4 Jan
2021
4 Jan
'21
8:42 a.m.
I suppose that the 68K only trickled down to the
home/consumer market
after about 5 years. The original Mac was circa $2.5K and the Lisa was
around $10K -- *not* home computer prices for most people, even in the
USA.
The Sinclair QL was arguably the first affordable mass-market 68K box,
and it used the somewhat crippled 68008 and 8-bit RAM to keep costs
down.
Before the Mac, I suppose that, as Cameron points out, the accurate
comparison was with standalone multi-user machines such as the Sage
and Alpha Micro. Desktop minicomputers, really.
Agreed.
A fully provisioned IBM PC / XT in 1981-4 was pretty expensive too, that's
why 8-bit machines continued to sell well into the later 80's. 16-bit was
overkill for most home needs. Apple would not have survived the 80's
without their 8-bit machine sales, and Commodore, Atari, Tandy....
Bill