[Coco] [magervalp at gmail.com: Re: 6809 assembly knowledge needed]

[Christian Lesage]

Gene Heskett wrote:
> Chuckle.  Having looked at the available architectures circa 1982-5, I was 
> convinced long ago that both the z-80, 8080 and the 6502 variants, were quite 
> drain bamaged, and that the 6809 was by far the smartest cpu around at the 
> time.
>   
Sure, programming the 6502 can be frustrating when you are used to the 
6809, but you have to remember that the 6502 came first ('75), and it 
was designed to be as cheap as possible. In addition, the 6502 was meant 
to be used as a microcontroller to be programmed in assembly language, 
not as a full-fledged, general purpose microprocessor to be programmed 
in C or some high-level language. It's no wonder, then, that even its 
predecessor, the 6800, had more powerful features that were not cloned, 
like 16-bit index and stack registers. I think the 6502 designers 
achieved their goals. The odd thing is that, due to its low cost, the 
6502 caught on as a general purpose microprocessor.

On the other hand, just how far can you push such a limited processor? 
That makes an interesting challenge. Even in the early days, clever 
people like Steve Wozniak would make it do tricks it wasn't designed for.