Newsgroups: comp.arch
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: History of personal computing (LONG
Message-ID: <1988Aug8.163944.29383@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <5946@venera.isi.edu> <46500024@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: Mon, 8 Aug 88 16:39:44 GMT

In article <46500024@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> mcdonald@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu writes:
>(for you newcomers, in core memories a read destroyed the contents of the
>cores,so every read had to be followed by a write)...

Dynamic RAMs are the same way, actually, although many people aren't aware
of this because the chips hide most of the ugly details.  It's one of the
reasons why DRAM timing specs are sacrosanct and you take shortcuts at
your peril.  (Which means, for example, that if your CPU is in the habit of
starting an access and then changing its mind, you have to be careful that
the DRAM still sees a full legal access of some kind.)
-- 
MSDOS is not dead, it just     |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
smells that way.               | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu
