19 Sep
2025
19 Sep
'25
1:09 p.m.
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 cisin(a)xenosoft.com