1. Which was the first semiconductor company in silicon valley?


Fairchild. I don't think HP could be counted as a semiconductor company at that time.


Correct.

1b. What owners has it had?


Noyce, Deal and Grove? Or do you mean other companies like Schlumberger?


Like Schlumberger - there are more, since it's gone from the SV original to a Maine-based company.

1c. Which startups were founded by its employees?


Intel and at least one other famous one whose name escapes me. Maybe MOSTEK?


Intel is the most famous.

2. What was TI's original business?


Night vision goggles or something similar for the Army?


Nope.

3. What markets did Intel invent?


DRAM, CPU. Maybe bubble memory too.


DRAM was their original product (1103 IIRC) in 1968. CPU, too. Bubble memory is a good one. There are a couple more.

4. What was the first microprocessor?


Intel 4004.


Correct.

4b. Who ordered the first microprocessor?


Some Japanese company looking for a special purpose part. The guys at Intel convinced them that a general purpose processor would be better.


Right except for the name (so the first CPU wasn't really ordered as such).

4c. What product was it used in?


A dictation machine or something similarly mundane?


Nope.

5. What is the most popular 32-bit architecture?


Motorola 68000.


Nope

5b. About how many units of it will be shipped this year?


150 M or somesuch ungodly high number. They're very popular in automotive and similar industrial applications.


Way low.

6. Who made the first DSP?


TI's known for them, but I don't know if they were first. There might be some specialty company that was making their own programmable gate arrays with similar functionality before TI.


It was a big company (IIRC, two companies before TI).

6b. What was the first successful DSP?


The TI hitchitfachit. :-)


Right company, wrong model.

7. What is the first successful VLIW processor?


It would just be a guess. Something from IBM in the lab, or maybe some Russian design. NOT the Itanium. But it depends on how you define successful.


Successful = tens of millions sold.

8. What was Intel's first 32-bit CPU?


The i860?


Not even close.

8b. What clock rates were available?


16 MHz? 33 MHz?


Nope.

8c. What were its companion chips?


Various math coprocessors, IIRC.


Nope.

9. What was the first personal computer?


ENIAC. ;-)


Maybe the Altair, but I think it depends on how you define it.


Personal = meant for a person to use, not an organization.

9b. What processor did it use?


I'd have to google. Some 8 bit non-Intel chip.


Nope.

9c. If you wanted to add a FPU to it, what chip did Intel have available for its CPU?


Which generation? 80287, 80387. I don't recall anything earlier than the 80287 from Intel.


Nope, this is a tricky one I don't think anyone will get.

10. What was Microsoft's first product? (No, it's not mugshots!)


BASIC for the Altair, IIRC. Some sort of BASIC.


I think you're right.

11. What was Intel's first display co-processor?


I'd have to Google. I didn't think they did anything before adding some VGA helper logic to the 486, but they might have had something for the i860/i960 line. They've got slow stuff in their chipsets now, but I'd have to google for the name.


Another one I don't think even Google will help you with (hint: it might involve green screen speedup).

12. Which semiconductor company was owned by a big oil company?


I can't dig it up in my head. Do you mean Fairchild and Schlumberger?


Nope, Schlumberger is a oil field services company. I mean a member of "big oil".

13. What was good about 6502 architecture? Why didn't it scale well?


It could do some operation without touching the registers, or some such thing. There was an article on Woz that mentioned here about it a while ago, IIRC. It didn't scale because it was an ungodly primitive chip! :-) In other words, I'd have to Google.


Not really.

14. What operating system did the Apple III run?


AppleDOS?


Nope.

My recollections and guesses. What say you?


Cheers,


Scott.