[GTALUG] "Golden Age for Computer Architecture"

[Russell Reiter]

On Sun, Aug 12, 2018, 1:44 PM James Knott via talk <talk at gtalug.org> wrote:

> On 08/12/2018 01:26 PM, Russell Reiter via talk wrote:
> > Some wag deemed it a "ring 4" exploit.
> >
>
> Many years ago, I was a computer tech, working on a variety of systems,
> including the VAX 11/780 and Data General Eclipse.  Both of those had a
> writable control store and the VAX even loaded it's microcode from a
> floppy at boot.  One ot the things I had to do, when repairing Eclipse
> computers was work my way through the microcode, using a very large
> listing and a logic probe, along with the microstep switch on the front
> panel.  The Eclipse used 4 AMD 4 bit slice processors and, IIRC, over
> 100 bits wide ROM to contain the instruction set.  With the WCS, I
> expect it would be fairly easy to insert malware.
>

Thats an interesting paradigm shift.

Searching through the physical setup using logic tools old school, vs new
school; searching through patent records just to be able to find the
hardware.

>
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