[sitkack]

> I have no clue why WDC decided to keep the same pinout as the 65816.

The entire market for this new chip would have been 100% of the people with a 65816 and only those people. Companies do this for a couple reasons, last ditch effort to get cash flow or bridge a gap in a delayed product, extend a product line another cycle, etc.

Pinouts are powerful interfaces (semantically), look at the op-amp, what a wonderful design.

*edit, turns out this chip would have gone in last model of the Apple IIGS but it was the 65816 instead.

I find this stuff fascinating, how technologies fold and morph over time. Esp with MIPS pivoting into RISC-V.