toon@vax1.sara.nl (11/16/90)
In article <3747@skye.ed.ac.uk>, richard@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Richard Tobin) writes: > In article <1768@metaphor.Metaphor.COM> djh@neuromancer.metaphor.com (Dallas J. Hodgson) writes: >>Ahem, excuse me, but Zilog's mnemonics were readable and orthogonal in a way >>that Intel's never were > > Quite true. The problem was that the orthogonality of the mnemonics > led one to write instructions that didn't in fact exist. Actually, it is more interesting than that: a lot of instructions (some 120 if you count them by opcode in the Zilog sense) which weren't documented worked like they looked. Of course you had to code them by hand - because your average assembler didn't know them either. Speaking of orthogonality, this is some orthogonality in design ! The Dutch Hobby Computer Club had an article about it in their periodical somewhere in 1980 (a few months before I bought my Exidy :-) -- Toon Moene, SARA - Amsterdam (NL) Internet: TOON@SARA.NL /usr/lib/sendmail.cf: Do.:%@!=/