easton@aucis.UUCP (Jeff Easton) (03/29/89)
I've always wanted to ask this.... On the front page of Electronic News, Dec. 7, 1987 issue, in an article titled "Peripheral PC Kits Succumbing to Tightly Packed Chip Sets", there is this paragraph: Although the standard architecture of the PC has provided the only viable market for the consolidatied peripherals chip sets - a slight silver lining to Motorla, which lost out to Intel's 8088 in th original design-win because it could not deliver the 6809 MPU to IBM - etc, etc. ^^^^ I have never heard of this before or after this specific article. Is it true? If so, why would IBM have picked the 8 bit 6809 over the 16 bit 68000, which I belive was avaliable at roughly the same time? If true, just think of the possibilities, today we could have 33 Mhz CPU's (32 bit) that were object code compatible with the 6809. Has anyone else heard this story? Jeff Easton Zenith Data Systems
del@Data-IO.COM (Erik Lindberg) (03/30/89)
In article <392@aucis.UUCP> easton@aucis.UUCP (Jeff Easton) writes:
-true? If so, why would IBM have picked the 8 bit 6809 over the 16 bit
-68000, which I belive was avaliable at roughly the same time?
Maybe for the same reason they picked the 8 bit 8088 over the 16 bit 8086?
-If true, just think of the possibilities, today we could have 33 Mhz CPU's
-(32 bit) that were object code compatible with the 6809.
You're kidding, right? I mean, I don't see any smileys, but ...
--
del (Erik Lindberg)
uw-beaver!tikal!pilchuck!delknudsen@ihlpl.ATT.COM (Knudsen) (03/30/89)
In article <392@aucis.UUCP>, easton@aucis.UUCP (Jeff Easton) writes: > silver lining to Motorla, which lost out to Intel's 8088 in th > original design-win because it could not deliver the 6809 MPU to IBM - > I have never heard of this before or after this specific article. Is it > true? If so, why would IBM have picked the 8 bit 6809 over the 16 bit > 68000, which I belive was avaliable at roughly the same time? What I read/heard on good authority (?) was that IBM had at least three separate design teams, scattered throughout the US, each developing their own version of the future IBM PC. For whatever reason, the team (from Florida I think) with the 8088 design won the contest. I think the 68K design was "too expensive" due to its 16-bit bus (was the 68008 an afterthought?) As for the 6809, OS9 was not yet out either, but if IBM had gone with the 6809 they would have got into bed with MicroWare along (Motorola already was), and DesMoines would have double its current population ;-). At least one of the other designs used some Motorola chip. However, my own employer at that time reluctantly chose the 8086 over the 68K for an internal project because Motorola did not have the peripheral chips and the software support ready for the 68K. Intel had the infamous upgraded Intellec box, plus all their old 8080 8-bit peripheral chips worked just fine on the 8088's bus (and are easy to adapt to an 8086 too). If Motorola could have got their support (and bug free uP chips) to market a year earlier, Intel would probably be an interesting chapter in Silicon Valley history by now. Unforch'ly, when the cop brags "you can't outrun Motorola" he's talking about radios. BTW one hears rumors of OS9 for the 80386. Imagine OS9 as an alternative to OS/2 on the PS/2 machines. -- Mike Knudsen Bell Labs(AT&T) att!ihlpl!knudsen "Anyone can build a conservative design, given liberal resources." -- MJK
knudsen@ihlpl.ATT.COM (Knudsen) (03/31/89)
In article <1176@pilchuck.Data-IO.COM>, del@Data-IO.COM (Erik Lindberg) writes: > -true? If so, why would IBM have picked the 8 bit 6809 over the 16 bit > -68000, which I belive was avaliable at roughly the same time? > Maybe for the same reason they picked the 8 bit 8088 over the 16 bit 8086? I definitely recall hearing that IBM management considered that a 16-bit bus, with its bigger circuit board connectors and all, would be too expensive for a "personal" computer, so it had to use an 8088 (or 68008, or 6809?) rather than 8086 or 68000. This is really humorous when you remember that IBM originally charged close to $2K for the big iron-cased PC! Hard to imagine 16 bits being any bulkier or costlier.... -- Mike Knudsen Bell Labs(AT&T) att!ihlpl!knudsen Round and round the while() loop goes; "Whether it stops," Turing says, "no one knows!"