Stephen Hoffman<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://mstdn.ca/@jfmezei" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@<span>jfmezei</span></a></span> One of the reasons VAX is comparatively slow involves the condition codes, including the carry bit.</p><p>~Every VAX instruction is a test instruction, if you want it to be.</p><p>But if you break that part of the VAX design to make the architecture go faster, you might as well also break, err, alter some other VAX architectural design constraints. After some other work including Prism, that architectural replacement was Alpha.</p><p>As assemblers go, VAX is quite nice.</p><p>But assembler as a choice for app development started to fade around the era of the 3GL vs Assembler debates; the early to mid 1980s.</p><p>Section 8.4 has details of the VAX condition codes:</p><p><a href="https://docs.vmssoftware.com/docs/vsi-openvms-vax-macro-and-instruction-set-reference-manual.pdf#page156" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">docs.vmssoftware.com/docs/vsi-</span><span class="invisible">openvms-vax-macro-and-instruction-set-reference-manual.pdf#page156</span></a></p><p><a href="https://infosec.exchange/tags/vax" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>vax</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.exchange/tags/hardwarearchitecture" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>hardwarearchitecture</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.exchange/tags/retrocomputing" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>retrocomputing</span></a></p>