel 4004, had no interrupt capability.
Its successor, the 8008, had interrupts, but with the shallow call stack and the need to reserve scarce registers to do any sort ...
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10
votes
Was there any computer since about 1960 without interrupt support?
Another example from the embedded world: the Parallax Propeller uses multiple CPU cores to service events instead of interrupts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax_Propeller#...
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11
votes
Was there any computer since about 1960 without interrupt support?
Although the Apple II family of computers allows I/O cards to use interrupts, none of the internal hardware on the Apple II nor the Apple //e offers any support for them beyond making the pins ...
- 34.7k
20
votes
Was there any computer since about 1960 without interrupt support?
Sharp pocket computers based on the ESR-H SC61860 micro-controller (PC-12xx, 13xx and 14xx) did not have interrupts. No instructions like rti, nothing. Everything was done by polling (it had for ...
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11
votes
Was there any computer since about 1960 without interrupt support?
Lots of examples could be found among many of USSR era home computers based on the KR580VM80 chip (a clone of i8080).
In a normal i8080 system, the CPU is supposed to work with companion (or 'chipset')...
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19
votes
Was there any computer since about 1960 without interrupt support?
Would embedded systems count?
If yes, there were GI's PIC1600 MCUs (http://bitsavers.org/components/gi/PIC/1983_PIC_Series_Microcomputer_Data_Manual.pdf), predecessors of PIC microcontrollers by ...
- 10.2k
14
votes
Why didn't Microsoft use a well-known encryption algorithm like RSA for telephone activation?
After 20 years
You could argue that the encryption was plenty strong enough. Support for XP ended nearly 15 years ago, the encryption lasted 15 years longer than the OS.
All security systems have to ...
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49
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Why didn't Microsoft use a well-known encryption algorithm like RSA for telephone activation?
My question is why didn't Microsoft simply use RSA or another proven algorithm?
Because they thought it was important to minimize the signature. That is, in the use case:
For those who don't know I ...
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17
votes
Why didn't Microsoft use a well-known encryption algorithm like RSA for telephone activation?
Opinion:
RSA received a patent for the algorithm in 1977. Microsoft was unlikely to use someone else's patented algorithm.
Though the RSA patent became public-domain in September 2000, and Windows XP ...
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