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Looking back, I wonder how much the switch from the cheap 6502 to the expensive 68000 killed the original 8-bit companies. Both Commodore and Atari had higher

Looking back, I wonder how much the switch from the cheap 6502 to the expensive 68000 killed the original 8-bit companies. Both Commodore and Atari had higher market shares than the Apple II. It seems like playing in the higher price bracket moved them too close to the PC. It feels like people making the opposite decision of the 6502 over the 6800. Plus, I did love the 6809 and its ISA. It was fun to program.

cmrdporcupine 9y ago
Tramiel's Atari Corp did manage to keep 8-bit-ish pricing on its ST line, despite the 68k switch. But yeah, if the 65816 had come out a year or two earlier, I wonder if Amiga and Tramiel and friends would have chosen to develop on that instead. An 8/16 processor that could address larger memory regions but still could use 8-bit memory and 6502 support chips, and had the cycle efficiency and simplicity of the 6502. Apple came out with the IIgs based on it, but overpriced it.
- protomyth 9y ago
  Well, the 520ST was $799.99 for the monochrome computer, so it was quite a bit more expensive than the Atari 65XE at $99.99. If I remember correctly the 68000 itself cost north of $200 in quantities, so it was impossible to stay in the old price range. I remember a story of Commodore / Amiga trying to use the Amiga chipset with a cheaper processor. Of course they also tried it with a PA-RISC.
  - rwallace 9y ago
    I thought the 68000 was down to something like $10 by that time? Given that, the price discrepancy is surprising, since the ST was intentionally a rather simple design. What exactly made the ST have to cost that much?
    - cmrdporcupine 9y ago
      Indeed this article seems to indicate that the 68000 was $15 by 1984: http://www.nytimes.com/1984/06/29/business/motorola-s-powerful-new-chip.html http://www.nytimes.com/1984/06/29/business/motorola-s-powerf... But 512KB or 1MB of RAM was really expensive then. Atari cheaped out a bit by running their RAM a bit over its spec, tho. There were a few custom chips in it too (the Shifter [video], the MMU, the GLU [logic], and DMA chip.

cmrdporcupine 9y ago

Tramiel's Atari Corp did manage to keep 8-bit-ish pricing on its ST line, despite the 68k switch. But yeah, if the 65816 had come out a year or two earlier, I wonder if Amiga and Tramiel and friends would have chosen to develop on that instead. An 8/16 processor that could address larger memory regions but still could use 8-bit memory and 6502 support chips, and had the cycle efficiency and simplicity of the 6502. Apple came out with the IIgs based on it, but overpriced it.

protomyth 9y ago
Well, the 520ST was $799.99 for the monochrome computer, so it was quite a bit more expensive than the Atari 65XE at $99.99. If I remember correctly the 68000 itself cost north of $200 in quantities, so it was impossible to stay in the old price range. I remember a story of Commodore / Amiga trying to use the Amiga chipset with a cheaper processor. Of course they also tried it with a PA-RISC.
- rwallace 9y ago
  I thought the 68000 was down to something like $10 by that time? Given that, the price discrepancy is surprising, since the ST was intentionally a rather simple design. What exactly made the ST have to cost that much?
  - cmrdporcupine 9y ago
    Indeed this article seems to indicate that the 68000 was $15 by 1984: http://www.nytimes.com/1984/06/29/business/motorola-s-powerful-new-chip.html http://www.nytimes.com/1984/06/29/business/motorola-s-powerf... But 512KB or 1MB of RAM was really expensive then. Atari cheaped out a bit by running their RAM a bit over its spec, tho. There were a few custom chips in it too (the Shifter [video], the MMU, the GLU [logic], and DMA chip.