[Coco] Re: wondering about 68k machines

[jdaggett at gate.net]

That may have been an original idea but that concept never materialized. At least 
not from Motorola's doings. 

They did produce a computer board that used a 6809. Configured with 64K of ram 
expandable to 128K and 32K of video ram. Also onboard was a GPIB controller, two 
serial ports a paralell port, and a 765 floppy disk controller.  Available OSes were 
TSC Flex and OS9 Level 1. 

A very large board, about 9x12 inches. The unit as far as I remember never 
shipped. As employee, I got a chance at the bare PCB and started to populate the 
thing. 

It seemed from inside that Motorola never was really interested in getting into the 
PC market. And when they did try it was way to late and what they did make was a 
flop. They were better off just a supplier of chips and let someone else do the 
marketing and manufacturering of PCs. 

Their best bet was the route they went and that was embedded processors.Of which 
the 68HC11E series was probably the most popular sold at one time. Sold tens of 
millions of those buggars. 

james
On 10 Jul 2005 at 22:56, Torsten Dittel wrote:

To:             	coco at maltedmedia.com
From:           	Torsten Dittel <Torsten at Dittel.info>
Date sent:      	Sun, 10 Jul 2005 22:56:01 +0200
Subject:        	[Coco] Re: wondering about 68k machines
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> >  with regard to peripheral access. The 6809 and 68K use different
> >  state machines. >>
> > 
> >        What was the purpose of that tho?   Is there some advantage
> >        to
> > this configuration?     Why didn't they just extend the buses and
> > clock speed of the 6809 and maybe even give it a 6809 compatiblity
> > mode sorta like Intel did for the 8086 in later 80x86  cpu's?   
> > Wouldn't that have been sweet?  :))
> 
> AFAIK the 6809 and the 68K where developed at the same time and
> planned to be a (68K) server and (6809) clients setup.
> 
> Torsten
> 
> 
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