Classic Computers -- what if they would have lived on?

[BydoEmpire]

I wonder what would have happened in the Motorola vs. Intel battle if PCs weren't really around. Seeing how the Mac, Amiga and STs all used 68k processors the world might be very different if those machines dominated the computer market.

Edited December 14, 2009 by BydoEmpire

[JamesD]

Slightly right and slightly wrong there Ze-ro re : 8bits and a reliance on 8bit processors

 

Going from memory, according to a thread i saw on the A8 forum, Atari (pre tramiel) were apparently working with Rockwell on developing a 'psuedo' 16bit 6502, or was it Rockwell working with Atari (nothing to do with the 65816 by WDC) I dunno what happened to that particular project

 

The *author* of the article in MICRO magazine stated the 6516 was supposed to be in the Atari computers. Based on the date of the article and comments I believe it was supposed to be for the Atari 8 bit launch. The data provided by the manufacturer does not mention Atari so that must have been conveyed verbally. I've never seen any confirmation from anyone at Atari that such a project existed. But then I may have missed it.

 

The company behind this, Synertek, was a 2nd source for 6502 processors so it was definitely possible for them to produce such a beast, and some engineers clearly spent some time at least working out what enhancements were possible. *I* think it went beyond the drawing board stage and something in the contract for providing 6502s or inside knowledge of the 6502 design prevented them from producing it. I say that because the company denied any such project existed after the article was published. I wonder if the chip would have been released if that article hadn't been published.

 

If you look at the enhancements that chip would have had, it's very close to a 65816 without the 24 bit memory address buss enhancements. The enhancements also fell well short of the 6809 which it was clearly targeted at. It wouldn't surprise me if that article influenced the design of the 65816.

 

I think I posted where you can find pdf files of all the MICRO issues if you do a search. I believe the article was from 1978 but I'm not sure. I The author posted some additional info in a comp.sys.apple (?) thread years later.

<edit>

A quick search came up with this:

http://homepage.mac.com/jorgechamorro/a2things/PDFs/65xxx.txt

Edited December 15, 2009 by JamesD

[carmel_andrews]

Oops, Synertec and not rockwell....dunno why i was thinking rockwell

[Bruce Tomlin]

I wonder what would have happened in the Motorola vs. Intel battle if PCs weren't really around. Seeing how the Mac, Amiga and STs all used 68k processors the world might be very different if those machines dominated the computer market.

You should read the DTACK Grounded newsletter archive sometime. The main problem with the 68K was that when it was new, Motorola's marketing people only wanted to sell it for $10,000+ Unix workstations. Not (sniff!) TOY computers, and not even high-performance embedded applications. They refused to give support to anyone who wasn't in an "approved" market. Never mind that these markets could sell many orders of magnitude more chips. This is one of the reasons that IBM ended up with the 8088.

 

It was only around the time of the Mac that Moto was even beginning to soften up. They were also beating Intel in getting higher-speed chips out on time.

 

If IBM hadn't decided to make the PC at the when they did, thus creating something that not only was easy to clone, but being made by a company big enough that people would WANT to clone it, maybe things would have gone different. However, the ST still would have come from Atari, and Atari's business sense wouldn't have been any better, and it's hard to say if Commodore's would have been any better with the lack of a clone industry.

 

The Mac was a lot less clonable than the PC, having 64K and later 128K of hand-optimized code including a file system and graphics, so in that sense it wouldn't become the "next PC". And the (very readable) black & white display was too boring.

 

But IBM did make the PC, Microsoft did only license the OS to IBM and to the cloners too, and the PC did kill off the "home computer" market.