Re: Footnote RE: Legacy Terminology RE: DMA across PCI

[Dimiter Popoff <tgi_earth@yahoo.com>]

Don,

>....
>I believe >the concept of DMA was mentioned in Intel databooks 
>on the 8080 since it supported a way to HOLD the processor 
>so the DMA controller could do its job.  DMA was probably 
>used as a term well before then.  Maybe someone older than I 
>can enlighten us all further.

I am not an old man either (just 45 :-), I just think it will be fair
to mention Motorolas 6844 DMAC (DMA Controller). It was around with
the introduction of the 6800 family, which had the _HALT and TSC
signals (TSC later was replaced by _BREQ). I fistly used the 6844
in the 80-es, but this is another story.

I would suspect things like DMA have been around since the 60-es
if not since the 50-es; I would be very surprised if the term
originated later than the 60-es.
As a matter of fact, a lot of computer knowledge developed
then - mostly regarding OS - seems to have been 'lost'.
Which it isn't, of course, it just has not been made available
to the wider public which has the wintel stuff enforced on
itself.

Dimiter

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Dimiter Popoff
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