Story by: W.G.Wilson
Illustrated by: Wally Bilyeau
| This is the story of how I met 8080, a little man. I was looking through a stack of electronic boards at a place called "the Whoopee Bowl" in Waterford Michigan. This place had lots of old boards for sale. I bought an old board for one dollar and took it home. At home as I sat down to remove parts, I heard a voice coming from a chip on the board. Looking through my magnifying glass, I saw a hole in the chip, and a little man was peering out at me. At first I thought I was dreaming. The little man said, "My name is 8080, who are you?" I told him my name was Bill. I asked him how he got in there and he said he didn't know. He told me that he lived in the chip with his wife and two children. I asked their names, and he told me that his wife was "Basic" and his children's names were "8086" and "8088." I was bewildered. I was talking to a little man in a chip! I could scarcely believe it was happening. Amazed, I asked him about himself. He began by saying that he seemed to have always lived there in the chip. He told me that his father's name was "Z80" and that his father had told him very little about their family history. Here is what he said he knew. Long ago his family had lived in a land called "Abacus." From the land of Abacus they moved to the town of "Babbage," where his great-grandfather lived in an electron tube and complained constantly about the heat, and the fact that the lights would suddenly go out. This prevented him from getting any work done. His grandfather moved from Babbage to the town of Sinclair. Sinclair had no electron tubes. His grandfather was the first of the family to live in a chip. A chip was much cooler than a tube and he could get more work done. This made me curious. I asked 8080 what kind of work they did. He told me that he did what he was commanded to do. I asked who gave the commands and he replied, "You humans give the commands." I quickly commanded him to make me rich. "No, no, I'm not a Genie", he said. I have a "Instruction Set" that I can perform. I have a set of "mnemonics" that I can translate into about 180 different instructions. "DUH" "What is a mnemonic?" I asked. He explained that a mnemonic (pronounced neemonic) is an instruction like this: MOV AH,09h (which simply means put the number 9 into the AH register) that a human easily understands but one that he translates into "Machine Code" to get some work done. There are about 116 different Mnemonics that he can translate. Humans remember mnemonics much easier than they do machine code. Normally, he uses machine code which looks like this: "0000 0011" which stands for the number 3. The eight digits of "Bits" as he calls them are grouped into what he called a "Byte." So, he tells me that a byte contains eight bits (digits). Starting from the rightmost bit, they each have a value. The rightmost or least significant bit tells us how many ones there are and each bit to the left is doubled. It looks like this: 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 128,64,32,16,8,4,2,1 "DUH" this means that each byte can hold a number from zero to 255, if we add up all the bits which contain a one. This was enough of an explanation for me. "I suppose there is such a thing called "Most Significant Bit", I asked. "Yep. It is the leftmost bit", he replied. I asked if I could have a look inside his "Chip Home." "Sure Bill, come closer and I'll give you a 25 cent tour of the place", he replied. With my magnifying glass I peered inside. It was a plain looking room with rows and columns of boxes lining the walls. Much like the U.S. Post Office. 8080 called them his memory cells and pointed out that on one wall was a group of boxes arranged in 16 rows with 16 boxes in each row. These he referred to as his "Registers." He had them labeled in order to keep track of them. I won't bore you with labels, but others have seen them and can tell you what they are called if you are interested. Two of the walls contained many, many boxes. He said that there were 640,000 boxes (memory cells) altogether. Each box had a number on it. He called this number the address of the box, just like houses on a street have addresses; each box had a unique number. In the middle of the room I noticed a table with a cup of tea on it. He explained that most of his time is spent sitting at the table and sipping tea while he waits for another instruction from a human. I decided to give him an instruction so I could see how he did it. I told him MOV AH,09h. I didn't even see him move, but to my amazement, there in the AH register was a note with the number 9. I asked him how he did it. He told me that he could move very fast. In fact, he moves so fast that you can't see him do anything unless you give him a lot of commands, and then you see a blurry object as he moves around. It was amazing. I wondered if his family could also move that fast and he said that his wife "Basic" was a bit slower but the two kids were just as fast as him. He explained that he operated at 5 volt speed, whatever that meant. But he hoped that when the kids grew up that they would be able to operate at 3 volt speed, which was faster. Whatever! He saw that I didn't understand so he explained more. It seems that he operates and moves by the clock. He said that he had a timer built into him that was set at 4.77 million ticks per second and that he could perform one instruction at every clock tick. "WOW!" He told me that he had a "Turbo" button on his chest that I could push and reset the clock to 10 million ticks per second. This would allow him to complete 10 million instructions per second. "Astounding," I said. It was no longer a mystery why he spent most of his time sipping tea. As time went on I learned a lot from 8080. But one day he became old and his son (8088) took over for him. 8088 had a son whose name was "80286" and when 8088 became old 80286 took over for him. 80286 had a son by the name of "80386" who took over for him when he got old. Presently, I am learning from a kid called "Pentium II." He moves at the unbelievable speed of 266 million ticks per second. He is more than 50 times faster than old 8080! Just to keep you up to date, 80386 had a son named "80486" and he had a son named "Pentium." Pentium is Pentium II 's father. Pentium II has a son who is a teenager called "Pentium II MMX" He has his own Rock Group and spends a lot of time showing Video's and playing Music. He is into something called "Multi-media." I hope this story helped clear the air about computers. I learned a lot from these little people and it was fun telling you about it. Some day I hope to have time to tell you about my experience with "Basic" and her daughters. Till then, get your hands on a computer and enjoy!!! |
