Xref: utzoo comp.os.cpm:2344 sci.electronics:5788
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wasatch!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!osu-cis!att!ihlpl!knudsen
From: knudsen@ihlpl.ATT.COM (Knudsen)
Newsgroups: comp.os.cpm,sci.electronics
Subject: Re: New processor rumour
Summary: 6809 8-bitters
Message-ID: <9991@ihlpl.ATT.COM>
Date: 5 Apr 89 19:26:25 GMT
References: <240@ericom.ericsson.se> <5388@lynx.UUCP>
Distribution: usa
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories - Naperville, Illinois
Lines: 14

I'll 2nd the notion that 8-bitters aren't dead yet -- maybe not
even sick.  The Motorola 6809, last & best of the 8-bitters,
is still powering the OS9 multi-tasking, windowing OS in 100's
of 1000 of Color Computers.  It's an easy and fun chip to write assembler
for (being orthogonal and having lots of PDP-11 style addressing modes
on top of a 6502-type architecture for speed and simplicity) but
also a very easy machine to compile C, Forth, and Pascal for.

 Lots of applications (data communications, word processing, MIDI music)
deal in 8-bit bytes, so 16 or 32 bit architectures are overkill.
-- 
Mike Knudsen  Bell Labs(AT&T)   att!ihlpl!knudsen
Round and round the while() loop goes;
"Whether it stops," Turing says, "no one knows!"