taylor (02/08/83)
Unlike John Gilmore and numerous others suggest, I have heard from some excellent sources (engineers at Motorola) that the 68000 uses a pre- fetch memory access system, so that while the CPU is processing an in- struction, it is simultaneously sending out a fetch instruction for the next instruction (ie memory access is one cycle ahead of the instruction that needs it) Given this system, the chip could run a HELL of a lot faster than 5Mhz. I mean, if the damn thing had proper DMA (Direct Memory Access) it could run as fast as a clock could pulse. (How do you chaps think that all the mainframes break the *cough* 5Mhz barrier? (Even the Z80B can go faster!) (actually, I do realize that the previous parenthetical comment does not apply, but what the heck!)) Flame on high... -- Dave Taylor