Talk:3M computer

Megapixel in a megabyte?

There's something unclear about this article. Even for a computer with only 16 colors or gray levels (4 bits per pixel), a 1 megapixel frame buffer alone would take half the 1 megabyte of RAM. Where did these 3M computers put the frame buffer? --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 11:02, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I think screen memory was not memory mapped, as dual-ported ram was very expensive, so it was not considered part of the megabyte of memory. Also they probably were talking about 1 bit per pixel (ie 2 colors, black and white) so this would be 128K bytes.Spitzak (talk) 05:35, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes: a "frame buffer" is a physical device with its own video memory -- that's what makes it a buffer. Cheers,NapoliRoma (talk) 05:55, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Oh yes (I was part of a team that developed one of them) megapixel black and white displays were expensive enough at the time; it was several years before gray scale or color was affordable at that resolution. Sould probably say this. W Nowicki (talk) 16:51, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Improper hatnote

Cybercobra (talk · contribs) removed:

{{dablink|This term is unrelated to the [[3M]] Company.}}

Please explain why this hatnote is improper. People who end up at this article might confuse "3M computer" with a computer made by 3M. --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 14:43, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

It's not necessary because there's no circumstance it which it would help navigation. Someone looking for the 3M computer would search for either "3M" or "3M computer". 3M has a hatnote leading here and the latter is the title of this very article. 3M-the-company, from what I can gather, has never made computers, thus there is no reason anyone would confuse computers-made-by-3M with the-3M-computer, or include the word "computer" when looking for the company. Thus, the hatnote falls under either the "Legitimate information about the topic" or "Trivial information" prohibitions on WP:HATNOTE. --Cybercobra (talk) 17:16, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Mixing MIPS and MegaFLOP

The original 3M construct was for Memory, Megapixels, and MIPS (Million Instructions per Second). I clearly recall Reddy and others cite this version. (source: Journal of Evolution and Technology . 1998. Vol. 1 Hans Moravec - When will computer hardware match the human brain?)

Not clear how megaflops (Floating Point operations per second) even entered into this, but once you add another 'M' category we're talking about a 4M machine, not a 3M one.