Path: utzoo!attcan!lsuc!hcr!ncrcan!ontenv!soley
From: soley@ontenv.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: History of PCs (also kind of long)
Message-ID: <652@ontenv.UUCP>
Date: 5 Aug 88 13:44:32 GMT
References: <5946@venera.isi.edu> <5458@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> <1876@looking.UUCP> <11228@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>
Organization: Ontario Ministry of the Environment, Toronto
Lines: 29

In article <11228@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>, bobmon@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (RAMontante) writes:
> In article <1238@flatline.UUCP> erict@flatline.UUCP (j eric townsend) writes:
> >[...]  Jobs has said that when he was looking for a chip, the 6809
> >was really expensive, and the 6502 was really cheap.  I remember something
> >about Motorola saying (in a memo) that the 6502 was something cheap
> >to fill in the gap between the 6809 and the bottom of the chip market. [...]
> 
> I really doubt all this -- Motorola didn't make the 6502, MOStek did.  MOStek
> may have been ex-Moto designers, but the 6502 wasn't a Motorola product.  Moto
> had other members of the 6800 family to fill in under the 6809.  As for prices
> you can compare those in new issues of Byte, or maybe Computer Shopper will do
> better.

Well the story I heard is this (entering serious hearsay mode now)
MOStek was seriously strapped for cash, they had about 100,000 chips
and no customers for them and no money to make more. So they went to
some show with a barrel full o' chips and sold them at about 1/10 the
current price of other microprocessors. It saved their bacon. It
established the 6502 as a cheap alternative to the Motorola chips.
Someone at MOStek decided that a decent market share at a low profit
margin was better than no business at all so the price stayed low. 

Apparently most of the original MOStek people are now at Western
Digital.
-- 
Norman Soley - Data Communications Analyst - Ontario Ministry of the Environment
UUCP:	utgpu!ontmoh!------------\              VOICE:	+1 416 323 2623
	{attcan,utzoo}!lsuc!ncrcan!ontenv!norm	
             "witty saying not available due to writers strike"