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From: daveh@cbmvax.cbm.UUCP (Dave Haynie)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple
Subject: Re: Re: Re: 65C816 programming weirdness; is it true?
Message-ID: <1254@cbmvax.cbmvax.cbm.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 19-Jan-87 16:51:03 EST
Article-I.D.: cbmvax.1254
Posted: Mon Jan 19 16:51:03 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 20-Jan-87 05:45:12 EST
References: <853@sdcc7.ucsd.EDU>
Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA
Lines: 52

> 
> What about the future, I wonder?  Though Mensch/Western Design
> Center has announced plans for a 32-bit version of the 658XX, who
> really wants it?  Unless you espouse orthogonality as a religion,
> and design your simplest processors from the start to be powerful
> machines temporarily hadicapped, trying to keep a family going for
> several generations for compatibility's sake gets real messy and 
> unpleasant.  I've heard little praise heaped upon the elegance of 
> the 80X86 family design, for despite a noble heritage, it has 
> hardly evolved into the programmer's dream machine of today.

Well put.  Of course, realize Mensch and his gang are the same ones who
hope someday to build a 6502 in GaAs that'll run at 100MHz.  So I never
take them too seriously.  At Commodore we received 65802 and 65816
chip samples over four years ago, but they would only run at 500KHz.
It was only this past late summer/early fall that limited quantites of
4MHz parts were available, though the spec sheets still list parts all
the way up to 8MHz.  A 32 bit version is still going to really be an
8/32 chip, if the claims of pin compatibility are to be believed, with
a maximum address range of 16Megabytes.  I think WDC was lucky to get
Apple committed to their new chip, but I'd really be surprised to see
anyone use a future version of it, unless they change their design
philosophy drastically and provide a real 32 bit mode that might
emulate the 8 bit modes without much pain.   And even at that, its an
uphill fight, at least in the mass home and business markets, to
oppose the latest and greatest from Motorola and Intel.  AT&T, TI,
National, etc. are all having their troubles with it.

> Let's keep II emulation alive
> in our machines forever, but not pretend that it should be the core 
> of future of personal computers.

That's what I keep telling 'em about C64s, too.  Modern computers, like
68000 and fast 80X86 types, should be able to emulate the old machines,
or at worst run them with a cheap expansion card.  The reasons to run
this old stuff are becoming less and less obvious, as well.  There's
no going back for most people.

> 
> 
> Grobbins
> 
> ln63wzb@sdcc18.ucsd.edu
> ...sdcsvax!sdcc7!ln63wzb
-- 
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Dave Haynie	{caip,ihnp4,allegra,seismo}!cbmvax!daveh

     "You can keep my things, they've come to take me home"
						-Peter Gabriel

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