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Original song |
Battle Hymn of the Republic |
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Original artist |
Traditional |
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Filk author |
Tony Duell |
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Intro |
The ICL/3 rivers PERQ was one of the first machines that we would call a workstation. It had a high-speed CPU (It took several years for SUN and Apollo to get comparable graphics performance), and a user-loaded instruction set. This machine is likely to be forgotten except by a few enthusiasts around the world who have rescued such machines and restored them. This song may help to remedy the last problem! PERQ was an Acronym for PASCAL Evaluation Real Quick (Hence the last line of each verse and the chorus)
The CPU was weird, with mostly 16 bit sections, although the ALU and registers were 20 bits. Much logic was used to convert that to the 16 bit memory/IO bus
The machine was essentially a closed system with 3 boards, CPU, memory and Input/Output. The last contained Ethernet, disk controllers, real time clock, 2 RS232 ports, GPIB ,etc. |
Glory, Glory Microcoding
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the workstations called Perq
In which high speed operation isn't only a quirk
You alter the instruction set to suit your kind of work
For Pascal Eval Real Quick
Chorus:
Glory, Glory Microcoding
Writable Control Store Loading
User Instruction set holding
For Pascal Eval Real Quick
The system was designed around a bit-slice CPU
Which handles Arithmetic with Twenty bit ALU
With data got from mem'ry in a 8 byte prefetch queue
For Pascal Eval Real Quick
Chorus :
The registers are doubled in two banks called X and Y
Just like the Eleven Forty-Five and I will tell you why
So that both values can be fetched together on the fly
For Pascal Eval Real Quick
Chorus :
The microcode is sequenced by a chip from A M D
But it has to be extended by 2 more bits you see
The JMUX is for when you don't want to go linearly
For Pascal Eval Real Quick
Chorus :
Raster Operations are by a finite state machine
And you will see the results in the bit-map on the screen
Just try a G U I and you'll find out what I mean
For Pascal Eval Real Quick
Chorus :
The mem'ry card contains either one megabyte or two
And Graphics circuity is located on that board too
Either Portrait or Landscape screen - the choice is up to you
For Pascal Eval Real Quick
Chorus :
The final module has the name of Ethernet I/O
Complete with Z-eighty and peripheral chips you know
Network, disk drive, G P I B and serial ports to go
For Pascal Eval Real Quick
Chorus :
The G P I B is used for linking up the Tablet
And printers, plotters, disk drives that were taken off a PET
The ethernet port gets you on a local area net
For Pascal Eval Real Quick
Chorus :
For storage we have a winchester and a floppy drive
>From which we load the programs when the system comes alive
Both are 8 inch units - there is none of this modern five
For Pascal Eval Real Quick
Chorus :
And so we have described the system circuit modules three
C P U and E I O, not forgetting memory
Fine end unto the finest box that ever did I see
For Pascal Eval Real Quick
Chorus :
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