26 Mar
2017
26 Mar
'17
1:02 p.m.
On Mar 26, 2017, at 3:58 PM, Noel Chiappa via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
J-11 may have been later. Also, until fairly late, the DEC in-house semiconductor group
charged extremely high prices for its chips. I remember the first couple of internal
Ethernet MACs were thoroughly uncompetitive with LANCE for that reason; some vague memory
says this was finally fixed in the third generation ("TGEC").
paul
From: Bill Gunshannon
I doubt Motorolla was in the business of custom
making different size
chips, even for DEC.
So, that triggered a question in my mind: why was DEC using the 68K on this
board, anyway? They had plenty of in-house chips the could have used, e.g.
the J11. The MC68000 had only a 16-bit bus, so it's not that dissimilar in
capabilities. Why buy out? Did Motorola offer them a price they couldn't
resist, or what?