Subj : Re: X86S
To   : Nightfox
From : poindexter FORTRAN
Date : Fri Apr 19 2024 06:45:00

-=> Nightfox wrote to fusion <=-

 Ni> I suppose this was bound to happen at some point.  In some ways, I
 Ni> think we users of x86 architecture have been lucky that at least some
 Ni> amount of backwards compatibility has continued this long.  There are
 Ni> some computer platforms (such as Mac) that have swapped their hardware
 Ni> architecture more than once, with official backwards compatibility (via
 Ni> emulation) only lasting a limited time.

Northern Telecom was a PBX and network manufacturer back in the day -
their marketing department called their PBXes "evergreen technology",
and it's the only time I can recall where it wasn't just a platitude.

They started off creating proprietary PBX chips and hardware in the mid
1970s. The original cabinets were full-height jobs that ran 4 digital
phones or copper trunks per card.

The CPUs were proprietary chips, designed by Nortel. They increased the
power of the CPUs and the density of the chips until cabinets could hold
many more times the phones, and the CPUs could keep up with it.

Nortel moved to Motorola chips, and ported the OS over to run on bare
metal. Later, they moved to Intel chips running VXWorks, and ported the
OS over to VxWorks.

You could take a single-density cabinet from 1975 and plug it into a
2000s Intel-based PBX. Run an antique phone alongside a SIP phone and
have them both conference in over a VOIP trunk.

I worked on a late 1970s Nortel SL1 PBX and one of the last Nortel
CS1000 PBXes from the late 2000s, and the programming was the same.





.... Which parts can be grouped?
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