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25 chips that shook the world.

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Mickster

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Quite an interesting read.....

**broken link removed**

Edit: Plus 13 runners-up which didn't make the list, due only to limits on print space:

**broken link removed**
 
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How is the 4004 not on there? It pretty much BEGAN CPU processing.
 
How is the 4004 not on there? It pretty much BEGAN CPU processing.

:confused: ...but it does get a small mention in the Z80 write-up:

"Federico Faggin knew well the kind of money and man-hours it took to market a microprocessor. While at Intel, he had contributed to the designs of two seminal specimens: the primordial 4004, and the 8080, of Altair fame. So when he founded Zilog with former Intel colleague Ralph Ungermann, they decided to start with something simpler: a single-chip microcontroller."

Taken from:
**broken link removed** (Page 4 link)
 
:confused: ...but it does get a small mention in the Z80 write-up:

"Federico Faggin knew well the kind of money and man-hours it took to market a microprocessor. While at Intel, he had contributed to the designs of two seminal specimens: the primordial 4004, and the 8080, of Altair fame. So when he founded Zilog with former Intel colleague Ralph Ungermann, they decided to start with something simpler: a single-chip microcontroller."

Taken from:
**broken link removed** (Page 4 link)

It still seems that they should have had that in there with its own write up.
 
How is the 4004 not on there? It pretty much BEGAN CPU processing.
Not quite true. Prior to the existance of the single chip processor we built CPUs from MSI chips like the 74181 ALU. We used a pair 7489 RAM chips for the registers and 7438 chips for the open collector bus drivers. Serial I/O was done with 74164, 74165, and 74166 shift registers. Those were the days when men were men, a 5V linear supply might be designed to supply in excess of 100 Amperes, and a carelessly placed screwdriver might get welded to the terminals of a big blue capacitor.
 
Papabravo,

I, amongst others most-likely, would love to hear more about your experiences from the earlier days of processing and electronics in general.

However, I think Krumlink's post, regarding the 4004, was made in reference to single-chip processing, as an addition to the mentioned list of singular chips that have changed our world since their introduction.
 
Papabravo,

I, amongst others most-likely, would love to hear more about your experiences from the earlier days of processing and electronics in general.

However, I think Krumlink's post, regarding the 4004, was made in reference to single-chip processing, as an addition to the mentioned list of singular chips that have changed our world since their introduction.
Yes, that was my interpretation of his post. I agree that the 4004 was an important precursor of the 8008 and subsequent chips. Since the main application was the calculator and it was quickly surpassed by LSI chips that did the whole job I can understand why it may have received short shrift from Spectrum.

I was trying to point out that "...It pretty much began CPU processing" was a bit wide of the mark. If he meant to say "single chip CPU processing" that would be closer to the mark, but as we all remember, those early systems actually required quite a halo of support chips around them so they were hardly the beginning of the single chip era. I would argue that the 8048 was among the early single chip microcontrollers. There were also some single chip 6800 variants at that time as well.

I am actually impressed that Krumlink knows a bit of history that occurred before his time. It is a testament to his maturity and his enthusiasm.
 
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Excellent read! I have been an Engineer for more than 30 years, it's fun to hear some of the stories behind those chips......I built my first microcomputer using the INS8060 from National Semiconductor!

It came in a wire wrap kit with the keyboard and 7 segment display thay was actually the top of a calculator case!

All hexadecimal, loading each memory location one at a time.

My first computer game was to scroll the "g" segment from left to right and try to stop it in the middle!

When I built my first Altair from MITS I was in hog heaven. 60 Kilobytes of RAM, and it cost me a small fortune!

Those were the days!
 
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