Everything about Sex Computing totally explained
» The acronym SEX
(written in capital letters) redirects here. For other meanings, see Sex (disambiguation).
In computing, the
SEX assembly language mnemonic has often been used for the "
Sign EXtend" machine
instruction found in the
PDP-11 and many other computer architectures.
SEX as an assembly language mnemonic
DEC's engineers nearly got a
PDP-11 assembler (MACRO-11) that used the
SEX mnemonic (for Sign EXtend) out the door at one time, however their marketing department forced them to change it to
SXT before release.
The
RCA 1802 chip used in the early
ELF and
ELF II microcomputers had a "
SEt X register" instruction, but this seems to have had little
folkloric impact, probably because of the 1802's very low market share in the general microcomputer field.
The
Motorola 6809, used in Radio Shack's
TRS-80 Color Computer (in the US) and Dragon Data's
Dragon 32/64 home/personal computers (in the UK), actually had an official
SEX instruction; the
MOS 6502 in the
Apple II and the
Commodore VIC-20 with which it competed did not. British
hackers thought this made perfect mythic sense; after all, it was commonly observed, you could (on some theoretical level) have sex with a
dragon, but you can't have sex with an apple.
The author of
The Intel 8086 Primer, who was one of the original designers of the
Intel 8086, noted that there was originally a
SEX instruction on that processor, too. He says that
Intel management got cold feet and decreed that it be changed, and thus the instruction was renamed
CBW and CWD (depending on what was being extended). The
Intel 8048 microcontroller (used for example in the original
IBM PC keyboard) is also missing straight
SEX but has
logical-or and
logical-and instructions
ORL and
ANL.
In NEC's
SX architecture, the
SEX instruction stands for "Save EXecution counter". The Execution Counter increments once for every
SX instruction executed.
SEX in software: rarely used jargon
The
TLA SEX has humorously been said to stand for
Software
EXchange, meaning copying of software. As
file sharing has sometimes spread
computer viruses, it has been stated that “illicit SEX can transmit viral diseases to your computer.”
Other sightings
The Commodore 64 Video Interface Chip (VIC) II contains registers to double the size of the hardware sprites in one or both directions. The register $d017 (Sprite EXpand Y) contains 1 bit per sprite to allow expansion in the Y direction, while $d01d (Sprite EXpand X) alters the X size in the same manner.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Sex Computing'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://sex__computing.totallyexplained.com">SEX (computing) Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
