> On Mar 26, 2017, at 3:58 PM, Noel Chiappa via cctalk <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
>> From: Bill Gunshannon
>
>> I doubt Motorolla was in the business of custom making different size
>> chips, even for DEC.
>
> So, that triggered a question in my mind: why was DEC using the 68K on this
> board, anyway? They had plenty of in-house chips the could have used, e.g.
> the J11. The MC68000 had only a 16-bit bus, so it's not that dissimilar in
> capabilities. Why buy out? Did Motorola offer them a price they couldn't
> resist, or what?
J-11 may have been later. Also, until fairly late, the DEC in-house
semiconductor group charged extremely high prices for its chips. I remember
the first couple of internal Ethernet MACs were thoroughly uncompetitive with
LANCE for that reason; some vague memory says this was finally fixed in the
third generation ("TGEC").
paul
