
WDC Re-releases Classic 1986 6502/65816 manual “Programming the 65816” - cmrdporcupine
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01855HL7Q
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jacquesm
The 65816 is an interesting beast. I used to have a prototype version of this
chip somewhere, though after the nth move I have no idea which of the many
crates it lives in or if I may have accidentally thrown it out (I seem to have
misplaced my heirlooms as well :( ).

The reason why this is an interesting chip is because if offers a window on
what an 'alternate universe' might have looked like if Motorola and Intel had
had a third viable contender when the CPU wars were still in their infancy.
Unfortunately the chip never found itself in a machine that was spread out
widely enough and with powerful enough hardware that its potential could be
seen. And that's a pity because it had some pretty nifty features, the
processor that it is easiest to compare to was the 80286.

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bryanlarsen
Yes, if the 65816 (or something similar) came out in 1978 (the same year as
8086, 6809 and 68000), we'd probably be in a very different world. In the late
70's, the Apple II was the dominant business machine, because it was the best
machine to run Visicalc. But in the 80's, Lotus 1-2-3 on PC completely
demolished Visicalc, and the IBM PC hegemony began.

Of course, given how badly Apple screwed up the Apple III, it's unlikely even
the 65816 could have saved it.

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cmrdporcupine
It would have been interesting if Atari or Commodore had continued their 8-bit
lines on the '816 instead of chasing after the 68k.

A 65c816 with Jay Miner's Amiga/Lorraine chipset would have been a natural
successor to the Atari 8-bit series.

My impression is the Apple IIGS was deliberately handicapped by pressure of
the Jobs/Mac partisans at Apple. It could have gone out with a higher clock
and been a contender.

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protomyth
I think the 68000 was a much better architecture than the 65816. It was nicer
to program and had 32-bit registers which was probably the result of not
really being a ISA compatible successor to either the 6800 or 6809. Perhaps if
WDC had built a 32-bit successor to 6502 instead of a 16-bit with some weird
performance issues, it would have been more interesting.

I do wish something had evolved so we could have something to power the low-
end PC market in the original 6052 price range.

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mrbill
The title says "Kindle Version" on Amazon but the only purchase option is a
$45 (!) paperback?

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mrbill
Looks like it's been fixed and the Kindle version is available for $9.99 now.

