langreiter.com plain, simple: 2003-07-02-360

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2003-07-02-360

CREATED BY chris • LAST EDITED BY chris 7797 days AGO

"The [System/360] family of computers ranged from the model 20 minicomputer (which typically had 24 KB of memory) to the model 91 supercomputer which was built for the North American missile defense system. Despite their differences, all these machines had the same user instruction set; on the smaller machines many of the more complex instructions were done in microcode rather than in hardware. For example, machines in the lower midrange did not have multiplier hardware, but the microcode implemented multiplications by repeated addition. It was rumored that the smallest machines did addition by repeated increments!"