[Coco] MC6809 Inards

[KnudsenMJ at aol.com]

In a message dated 10/4/06 2:25:55 PM Eastern Daylight Time,  
jdaggett at gate.net writes:

>I do  remember Nick and John's discussions on who the original chip designer 
 
>was. My point is, since he designed the chip, most likely any  inventions 
that 
>would have come about from the design of this chip  would more than likely 
be 
>assigned to Tandy/Radio Sh ack and not to  the inventor. Only the inventor 
would 
>have his name on any patents as  inventor and not the owner of the patent. 
That is 
>the right of the  assignee. 
 
You are right on both counts.  Patents are usually assigned to the  
inventor's employer, but the Patent Office insists on having real human names  attached 
to the patent.  So if you found the GIME patents or copyrights,  you'd find 
the chip designer's name.  (Well, actually, a copyright on a  "work done for 
hire" does not need to list the person's name, unlike a  patent).

>. So  Tandy would own a copyright of some form of 
>information regarding the  chip. I am not sure any search will reveal any 
deep 
>intricate details  of the chip.But worth a shot.

Tandy (now Radio Shack) probably long since threw away the GIME design, or  
the floppies it's stored on probably can't be read by anything they have  now.  
If you could find the designer and talk to him (hopefully he's  retired), he 
might remember a few useful concepts, but I doubt he saved a copy  of the gate 
design, unless he was really proud of it.
 
ISTR someone here was well along the way in "forward engineering" a  
work-alike ASIC design for the GIME -- like, we understand it well enough to  emulate 
it, so we could build one.  Probably minus the sparklies, tho  :-)
--Mike K.