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From: ranger@ecsvax.UUCP (Rick N. Fincher)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple
Subject: Re: 65C816 programming weirdness; is it true?
Message-ID: <2571@ecsvax.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 15-Jan-87 11:47:37 EST
Article-I.D.: ecsvax.2571
Posted: Thu Jan 15 11:47:37 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 16-Jan-87 01:32:27 EST
References: <2515@ecsvax.UUCP> <1226@cbmvax.cbmvax.cbm.UUCP> <853@sdcc7.ucsd.EDU>
Organization: UNC Educational Computing Service
Lines: 60
Summary: Limited usefulness of 32 bit 65xxx?


Most of what you say is a matter of personal preference and is not really	
arguable, but I take exception to your contention that it is not useful
to extend the life of a processor by Kludgy upgrades.  From a hardware
designer's point of view or a Computer Scientist's, it is certainly more
elegant to move to more modern architectures.  You must remember, though,
that microcomputers have moved past the stage of being the tools of a few,
to being true mass market consumer items.  When this state of affairs exists
you have to evaluate the impact of abandoning an obsolescent technology
in favor of a new 'better' technology.  Who is this technology better for?
The consumer? Or the producer and the programmer?  Sure more powerful 
machines are great for programmers, but what about the 3 million or so
consumers out there who have Apples?  Should 3 million be inconvienienced
so that a few thousand programmers won't have to work as hard to create
applications that are state of the art?  What about the billions of
dollars the consumer has invested in peripherals and software?  It's
as if you were to say "Current television technology is inferior,  it
should be scrapped and a new system with much greater capability should
be implemented", you may be absolutely right on a technical level, but
on the level of what consumers care about, you would be wrong.  People
in general don't know or care what's inside the box.  All they know is
that they either like or dislike what the box produces.  A bomb TV show
will still be a bomb on a Super-Duper 3-D Holographic TV set, where
something like the Cosby Show will be a hit on any TV set, and probably
Radio too, if that were all that we had to receive the show on.  In order
to justify a complete change of technology, the consumer will have to
perceive that the new technology offers something so superior that it  
would be worth losing the investment they currently have to get those
new capabilities.  Improvements in speed or other capability of less
than orders of magnitude will be ignored.  In order for a completely
new product to make it today, there has to be enough of a market of new
users getting their first system (people who want to get the best that 
that is available) or users who currently have machines must perceive 
that the new system offers them so much more than their old system that
they'd be foolish not to change.  The //gs versus the Amiga is a case in
point.  The Amiga is superior in many ways to the //gs, better faster
processor, hardware graphics support, multitasking operating system etc,
but it is inferior to the //gs in other ways, lack of cheap easy expandability,
lack of a wide selection of software, lack of built in networking and
perhaps most important, lack of an installed base large enough to make
developers risk money writing software for the machine. 

As machines get better and faster current technology can be modified to
at least stay in the ball park.  Of course all technology will eventually be
be replaced with something better, it is important for people like 
Commodore to keep pushing the technology forward because eventually
the mass market will catch up with them, but it won't happen overnight.
Untill then the old stuff with a new twist will still be competitive to
the consumer, who is only concerned with end results.  So I think it's
great that Bill Mensch is working on a 32 bit 65xxx.  If the current
65816's start coming out in gallium arsenide at 100+ mhz then they will
hold their relative position, in terms of capability, to GA 68000's.  I
hope to drop an accelerator board in the slot of my //gs when that happens
one day and run my existing software 30 times faster and wonder what 
things will be practical that weren't before with all that extra speed.

Rick Fincher
ranger@ecsvax   "Please give decent warning before firing up your
                 flamethrowers, so I can put on my flameproof suit :-)"
In article <853@sdcc7.ucsd.EDU>, ln63wzb@sdcc7.ucsd.EDU (Greg Robbins ) writes: