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From: Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com>
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Cost of handling misaligned access
Date: Wed, 5 Feb 2025 16:42:44 +0200
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
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On Tue, 4 Feb 2025 20:45 +0000 (GMT Standard Time)
jgd@cix.co.uk (John Dallman) wrote:

> In article <vnrrmg$2adb$1@gal.iecc.com>, johnl@taugh.com (John Levine)
> wrote:
> > According to MitchAlsup1 <mitchalsup@aol.com>:  
> > >while Intel 432 taught us why we did not bit
> > >aligned decoders (and a lot of other things).  
> > It was certainly an interesting experiment in yet another way that
> > Intel wanted programmers to use their computers and the programmers
> > said, naah.  
> 
> It didn't get that far. There were no low-cost i432 systems, so the
> ingenious software developers of the early 1980s carried on using more
> conventional microprocessors. 
> 

Do you mean that there were high-cost i432 systems?
I can't find anything in Wikipedia, but would guess that all
programmers/organizations that had access to i432 hardware, did not pay
money for it.
Not dissimilar to Merced 17-18 years later except that number of the
systems that was given away in early 80s was probably 3 orders of
magnitude lower than in late 90s.
Just speculating...

> The DoD wanted ADA, but the new software companies of the period
> weren't especially interested in selling to them. Making money in the
> civilian business software and games markets was far easier and more
> fun. 
> 
> John