> On Sep 19, 2025, at 3:09 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
> On Fri, 19 Sep 2025, Steve Lewis via cctalk wrote:
>> just an overall simpler chip?). I didn't get the impression the Z80 was
>> "expensive" - contemporary prices that I found placed the Z80 at something
>> like $60 (or at least, under $100) and an 8080 at over $300? (but it's
>> hard to pinpoint individual price vs bulk order, and normalize across those
>> critical years of 1974-1977).
>
> Also prices were volatile; announced at one price, and then up or down on
> demand
>
>> At Lockheed (then GD), when the F-16 was first being developed, I'm told
>> they used Commodore PET's to do initial aerodynamics modeling because it's
>> BASIC had floating point support. Obviously, that's not unique to the 6502
>
> As did TRS80 ("Level 2 BASIC") where all numbers were single precision
> floating point by default!
> also AppleSoft, and many/most? of the other Microsoft BASICs.
>
> --
> Grumpy Ol' Fred [email protected]
The timeline for the story about the F-16 & PET according to Wikipedia:
20 Jan 1974: First flight of YF-16
Jan 1977: Commodore PET debuted at CES.
—Milo
