Museum of Information Technology at Arlington

[Gil Carrick]

Boysel said that he set that system up in a short time just as a demo. As you know, the IV/70 system used 3 of these AL-1 chips. The courtroom demonstration used a single AL-1 just to prove that it was functional as a CPU by itself. So in that configuration it would be an 8 bit CPU. He did the demonstration in the courtroom and after he did the suite was dropped as it was moot. Clearly the AL-1 was prior art to the patent claims. The demo system was just that. It was never made into a product and did not survive AFAIK.

[kosmokrator]

im luck i have 4 chips from this epic system....
i like to have one complete Four Phase Systems .....

also im like to expandmy collection with more fps chips.....hope some day will find some

here is what i have..

http://img405.imageshack.us/i/img0731a.jpg/


http://img11.imageshack.us/i/img0732pf.jpg/

[Gil Carrick]

The I/O 12 we already talked about. The RL-5 chips are Random Logic. I can't recall exactly where the RL-5 went. As you can see in the picture of the CPU card, that board had three RL chips numbered 1 to 3. My guess would be that the RL-5 was part of the I/O system since you have the I/O 12. I can look it up if you want.

The RAM-9 is one of the main memory chips. This is a later version (the 9). I don't know if all 9 versions were ever in production. The Four Phase may have been the first all semiconductor machine. Most systems at that time used magnetic core memory.

The most interesting thing about this RAM is that it was used to continuously generate the video that was sent to the terminals. They were just monitors with attached keyboards. (You could actually show a TV picture on one.) So "writing" to the terminal merely involved storing information in a location in the memory that was being used to refresh the video for that terminal. Even the cursor blinking was done by the software under clock control.

[6a6ar09a]

I will try to get this book (Exposing Electronics), definitely it wort to have it. It seams that Ross Bassett text (When is a Microprocessor not a Microprocessor) will be interesting one.

Thank you again. Best regards.

[wepwawet]

Here's a presentation showing Boysel's arguments including some interesting details/pictures.

As mentioned in another thread here is just intel's 8008 part of the discussion but i guess this is due to the fact that this 8008 was TI's competitor at that time.

http://www.eecs.umich.edu/eecs/ece/presentations/Boysel-07.pdf

[6a6ar09a]

Great! Now there are 4 documents with the same conclusion. For me, this is more than enough.

I am sure you have noticed "again" picture from page 15.

Regarding comparison, I think that Boysel compared AL1 with 8008 (not 4004) because both was 8bit (single wafer [chip] units).

Also, I hope you notice fact (in previous documents) that was not argued, that AL1 was 10 time faster than competitors at that time.

[wepwawet]

Yupp,

just funny I could not find any info about TI's 1795 CPU.

How could they claim to be first when it almos seems they never used their "invention"?

[6a6ar09a]

Who know... maybe some of us will find 1795 soon .

History is always written by those who survived. They are in position to "forgot" something or someone (this is not against the law ) but... it is incorrect, I think.

[wepwawet]

btw, here is F.F.'s statement:
http://www.intel4004.com/hyatt.htm

Finally he says Four Phase did not have a CPU what consisted of a single chip.
He argues that the reduction to a single element makes it.
Now when it is proved since the mid nineties that the AL1 was a single chip CPU...

[6a6ar09a]

Well, let me put it like this;

If you invent bulb and you use three bulbs to make your room much brighter... Does this mean that you "didn't invented" a single bulb ???

Thanks for nice links and documents.

[wepwawet]

from a timeline I found somewhere:

1969
Computer Terminal Corporation visits Intel, asking them to integrate about 100 TTL components of their Datapoint 2200 terminal's 8-bit CPU into a few chips. Ted Hoff says they could put it all on one chip, so Intel and CTC sign a contract for it. (The resulting chip becomes Intel's 8008 processor.) [1038.148]
December
Gilbert Hyatt files a patent application entitled "Single Chip Integrated Circuit Computer Architecture", the first basic patent on the microprocessor. (Twenty years later, the US Patent Office will grant his patent, but five years after that will overturn the award.) [162] [185.193] [590.5]
At Intel, the first run of 4004 microprocessors is fabricated. However, due to a missing masking layer, the entire run is unusable. At the time the chip is called a "mini-programmer". [106.104] [900] [1038.146]
1971
June
Texas Instruments runs an advertisement in Electronics magazine, showing a "CPU on a Chip" that it developed for Computer Terminal's Datapoint 2200 terminal. (However, the chip is never marketed due to unresolved problems in operation.) [1038.148]
Gary Boone, of Texas Instruments, files a patent application relating to a single-chip computer. [590.5]

That sounds, however, as if TI took their mouth a bit full on that time.

[wepwawet]

[wepwawet]

Another text passage (quoted from Time magazine 1990 Sept. 10):

Most business texts credit engineer Ted Hoff at Intel Corp., based in Santa Clara, Calif., with having fathered the microprocessor between 1969 and 1971. But Hyatt asserts that he put together the requisite technology a year earlier at his short-lived company, Micro Computer Inc., whose major investors included Intel's founders, Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore. Micro Computer invented a digital computer that controlled machine tools, then fell apart in 1971 after a dispute between Hyatt and his venture-capital partners over sharing his rights to that invention. Noyce and Moore went on to develop Intel into one of the world's largest chip manufacturers.

[donutty]

More reading: http://corphist.computerhistory.org/corphist/documents/doc-4946dbc7a541f.pdf?PHPSESSID=144228c0da006280a4c1b222c8004737

'Test' system shows a rather simplistic setup?!

[wepwawet]