[Coco] [magervalp at gmail.com: Re: 6809 assembly knowledge needed]

[Gene Heskett]

On Thursday 07 January 2010, Christian Lesage wrote:
>Gene Heskett wrote:
>> Chuckle.  Having looked at the available architectures circa 1982-5, I
>> was convinced long ago that both the z-80, 8080 and the 6502 variants,
>> were quite drain bamaged, and that the 6809 was by far the smartest cpu
>> around at the time.
>
>Sure, programming the 6502 can be frustrating when you are used to the
>6809, but you have to remember that the 6502 came first ('75), and it
>was designed to be as cheap as possible. In addition, the 6502 was meant
>to be used as a microcontroller to be programmed in assembly language,
>not as a full-fledged, general purpose microprocessor to be programmed
>in C or some high-level language. It's no wonder, then, that even its
>predecessor, the 6800, had more powerful features that were not cloned,
>like 16-bit index and stack registers. I think the 6502 designers
>achieved their goals. The odd thing is that, due to its low cost, the
>6502 caught on as a general purpose microprocessor.
>
>On the other hand, just how far can you push such a limited processor?
>That makes an interesting challenge. Even in the early days, clever
>people like Steve Wozniak would make it do tricks it wasn't designed for.
>
>
And I expect Woz was the driving force behind the 65816, which I am not 
familiar enough with to judge.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
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