3 Jun
2013
3 Jun
'13
9 p.m.
On Jun 3, 2013, at 3:48 PM, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
On 3 June 2013 20:04, Fred Cisin <cisin at
xenosoft.com> wrote:
Interestingly enough, it was originally a 6809 design! The 6809
turned out to be underpowered for what they were trying to do,
though, so they moved to the next step up.
- Dave
On the 68000, they abandoned all chance of ANY
compatability, to build
"THE BEST 16 bit processor" (arguably succeeding). Not "too little",
but
almost "too late". X86 and MS-DOS dominated the market. Fortunately,
Jobs' "clean room" design team for the Lisa had no "real-world"
experience, and no clue to even consider working from old designs, and
using any old software. That was one of Jobs' major goals. After the
fiasco with the Apple /// that put Apple on the rocks, he was determined
that the new design would not be tainted by ANY knowledge of anything
previous. So, they picked a processor from spec sheets, and the 68000 was
the clear winner. They designed from scratch. When it came to software,
they also had to design from scratch, there did not exist any 68000
compatible, nor even easily portable code. They didn't even know to
CONSIDER compatability. Even the drives had to be different, with an
extra slot to make it easier to put thumbprints on the media.
The "Maserati of the mind" was a design team dream. priced accordingly,
and with no place to carry a bag of groceries.
Fortunately, (after Jobs was out), the Mac was
designed as a newer version
of a Lisa (and cutting the corners necessary to get it into the price
curve, albeit near the peak - does Apple still hold all records for
highest manufacturing mark-up?)
Jobs was part of the Mac team, you know; indeed he is largely
responsible for it being what it is. Jef Raskin's original design was
radically different.