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by cmrdporcupine 1665 days ago
I feel like the right way to do it would have been to have shipped a C64 compatibility mode in the Amiga, instead. An A500+ with a 100% C64 compatible mode capable of running a C64 in a window even, IMHO would have been great product that could have sold like gangbusters because the C64 was still a hot selling product right through the late 80s. I can't imagine it would have been that expensive to do given how well understood the C64 architecture was at that point.

Either that or have built the Amiga around a 65816 or similar instead of 68000. Like the IIgs but with even better sound and graphics.
1 comments
rbanffy 1665 days ago
> Either that or have built the Amiga around a 65816 or similar instead of 68000.

This would be a huge mistake. The 68000 was much more elegant and had a way forward, something the 65816 never had. Had they gone the 65816 route, there would never be an Amiga with a better CPU except, maybe, a faster one.

And the whole Amiga 1000/2000/500/600 was saddled with TV signal timing dependencies that made it more difficult to have better graphics and ended up having to play catch-up with VGA and Sound Blaster.

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rasz 1664 days ago
65816 at 7MHz would be faster than 68000 despite 8 bit databus. one modified for full 16bit would fly circles around motorola. Bill Mensch would have no problem extending and growing this chip as long as Commodore was buying. 65816 already has reserved mnemonic for expanding instruction set further.
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rbanffy 1664 days ago
The 65816 (much like the 6502 before it) punched way above its weight, but that'd not be enough in the long term.

There was a point neither IBM nor Motorola cared about making PPC CPUs for Apple - that's why Apple moved to Intel. Moving to a bespoke, Apple-only CPU, would only precipitate things by making a series of CPUs just for Apple. Not sure WDC would be able to rival the investment of the big CPU shops of the time.

If, instead of tapping WDC they went to MOS with a roadmap that could accommodate both Apple and Commodore, maybe history would be different. In either case, these are parallel universes I'd love to observe.

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