Path: csiph.com!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!nntp.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: John Ames Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.vintage,comp.os.linux.misc Subject: Re: Early-2014 Macbook Air and Linux Mint Cinnamon Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2026 08:29:53 -0700 Organization: A place where nothing fits quite right Lines: 24 Message-ID: <20260624082953.000051eb@gmail.com> References: <1115q51$la$1@dont-email.me> <11165cp$3uc0$1@dont-email.me> <1117u54$iqhs$1@dont-email.me> <1118486$h4pm$1@news1.tnib.de> <111fbuv$2lq9d$8@dont-email.me> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Injection-Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2026 15:29:56 +0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; logging-data="3253885"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1/HZbwikIZqSeYWOD2FubdJ4IVi/oTly+Y="; posting-host="933d100d7f22ccb80a65512efe2ffa55" Cancel-Lock: sha1:RRgc4K5IRqjzOS4+Fc5ZQZhFMXE= sha256:TCb47Vthz+YBcZSi8FuSpGSElQU7XsVbkUP90IYvRYY= sha1:tW8z6QtF9wrFET3/Ea5Qlz+Qu28= X-Newsreader: Claws Mail 4.3.0 (GTK 3.24.42; x86_64-w64-mingw32) Xref: csiph.com comp.sys.mac.vintage:1723 comp.os.linux.misc:88350 On Wed, 24 Jun 2026 12:07:47 +0200 "Carlos E. R." wrote: > An accumulator is not a register. It is different, you can do > operations on it. Maybe on current processors the difference is not > that big. The specifics depend on the architecture in question, but generally speaking "accumulator" is used for a general-purpose register in an architecture where there are other, non-general-purpose ones - e.g. the 6502, which has A (which most of the ALU instructions work on) plus the X and Y registers, which are index registers but can also be used as counters or spare registers for intermediate values in a pinch. Other architectures take a different approach, and treat most or all registers as general-purpose - e.g. the PDP-11, and any RISC design I've ever heard of. Some split the difference, with a set of general- purpose registers plus a set of specialized ones (the 68k, which has eight GPRs and eight address registers.) And then there's the 8086, in which all registers are *sorta* general- purpose, except they also all have special functions the others don't, except when you can override them, but sometimes you can't... :/