From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!floyd!cmcl2!philabs!sdcsvax!taylor Newsgroups: net.micro Title: wrongo on the wait states for the 68000... Article-I.D.: sdcsvax.116 Posted: Mon Feb 7 20:32:47 1983 Received: Fri Feb 11 08:40:39 1983 References: sun.197 Unlike John Gilmore and numerous others suggest, I have heard from some excellent sources (engineers at Motorola) that the 68000 uses a pre- fetch memory access system, so that while the CPU is processing an in- struction, it is simultaneously sending out a fetch instruction for the next instruction (ie memory access is one cycle ahead of the instruction that needs it) Given this system, the chip could run a HELL of a lot faster than 5Mhz. I mean, if the damn thing had proper DMA (Direct Memory Access) it could run as fast as a clock could pulse. (How do you chaps think that all the mainframes break the *cough* 5Mhz barrier? (Even the Z80B can go faster!) (actually, I do realize that the previous parenthetical comment does not apply, but what the heck!)) Flame on high... -- Dave Taylor