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Intel evolved the x86 line beyond 386, into Pentium Pro and then to amd64. Why did Motorolla not do the same with the 68k? I have seen discussion that treats i

Intel evolved the x86 line beyond 386, into Pentium Pro and then to amd64. Why did Motorolla not do the same with the 68k? I have seen discussion that treats it as assumed knowledge that 68k was obsolete and needed to be replaced by powerpc. But it seems like conjecture - I have not seem technical arguments, and 68k seems like a cleaner architecture to ride forward than post-286 x86.

ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
Not enough computers were sold using 68k to provide enough demand for the chips and so it couldn't compete with Intel on price and couldn't justify spending lots on research and development. Intel had the PC-compatible market and thus a huge demand for its chips.
- xtracto 3y ago
  Here's my 3rd world country perspective, from someone growing in the 80s: We never had intel chips. They were expensive. I had a Texas Instruments 286 and a cyrix 486 years later. The computer in my Dad's office were all "pc compatible" . This was a university (biology department in a God forsaken poor small city in Mexico). Someone got it bought because it was going to "change the world" (oh boy). We played TDCGA.EXE and PRINCE.EXE from its 2 51/4 floppy drives. No HDD. We heard about apple's, commodore's and other crazy computers, but they were for "gringos" or rich people. At the same time, we shared (pirated) software as if there was no tomorrow. Spread like wildfire. As and played the heck out of ID shareware. Then you had the Mexican middle upper class: whose dad bought Macintosh one of those others. They NOW had to spend all this money to get it to do something (buy software). Nobody was pirating/sharing programs, and the PC ones just didn't work. So a virtuous cycle continued and we kept buying x86. Great memories! I'm glad I was part of that dawn of PC.
tyingq 3y ago
>Were there any commercial efforts to build IDE, VESA or PCI systems around a 68k processor? Sort of. There was the VME bus. An attempt to have a standards based bus that would work across vendors, and also for the the 88k cpu. It wasn't wildly successful, but was mildly successful.
- hulitu 3y ago
  There was also Apollo. They had the Domain 3000 series pretty close to PC architecture (ISA bus). Unfortunately, HP ate them.
mixmastamyk 3y ago
The problem wasn't technical, it was the lack of "buckets of money" that intel had access to, combined with customers that demanded backwards compatibility. Intel tried at least twice to move them away to i860 or Itanic and failed. So, improve x86 was the winning bet. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37796469 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37796469

ndsipa_pomu 3y ago

Not enough computers were sold using 68k to provide enough demand for the chips and so it couldn't compete with Intel on price and couldn't justify spending lots on research and development. Intel had the PC-compatible market and thus a huge demand for its chips.

xtracto 3y ago
Here's my 3rd world country perspective, from someone growing in the 80s: We never had intel chips. They were expensive. I had a Texas Instruments 286 and a cyrix 486 years later. The computer in my Dad's office were all "pc compatible" . This was a university (biology department in a God forsaken poor small city in Mexico). Someone got it bought because it was going to "change the world" (oh boy). We played TDCGA.EXE and PRINCE.EXE from its 2 51/4 floppy drives. No HDD. We heard about apple's, commodore's and other crazy computers, but they were for "gringos" or rich people. At the same time, we shared (pirated) software as if there was no tomorrow. Spread like wildfire. As and played the heck out of ID shareware. Then you had the Mexican middle upper class: whose dad bought Macintosh one of those others. They NOW had to spend all this money to get it to do something (buy software). Nobody was pirating/sharing programs, and the PC ones just didn't work. So a virtuous cycle continued and we kept buying x86. Great memories! I'm glad I was part of that dawn of PC.

tyingq 3y ago

>Were there any commercial efforts to build IDE, VESA or PCI systems around a 68k processor? Sort of. There was the VME bus. An attempt to have a standards based bus that would work across vendors, and also for the the 88k cpu. It wasn't wildly successful, but was mildly successful.

hulitu 3y ago
There was also Apollo. They had the Domain 3000 series pretty close to PC architecture (ISA bus). Unfortunately, HP ate them.

mixmastamyk 3y ago

The problem wasn't technical, it was the lack of "buckets of money" that intel had access to, combined with customers that demanded backwards compatibility. Intel tried at least twice to move them away to i860 or Itanic and failed. So, improve x86 was the winning bet. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37796469 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37796469