[rescue] 6809 processors...

Paul paul at techcenter3000.com
Thu Nov 13 21:01:27 CST 2003


6809's were nice. Hitachi (IIRC) came out with the 6309 which was a 'souped
up' version of the chip...and allowed faster clock speeds. The 68k series
was loosely based on many of the 6800 ideas. And, gee, the 6809 actually had
a built in multiply! Not to mention OS/9...which is still around btw, and is
amazing in what you could do on a very cpu/ram/storage limited machine. A
multitasking GUI system in 64k? Yep. In case you're wondering, the consumer
machine was the Radio Shack Color Computer. (The RS MC-10 used a 6803
instead, but was cool in that you could run one for about 5-10 minutes on a
standard 9 volt battery) The CoCo series went up to the CoCo3 which came
standard with a whopping 128k...and could actually be expanded to 2 meg!
WooHoo! The first few shuttle launches had a lot of telemetry available via
BBS...which was run on a modded CoCo2.  Of course, the little-endianness of
the 6809 spoiled me forever into thinking (byte1*256+byte2) which somehow
seems logical.

Nowadays, the 6803 and 6809 is most often found in....power meters. Go
figure. :)

TTYL
Paul

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dave McGuire" <mcguire at neurotica.com>
To: "The Rescue List" <rescue at sunhelp.org>
Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2003 2:00 PM
Subject: Re: micros: was Re: [rescue] Bigger Iron at Home (was: SNMP, Baby!)


> On Thursday, November 13, 2003, at 02:57 PM, Scott Newell wrote:
> >>> Apple II. 6502 wasn't bad, but the different roms for
> >>>   different slots sucked.
> >>
> >>   I have to disagree here.  I find nothing particularly nice about the
> >> 6502.  Three registers??  Come ON.
> >
> > I have fond memories of messing with 6502 based systems.  I also like
> > the
> > Z-80 (especially the Z-180 variant).
>
>    I'm an old Z80-head...I love those processors.  Not quite as much as
> the PDP-11 though.
>
> >   Never really warmed up to the 6809,
> > but I understand that it was a pretty elegant chip to code.
>
>    I've heard that too, but I've not played with them.
>
>       -Dave
>
> --
> Dave McGuire                      "My tummy hurts now, but my soul
> St. Petersburg, FL                 feels a little better."     -Ed
> _______________________________________________
> rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue



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