HP/Rumors

[jim nutt]

 > From: jv at mhres.mh.nl (Johan Vromans)
 > Message-ID: <2336 at mhres.mh.nl>
 > 
 > As I remember ... an pointer on the HP9000/500 system is
 > something you cannot treat as an numeric quantity. Of course, you
 > should not do that anyway.
 > I recall the following symptoms:
 >  - address space is not contiguous from zero to somewhere,
 >    pointers contain segment numbers and offsets;
 >  - you cannot store a pointer on disk, and read it back in
 >    another run, because your program will probably not be loaded
 >    in the same memory segments;
 >  - you cannot use the highest bits of a pointer for other
 >    purposes (as GNU Emacs does). All 32 bits contain information.

actually sounds a lot like working on an intel iapx86 microprocessor, doesn't it?  the restrictions are much the same.

jim nutt
'the computer handyman'


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