AVR-Chat

I think it's commonly accepted that IBM went with the Intel CPU for market
timing reasons - to hit the Christmas market window. The 8080 and DOS were
there but Moto was 6 months behind. If they had not been so, things may have
gone much differently. IMHO, PC OSes would have become stable and user
friendly several years sooner had it not struggled with the horrible banked
memory non-linear addressing and goofy register set architecture of the
8080, an 8008 successor.

But, VisiCalc, which I say "MADE" PCs happen, ran OK none the less, and ran
on Apples too.



-----Original Message-----
From: AVR-Chat@yahoogroups.com [mailto:AVR-Chat@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf
Of erikc
Sent: Thursday, October 20, 2005 9:32 AM
To: AVR-Chat@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [AVR-Chat] eclipse and avr-gcc?

Thomas Keller wrote:

[===]

>    Bull puckey!   I was a recipient of a pre-produciton sample of an
> MC68000  microprocessoir at about the same time that Apple Computer
> received their pre-production samples.  I was so impressed with the
> archi8tecture (which wasn't perfect, but was so far advanced over the
> x86 crap as to be totally amazing) that my nick on the intra-state
> computer chat system we had on the California State University and
> College staste-wdie timesharing computers was "68000Micronut."  When
> Apple began hinting around about their new design, and let it be known
> it was to be based on the 68K, I was thirlled.  Unitl I saw the design
> and architecture of the machine.  What a loser!

Gotta toss in my two cents worth.  Back when the 68000 and the 8086 were 
coming out, I had to decide on which part to use in a product my company 
was working on.  I had the both manuals on my desk; the Motorola one was 
fairly slender compared to the Intel one.  (like 100 pages vs 350 pages 
IIRC).  At first, I thought the Moto manual was either a preliminary or 
that they left something out, but on study, I discovered that the 
slender Moto manual contained 100% of the information I needed to apply 
the 68000 in a circuit and also to write demo code for my boss.  Whereas 
the intel manual left stuff out that I had to get from _another_ Intel book.

Oh, let's not forget the flat addressing space and the (almost) 
orthogonal instruction set that Moto used compared to Intel's 
segment:offset bullshit and baroque instruction set.  Think 8080 on 
steroids.  (I don't think Intel knows how to make a decent instruction set.)

At any rate, my bosses did the smart thing for once and went with the 
68000 and the product was a success.  Although I no longer work there, I 
understand they are using the 68000's successors (Coldfire, I think they 
call it).

erikc




 
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