5 ms·

The 68000, like the 6809, was fun to program, and it had great documentation available from Motorola. I remember the wonderment when I received a free 68000 pr

The 68000, like the 6809, was fun to program, and it had great documentation available from Motorola. I remember the wonderment when I received a free 68000 programming manual in the mail just by sending a documentation request to them. My pre-teen self thought nothing would come of it, but Christmas came early.

jacquesm 5y ago
Ha! We're part of the same club it seems. I did the same thing in Europe and got one as well as an offer for an evaluation chip. I explained that I was just trying to work on my Atari ST and they were more than happy to send the manual, at their cost (and it was a pretty beefy book). I still have it somewhere. Motorola chips were so nice to program for compared to everything else.
- protomyth 5y ago
  I wonder if those folks know the service they did for the next generation of computer professional? I remember the blue and green books they sent me. I poured over those things. Having some big company just send me books was amazing and really made me feel like I could be a programmer. Mine are in the same box as the NeXTSTEP documentation I would have as a professional. That one little bone thrown to some nobody, poor kid in rural North Dakota was a lifesaver and light in the darkness.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    :) Mine actually helped me to troubleshoot a fault in a professionally made 68K board many years later, subtle timing bug resulting in the CPU hitting the reset vectors over and over again. If not for that reference manual I would have never found it.
ddingus 5y ago
Same! In my case, I had a family member drive me up to the local Moto office. They didn't blink an eye at some kid asking for 6809 and 68K docs. The guy who walked them up to me asked a few questions. Not to qualify, but just curious about what I was doing. At that time I had only been programming the 6809. The 68K seemed powerful and exotic to me at the time too. We had a friendly banter which left me wanting a 68K machine and a few tips filed away in my head for later. Instant Moto fan created.

jacquesm 5y ago

Ha! We're part of the same club it seems. I did the same thing in Europe and got one as well as an offer for an evaluation chip. I explained that I was just trying to work on my Atari ST and they were more than happy to send the manual, at their cost (and it was a pretty beefy book). I still have it somewhere. Motorola chips were so nice to program for compared to everything else.

protomyth 5y ago
I wonder if those folks know the service they did for the next generation of computer professional? I remember the blue and green books they sent me. I poured over those things. Having some big company just send me books was amazing and really made me feel like I could be a programmer. Mine are in the same box as the NeXTSTEP documentation I would have as a professional. That one little bone thrown to some nobody, poor kid in rural North Dakota was a lifesaver and light in the darkness.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  :) Mine actually helped me to troubleshoot a fault in a professionally made 68K board many years later, subtle timing bug resulting in the CPU hitting the reset vectors over and over again. If not for that reference manual I would have never found it.

ddingus 5y ago

Same! In my case, I had a family member drive me up to the local Moto office. They didn't blink an eye at some kid asking for 6809 and 68K docs. The guy who walked them up to me asked a few questions. Not to qualify, but just curious about what I was doing. At that time I had only been programming the 6809. The 68K seemed powerful and exotic to me at the time too. We had a friendly banter which left me wanting a 68K machine and a few tips filed away in my head for later. Instant Moto fan created.