<> I missed a few... D11, T11, 68030, HP Saturn, 7811 (if we're counting
<> embedded chips that we've never programmed :-)), 8x305, Z8, probably
<I didn't quite mean that :-) I was just interested to note that some
<micros that were once well-known aren't well-represented in your list, o
<Allison's, or mine. Only one occurrence of the 9900, no F8, only one
<Cosmac, ... Perhaps three people is just too small a sample to show al
<of the ones that faded from popularity (and maybe nobody else here is
<interested :-)) Not a lot of DSPs either, though of course they're more
<"modern".
Well the F8 while known was not hobbiest fodder being aimed at embedded
systems. Same can eb said for z8. The 9900 as I refer to it was not the
TI99/4a(have those too) but a Technico SBC, due to a lack of TI support it
was not that popular. However the TI99/4a is still quite popular.
Others I've worked with 78pg11(uCOM78) were aimed at embedded
applications. I might add that my time as a product engineer at NEC in
the early '80s had me designing in that part as well as supporting it
along with ucom4 and ucom75 4bit micros.
The RCA1802 was sort of a square egg. It had popularity for a short
while. People lost interest after that, partly as RCA discontinued
it by the mid 80s. Also because it was slow and had a relatively
poor(primitive) instruction set and a total lack of high level languages
other than tinybasic.
The advent of more complete systems like apple and trs80 and decreasing
prices helped focus the market on two key players 6502 and z80 and it
would remain that way until the 68000 and 8088(x86) would displace them.
Allison
Received on Sun Apr 26 1998 - 09:30:24 BST