[Coco] TRS-80 Color Computer: Wikipedia Article

[jdaggett at gate.net]

On 30 Nov 2009 at 15:39, Lothan wrote:

> Don't forget that Tandy did not want the Color Computer to compete with
> the 
> Model III and IV because Radio Shack considered those "business class" 
> computers even though they were inferior in many ways. The real 
> differentiator in those early days was that Radio Shack had sunk a ton of
> money into business applications for the Model III and IV and was heavily
> promoting those to small businesses and promoted the Color Computer 
> exclusively to the education/home hobbyist/gaming market.


Also consider this that Motorola by the mid 80's considered the MC6809 a dead end 
processor. By then, the MC68K series were the main processor Motorola was selling for 
MACs and other industrial computers. For embedded processors the MC6805 and the 
HC11's were better suited for that process. The MC6809 died for lack of use. Outside the 
Coco and its derivatives the MC6809 was being pushed to the back burner. 

I once told a manager that did support for the HC11 line and told him that the biggest falilure 
of the HC11 was not including the U register. He agreed with me that it would have made the 
HC11 a bit more powerful. The HC12 finally incorparated most if not all the addressing 
modes of the MC6809 but still lacks the U register. 

If only the HC12 had a fourth pointer register! That would be a fantastic processor to migrate 
MC6809 code to. 

james
james