20 Nov
2009
20 Nov
'09
4:34 p.m.
On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 10:16 AM, Al Kossow <aek at bitsavers.org> wrote:
Chuck Peddle told me a couple of months ago that the
6502 was never
intended
to be a general-purpose microprocessor, it was designed to be a replacement
for hard-wired logic.
They had a die size target to hit to get to the price point they wanted
and pulled out things they thought were unnecessary for its use in that
market.
In particular, the length of the registers. I had always wondered why they
built
a microprocessor with an 8 bit stack pointer, when the previous 6800 design
had
16.
lol Who needs multiply and divide operations anyway?
Great info, I never knew that.
brian