[Coco] [Color Computer] RE: [CoCo] Atari and Amiga comparison

[Alex Evans]

On  14  Mar 2007, at 1:12 PM, Mike Pepe wrote:

> Frank Pittel wrote:
>
>> I've often wondered what things would have been like if the coco had
>> been built around a 68000 unstead of a 6809.
>
> Or, better yet, if the 68000 were an extension of the 6809  
> architecture; if it had powered up in 6809 "real mode" and then  
> could have the 16/32 bit goodness switched on later.

I like the 6809, but the 68000 was a better processor because it  
didn't try to be backward compatible with any of the 6800 series.  It  
was a well thought out design with an eye to the future.  Compare  
this to the 8086 which was mnemonic compatible with the 8080 (and  
8085), and has been extended to the current crop of x86 processors  
maintaining a lot of ugly baggage and weird operating modes.