> The end of all the 8-bit systems was pretty obvious by '89
While it might not have been as easy to see /in/ '89 in hindsight the seeds for the rise (and crowding out of other architectures) of the Intel x86 chips were already well sown and growing rapidly by then:
We all knew where it was going back in the late 80's, there was no question about that, Motorola had a hard time getting traction where it matter, the PC.