Conference 7.286::digital

    No, that was Inmos.
    

    See 1992.97 for more info on Mostek. BTW, the Inmos facility in
    Colorado Springs was at the opposite end of town from the Mostek / 
    United Technologies Microelectronics Center. The old Inmos facility is
    now occupied Cray Computer. FWIW, the old Data General facility in
    Fountain, Colorado is now occupied by Apple Computer. This is a fast
    paced business!
    
    Harry
    

>Corrections welcomed....
...and received! Jeeze, I think my memory's busted. Tough getting old.

    The Transputer has changed hands through several mergers and
    take-overs.  SGS-Thompson is the current owner.  Nice machine,
    especially the "link"...  Could make a spiffy disk controller chip if
    we were to ever divorce ourselves from Motorola.

Mostek was founded in 1972 in Carrollton, Texas (outside Dallas) by L.J. Sevin
and others from Texas Instruments. Their heyday was during the 4K DRAM days
when they grabbed the market with a 16 pin device with multiplexed address lines
while TI and Intel were pushing 22 pin devices.

They were later bought out by United Technology (Pratt and Whitney engines, 
etc), who later sold the business to Thomson/CSF of France.

Mostek was one of our qualified second sources for the first MicroVAX chip.

Dileep

I believe that we also bought rights to use the 4K DRAM design from Mostek
and manufactured them in our own fab - that being back in the days of DRAM
shortage.

jb

    Incidentally, I believe Thomson in France is the same outfit that
    bought RCA's Consumer division from G.E.,and now manufactures RCA TV's...
    
    Some computer company.
    
    tim
    

    Actually some of their TV's are extremely high tech, with PIP, digital
    zoom and many other features...
    
    q
    
    

       
       
       RE: .8
       
       When I saw PIP in your response, the first thing I thought of
       was "What, my TV set can now transfer files for me? Wow!" 
       Then I realized you were talking about Picture-In-Picture.
       
       				Yours in Brain-dead-land,
       					->Jay

    Actually, there should be no reason why you TV shouldn't be able to
    transfer files for you. With the phone companies getting into cable tv,
    and isdn and so on, the technology is all pretty much there to have
    sufficient bandwidth into the household, to have full electronic
    shopping, banking and other services to the household... But yes,
    sadly, I was just talking about Picture in Picture.
    
    q
    

    Mostek, I believe, was also the company which did an almost clone of
    the Motorola 6800 chip in 1976 (detailed in BYTE magazine issue #2 I
    think) which was known as the 6502.  This chip was architecturally
    patterned after the PDP-11 and became the processor in the commodore
    {pet,vic-20,64,128, whatever}, ATARI {400,600,800,1200, etc}, AIM-65,
    and, oh yes, it powered something called the Apple I (and II) by an
    obscure, garage-based company in California.  The 6800 and 6809 chips
    were slightly nicer in their architecture but were priced higher (early
    6800 chips went for about $400) than the 6502 (which came out at
    around $20-$30).  DEC's ALPHA strategy should (& hopefully will)
    promote similar success by providing good bang-for-buck in systems
    (ours and our partners who use ALPHA processers in their boxes) as long
    as we are able to get good chip yields and produce enough of them.
    (And what better place to produce software for these systems?)
    
    Rich Martin (a bit of trivia/nostalgia/positiveness in that order)
                

Not Mostek, but MOS Technologies.  Two similar sounding names, but
different companies, and yes, there was confusion between the two at the
time.

MOS technology made the 6501, which was electrically compatible with the
6800.  That meant you could take the 6800 out of its socket, plunk a 6501
in its place, and all things electrical would still work.  Of course, the
two executed very different instruction sets, so you probably also wanted
to swap ROMs at the same time.  MOS Technology was ultimately
bought/absorbed/whatever by Commodore,

As for niceness of architecture:  Matter of opinion.  The big win for the
6501 was better chip yield due to smaller chip area. 

The courts forced them to make the chip electrically incompatible, which
brought us the 6502, which differed mainly in clock circuitry and a bugfix
or two in the instruction set (I hesitate to say "microcode", but bugfix in
the microcode is probably more accurate).

Also, since it wasn't MOSTEK, I've just ratholed the note.  Sorry.

Dawn Banks (who's been waiting for someone to confuse MOSTEK with MOS
Technologies)

    Um, as I recall Mostek also did 68000 and 6800 clones.  But, it's been
    about 10 years since I worked there.
    
    Steve

    re: .11
    
    yes it was a 6502...and DEC used it in the DMV11...!!!
    
    I remember there was a bit rif in eng at the time as Gordon Bell
    wanted us to use the t-11, but we showed that we couldn't get the 
    throughput needed...there was a memo that this was the only product
    it could be used in, many groups were calling us after we brought it
    in that wanted to use it but ...

    
    	They did chips for the fuel controls that Hamilton Standard
    	designed for Pratt and Whitney (both United Technologies),
    	Rolls Royce, and McDonnell[sp] Douglas.  I worked on something
    	called the 1553.  Long time ago, but I think it was a clock
    	chip.  They went downhill fast after they were sold to U.T.
    	Everything U.T. bought went downhill fast...  American Bosch,		
    	Turbo Power Marine, Auto Sense...