PC/104

[Christopher Browne]

On 7/18/07, Alex Beamish <talexb-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> In any case, I'm not sure why one would bother with such an old piece
> of equipment. That sounds like the platform I used for a third year
> project on in 1981 (Z80 with 32K RAM). Anything with an 8-bit
> processor is by now an antique.

Well, it depends on whether what you're trying to control with it is
simple or complex.

If you need to compute FFTs in order to make decisions, and trying to
drive a hi-rez display, well then you probably need megabytes of
memory and 32 bits or so of address space.

If, on the other hand, you're controlling an elevator, where the
system is composed of a state machine with a couple dozen inputs and a
couple dozen states, then having 256 bytes of data memory and a few KB
for code ought to be quite sufficient.

They're still *making* 8 bit CPUs (and even 4 bit ones!) because they
still successfully address needs.  Automation of simple systems with
small numbers of states and not-incredibly-obtuse logic doesn't need
more than that.  There are still plenty of automation opportunities
that can be handled by hardware that primitive.
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"...  memory leaks  are  quite acceptable  in  many applications  ..."
(Bjarne Stroustrup, The Design and Evolution of C++, page 220)
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