Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!mcnc!ecsvax!ranger 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: