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Originally, I thought a lot of registers would be more like the 1802 CPU in the fact that with more registers, there would be less need for external memory... There are some very intriguing features of this 'ancient' 1802 CPU I would like to bring back to life.
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my first computer was the 1802-based COSMAC ELF II. I was 14 years old and taught myself how to program in machine language using a hex keypad. I really liked the 1802's registers. Any one of the 16 register could be a stack register, program counter, or data store. I also like the 4 input bits that were directly mapped to instructions along with the Q output bit. Great times!
A friend of mine also had the COSMAC Elf which he bought as a kit and put together in 1978 or '79. He later did his senior project for his BSEE in 1981-'82 with the 1802, and the large collection of registers was one of his excuses, as it prevented the need for RAM for the project (as if that were a big deal in a one-off copy). I understand that was one of the first rad-hard processors though, so it made it into quite a few spacecraft. The performance was absolutely terrible compared to the 6502's though!
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