On 12/4/24 10:49, Mike Katz via cctalk wrote: > I still say the 6809 was the best 8 bit micro ever.
Perhaps, but it was also one of the last new 8-bit CPU designs, so there's that. The die had already been cast in favor of 16 bit CPUs by the time of its introduction. And it was far more *expensive* when compared with other commodity 8-biy CPUs. I recall that by 1984 or so, the OEM 10K pricing for a Z80A was under a dollar per unit. No way that the 6809, with a price north of $20 could compete with that. It was pretty much common knowledge that the 6809 was just a stopgap product, with a larger, more capable CPU in development due to be released Real Soon Now. Given the price differential of the 6809 against already established 8 bit CPUs and the specter of obsolescence, most vendors elected to wait or go with another already-established 8-bit chip. And then there's the idea that ya dance with the one that brung ya--which, in many cases was Intel or Zilog. --Chuck
