22
votes
Was the IBM 5100 ever used for codebreaking?
The 5100 had programmable microcode which could be used to implement crypto-specific opcodes1,2,3. Then there's the whole John Titor4,5 thing...
1 Such as population count
2 I'm unaware of anyone ...
- 9,050
8
votes
Was the IBM 5100 ever used for codebreaking?
I think the original argument (both in the John Titor hoax and in Steins;Gate) goes like this:
The IBM 5100 can emulate the IBM mainframe ISA (that's true, and that's how the APL running on the IBM ...
- 22.2k
3
votes
Was the IBM 5100 ever used for codebreaking?
I have an IBM 5100. There were some versions with APL-only and some versions with BASIC-only, while also yet another version that did have "the switch" as mentioned to toggle between either ...
- 129
1
vote
Was the IBM 5100 ever used for codebreaking?
Apologies, this didn't occur to me in my earlier Reply: There is also one other special feature of the IBM 5100. A long time ago with typewriters, you could backspace, and "overstruck" a new ...
- 129
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible