3 ms·
This is the history of Mac CPUs. The Apple I, II, and variants were 6502. The Lisa used the 68000.
by gumby 3y ago
This is the history of Mac CPUs. The Apple I, II, and variants were 6502. The Lisa used the 68000.
- cameroncooper 3y agoFun fact, the Apple 1 could also use a Motorola 6800 CPU
- gumby 3y agoIn this case that fact really is fun!
- PopePompus 3y agoI thought litigation or the threat of litigation resulted in the 6502 not being pin compatible with the 6800. How did the Apple 1 get around that?
- duskwuff 3y agoThe 6800 wasn't a drop-in replacement on the Apple 1. Installing one required some hardware modifications to the board. (It's unclear if anyone who owned one ever did this.)
- cameroncooper 3y agoThe 6501 was pin compatible with the 6800, but had its own instruction set. After the lawsuit, the pins changed and we got the 6502. This meant that if you enabled 6800 support on the Apple 1 you could drop in a 6501 and use it with software made for the 6502. If you were really ambitious you could use a 6800 but then you'd have to write a new monitor ROM. There's no evidence that this was done at the time, but about 10 years ago someone did it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ag6pWUhps7U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ag6pWUhps7U
- runjake 3y agoOne must not forget the IIgs and it's 65C816 processor -- a bizarro 16-bit variant of the 6502. :)
- monocasa 3y agoSame processor as the SNES.
- jakey_bakey 3y agoThat's cool!
- jakey_bakey 3y agoYou're extremely correct. Regrettably, I did this intentionally because "Apple CPU Architecture" is more clickable than "Mac CPU Architecture".
- gumby 3y agoAlso Apple has used lots of CPU architectures over the years in various devices (e.g. time capsules, various dongles, etc). Surely they must have RISC V deeply embedded in various locations invisible to the end user, both for cost and experience. They could possibly even be used deeply in the bowels of the M and A devices doing some random housekeeping in the storage system or who knows what. In a funny way the term “CPU” is returning to its mainframe roots with so many functional units harnessed into a system, yet at the same time having strayed so far from its original usage (with multicore, non-linear systems) as to have become meaningless.