[TUHS] 68k prototypes & microcode

[Clem Cole]

No, that was the 16032 from nat semi.

I believe at least Nick and Les had been building oil drilling controll
systems using pdp11s and custom TTL For Schulmerger before they came to
Moto.  They were definitely pdp11 fans.   But they had used 360 systems at
UT in college.  So they idea of a 24 bit pointer stored in a 32 bit word
they took from it.

Remember the chip was a 16 chip inside.  It has 16 bit Barallel shifter and
All 32 bit operations took 2 ticks.    And int was naturally 16 bits which
is what it was in my compiler.

I think it was Jack Test's compiler from MIT that was the first one ILP32
one for the 68k.

I used to commute to work at Stellar with Les and he told me many of the
stories btw.  One of them I remember was they were worried about the
Barallel shifter because it was one of the pieces that was different
between the TTL prototype and the MOS implementation and it was the largest
pattern on the die.  It was one of the few parts of the chip that had full
spice simulation.

Clem

On Wed, Feb 3, 2021 at 8:18 PM Arthur Krewat <krewat at kilonet.net> wrote:

> On 2/3/2021 7:41 PM, John Gilmore wrote:
> > When the 68000 was announced, it was obviously head-and-shoulders better
> > than the other clunky 8-bit and 16-bit systems, with a clean 32-bit
> > architecture and a large address space.
> The 68K always reminded me of the VAX.
>
> art k.
>
> --
Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual
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