No Jan, I don't know what the 8048 development route was. In 1976, the 4040/4004 was apparently the most produced microprocessor in the world! I can't imagine why the development team might have moved on to the 8048 - probably one of those insane political decisions, based on a mindset that suggested both were 'small and simple' ;-)

I actually missed out on microcontrollers (we went for Z80s and then I became a 'manager' instead), only coming 'back' to dirty hands and the 8051/2 in 1993 when I set up my own design consultancy. I do remember my brother, who had just finished a PhD and was working for an electronics outfit in 1986 or 7 actually taking home trays of 8051s. They were in short supply and VERY expensive. The company didn't even want to leave them in its safe...

Both 4004 and PDP-8 (the 8k Cadillac, Erik) were a culture shock for me. I cut my teeth on PDP-11s (Macro-11) and our English offshoot of a New Jersey company was already using LSI-11s in our control systems (Western Digital made a microprocessor with a PDP-11 core for DEC - in 1975 - whilst everyone else was playing with 4 and 8 bits!!!). Then the US called - they couldn't hire anyone to program their recently developed 4004 based controller, so I wound up in NJ (perhaps I was just cheap). Boy was that different.

It was interesting to see the completely different route the PDP-11 had taken after the PDP-8. And why the latter design team upped and left and set up Data General to build Novas.

One weekend in the spring of 1976, I went to a Radio Rally (Hamfest) - I hold an amateur licence - at Princeton University. Tucked away in one corner (a big corner) was a whole bunch of people selling second-hand ASR-33 Teletypes, monitors, keyboards, racking, modules, lineprinters and other ex-mainframe bits and pieces. There were even Altair and KIM-1 kits. Talking to one of the guys at work on the Monday morning about where I'd been, he produced his copy of the NY Times, in which there was a big spread on this event - calling it the world's first ever home computer fair! I wonder if it was...

Dave