- Tracing the roots of the 8086 instruction set to the Datapoint 2200 minicomputer (righto.com)
The Intel 8086 processor started the x86 architecture that is still extensively used today. The 8086 has some quirky characteristics: it is little-endian, has a parity flag, and uses explicit I/O instructions instead of just memory-mapped I/O. It has four 16-bit registers that can be split into 8-bit registers, but only one that can be used for memory indexing. Surprisingly, the reason for these characteristics and more is compatibility with a computer dating back before the creation of the microprocessor: the Datapoint 2200, a minicomputer with a processor built out of TTL chips. In this blog post, I’ll look in detail at how the Datapoint 2200 led to the architecture of Intel’s modern processors, step by step through the 8008, 8080, and 8086 processors.
- Interactivist — Ben Morea — Garbage Guerrilla (16beaver.org)
In the late 1960s, Ben Morea was the notorious leader of an unsavory Lower East Side anarchist collective called Up Against the Wall, Motherfucker. As a young historian who studies that period, I’d spent almost three years trying to locate him. All the leads I’d followed went nowhere. It was as if Morea had vanished, every bit as thoroughly as a jet contrail.