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The 1.6 microsecond memory timing referenced in the brochure suggests the 0.6MHz figure. (1.6µs translates to 625KHz) Remember, no cache. If it did run at 2.5MHz, it ran at an *effective* 0.6MHz.

Adequate for most 1960s kitchen computing workloads. The complimentary programming course and bundled Shish-kabuntu were a nice touch, too. "

Note that 625 kHz x 4 = 2.5 MHz. Many CPUs used to require multiple clock cycles to execute instructions. That was the difference between a clock cycle and a machine cycle.

Enough for today too, I'd say. After all, kitchen recipes haven't become more complex, and ~1MHz is more than enough to drive the UI of a recipe storage. Although, of course, you'd take a cheap ~25MHz microcontroller today, simply because they aren't more expensive.

No, it wasn't the CPU that doomed this device.

But what we expect from computers has become more complex. First of all we'd expect a pretty and responsive GUI fully in line with all the latest apps. Secondly we'd expect to be able to do searches like, show me all cold vegetarian appetizers using eggs and asparagus, but no leeks, and we'd expect the search to be instantanious. We'd also expect it to search online for a recipe if it couldn't find anything stored locally, and to play mp3s to us while we cook. If we where even more demanding we might expect it to come up with wine suggestions based on the ingredients in a menu using some sort of AI routine. No way you could do all of that with a 25MHz microcontroller.