16 out of 30. Well, we're half way there

[Matt Agajanian]

Hi all.

Perhaps there were many factors. Why was it that on the 19C & 29C only 16 of the 30 registers were part of the Continouos Memory scheme?

[Eric Smith]

For continuous memory they needed CMOS RAM chips. Those held only 16 registers each. They had PMOS chips combined 1Kx10 of ROM with 16 data registers, at a lower cost than the CMOS RAM-only chip. Had they made all of the RAM from CMOS, they would have needed more chips at significantly higher cost, and it would have been difficult to fit all of the chips into the available space.

[Matt Agajanian]

O,I C (no pun intended). Well then, despite the small form factor, the Woodstocks still delivered quite a bunch of functionality.