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From: farren@well.sf.ca.us (Mike Farren)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: 8-bit death
Message-ID: <24582@well.sf.ca.us>
Date: 4 May 91 07:29:42 GMT
References: <1991Apr28.122439.13393@sugar.hackercorp.com> <1991Apr28.162045.15585@daffy.cs.wisc.edu> <1991Apr30.112820.2451@sugar.hackercorp.com> <1991May1.064455.3058@kessner.denver.co.us> <21135@cbmvax.commodore.com>
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daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie) writes:

>It was obviously not reasonable to anyone but Intel.  They felt it was 
>reasonable because it made the 8086/8 assembly code very similar to 8080/5
>assembly code.  

Not really.  That's much more a matter of choice of mnemonics, rather than
architectural similarity.  The 8086 differed significantly from the 8080/8085,
with only some basic architectural decisions (few registers, somewhat skewed
addressing modes) making it "easy" to port assembly code between the two.

The 8086, ***at the time it was introduced***, was a big step up.  Until that
time, the only 16-bit processors you could get were the National Semiconductor
IMP-16 and the Texas Instruments TI9900, both of which were weird, weird, 
weird, both in the hardware and the software.  The 8086, in comparison, was
a delight.  Of course, Motorola did the 68000 a year or two later, but for
quite a while, you chose an 8086 or nothing if you wanted a reasonable
16-bit processor.
-- 
Mike Farren 				     farren@well.sf.ca.us