In article , "Tarver Engineering"
wrote:


Nope, the i960 is a processor designed to control printers.

There were several flavors of the i960, most of which were purely
commercial and were used as printer drivers among other things.

The i960 is the follow on of the i860, from which Intel produced the
i432
MPP. The i432 was such a failure that Intel was nearly bankrupt and was
forced to sell a controlling interest of 16% of Intel to IBM; it was
through
this transaction that IBM was able to corner the 8088 market. The i960
found application as a printer processor in the commercial world until
some
years ago. Lockmart got the bright idea of using the i960 to replicate
Intel's i432 MPP success in the Raptor.

snip of Harry making things up

Well John, I was there. Funny, I didn't see you name listed on the IPT.
Mine was.

I am pleased to be missing from that list.

All this i860 & 432 stuff is just smoke that has no bearing on the
decision
to use the i960. Lockheed had no say, BTW, in the i960 decision.

I'd say that it is a demonsable error in judgement for Hughes to fail to
consider Intel's failure WRT the i432 when estimating the risk induced by
their poor decision making in selecting the i960.

You're talking through your hat again John. Time to give up before you
demonstrate your ignorance of the selection process and the era
the decision was made in.


That
was an internal Hughes decision and we had a lot of selling to do with
our customer. The stuff you snipped has the real reason for the
selection of the MX over the competition. I was there.

You here claiming that you somehow determined that Hughes could do what
Intel could not shows that you have not come to terms with the dimensions of
your error, Harry. To come here now and claim the problems are a result of
your personal incompetence is hardly comforting to the American tax payer.

What are you on about? We designed and delivered a heterogeneous MPP
that works as advertised. No one else has done anything remotely close.
What programmers choose to do with it is up to them.
BTW, you're giving me way too much credit, but thanks anyway. I was part
of a very large multi-discliplinary team that fulfilled the contract design
parameters.

--
Harry Andreas
Engineering raconteur