4 ms·

The dual accumulator and dual stack pointer design seem like they would make this one of the most straight forward 8-bitters to program. What home computers use

The dual accumulator and dual stack pointer design seem like they would make this one of the most straight forward 8-bitters to program. What home computers used this? I remember reading about a Hitachi clone that extended it to use four accumulators that could either be paired into two 16-bit accumulators or all joint into a single 32 bit accumulator.

jonsen 13y ago
What home computers used this? : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWTPC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWTPC
- avifreedman 13y ago
  There was also the GIMIX, and of course later the Radio Shack Color Computer. A (ugh single 5.25" floppy) SWTPC 6809 system was my first "home" computer system. Flex was a great simple operating system. Anyone remember Frank Hogg for CoCo ports of Flex? FYI, '68 Micro Journal is available online or on CD, though I have a full print set and a few SWTPCs if anyone wants to do a 6809 get together and hackfest at some point.
  - jonsen 13y ago
    Flex was great. I disassembled it all to learn its internals. Then implemented print spooling, RAM-disk, and dual tasking by RAM bank switching, for a 6809 based computer I was co-developing. But then the IBM PC took over the world :/
joezydeco 13y ago
The Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer was the most popular home computer in the USA to use the 6809. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Color_Computer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Color_Computer Motorola intended the 6809 as a transition between their popular 6800 series and the future 68000 line. The '09 could execute 6800 code with minimal modification.
- Estragon 13y ago
  I learned BASIC, Forth and 6809 assembly on one of these. Fond memories.
jonsen 13y ago
You are right. The 6809 was relatively straight forward to program. It had a highly orthogonal architecture which made it a very effective and pleasing framework to think in.
alan-crowe 13y ago
My home made one that I got working in 1981. A friend had built a machine around a 6800 and I had used the 6800 during a vacation job at Ferranti. The single index register of the 6800 was a pain. One was always swapping indexes between X and RAM. Should I build a 6800 machine and suffer? The 68000 was being talked about and was going to be a lovely machine for assembler programmers, somewhat like the IBM360. But that could be a long wait for a processor which might be beyond my budget at first. So I went with the 6809. It was enough of an improvement over the 6800 to be bearable and available and reasonably priced. (The 6502 had two index registers, which was nice, but they were 8 bit, and I had ambitions to write a Lisp for my machine and would certainly want 16 address registers.)
renox 13y ago
>What home computers used this? In France, the 6809 was used in several computers (TO7 for example) widely deployed in schools and also purchased by many: my parents bought me one. For its time it was nice, but I cannot help thinking than RISCs are more 'elegant'.

jonsen 13y ago

What home computers used this? : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWTPC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWTPC

avifreedman 13y ago
There was also the GIMIX, and of course later the Radio Shack Color Computer. A (ugh single 5.25" floppy) SWTPC 6809 system was my first "home" computer system. Flex was a great simple operating system. Anyone remember Frank Hogg for CoCo ports of Flex? FYI, '68 Micro Journal is available online or on CD, though I have a full print set and a few SWTPCs if anyone wants to do a 6809 get together and hackfest at some point.
- jonsen 13y ago
  Flex was great. I disassembled it all to learn its internals. Then implemented print spooling, RAM-disk, and dual tasking by RAM bank switching, for a 6809 based computer I was co-developing. But then the IBM PC took over the world :/

joezydeco 13y ago

The Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer was the most popular home computer in the USA to use the 6809. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Color_Computer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Color_Computer Motorola intended the 6809 as a transition between their popular 6800 series and the future 68000 line. The '09 could execute 6800 code with minimal modification.

Estragon 13y ago
I learned BASIC, Forth and 6809 assembly on one of these. Fond memories.

jonsen 13y ago

You are right. The 6809 was relatively straight forward to program. It had a highly orthogonal architecture which made it a very effective and pleasing framework to think in.

alan-crowe 13y ago

My home made one that I got working in 1981. A friend had built a machine around a 6800 and I had used the 6800 during a vacation job at Ferranti. The single index register of the 6800 was a pain. One was always swapping indexes between X and RAM. Should I build a 6800 machine and suffer? The 68000 was being talked about and was going to be a lovely machine for assembler programmers, somewhat like the IBM360. But that could be a long wait for a processor which might be beyond my budget at first. So I went with the 6809. It was enough of an improvement over the 6800 to be bearable and available and reasonably priced. (The 6502 had two index registers, which was nice, but they were 8 bit, and I had ambitions to write a Lisp for my machine and would certainly want 16 address registers.)

renox 13y ago

>What home computers used this? In France, the 6809 was used in several computers (TO7 for example) widely deployed in schools and also purchased by many: my parents bought me one. For its time it was nice, but I cannot help thinking than RISCs are more 'elegant'.