Subject: Re: T11 design WAS - Re: Inside old games machines,was: Re: Simulated CP/M-68K? From: "Ethan Dicks" <ethan.dicks at gmail.com> Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 10:33:29 -0400 To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> On 6/19/07, Robert Borsuk <rborsuk at colourfull.com> wrote: Yes (see the thread where it appears in a few video games). DEC used it as a PDP-11-instruction-set-compatible microcontroller. It appears on a few peripheral boards (the RQDX3 comes to mind), and a few other places.

For some real boots-on-the-ground history, we turn to Bob Supnik... http://simh.trailing-edge.com/semi/t11.html (I did not know about his T-11-based RT-11 box - I should ask him about it). In what? In video games? the 6100 _might_ have been a competetive architecture when it was new in the mid-to-late 1970s, but as competition against an early 8-bit micro, not a 16-bit micro, which the T-11 is. From looking at the Atari line at the time, it seems that they were positioning the T-11 against the Motorola 68000. Presumably there was some engineering or marketing or production reason to go with the T-11 over the 68000, but, as much as I like the PDP-11, I can't imagine what that would be. Perhaps the $10/unit cost that Bob Supnik cites was favorable compared to, say, trying to go over 8MHz on a 68000, but that's mere speculation. I know that at the low-point in the 68000 timeline, it was going for about $3 each in reasonable quantities, but I don't know where that curve compares to the $10 each for the T-11.

I'm not saying you _couldn't_ make a video game based on the IM6100, but it didn't happen to have been done, and would probably just end up as a demonstration of engineering prowess, not something that would have made sense from a business standpoint in 1976.