68K Macs with MacOS 7.5 still in production use...

[Fred Cisin]

>> family) that the _architecture_ was 32-bit:
On Thu, 15 Sep 2016, Chuck Guzis wrote:
> Hence my comment.  It's a matter of what to believe--Motorola or your
> lyin' eyes.  :)

Ah, but can the manufacturer be trusted?
What would motivate them to take a 32 bit processor and CALL it 16 bit?
Was that a marketing decision?  "We can call it a good competitive 32 bit 
processor, or we can make an indisputable claim that it is the BEST 16 bit 
processor!"

> 'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it
> means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'

There are more than a hundred different parameters involved.
There is no definitive agreement as to which parameter is to be used for 
the classification, nor even which parameterS.
Whenever somebody has the efrontery to build a product that has one 
classification by one parameter, and a different classification by another 
parameter, there will be disputed classifications, since different 
parameters are more or less important to each viewer.

Few, if any processors could be unambiguously classified.
What size is a
Z80?
8088?
8086?
80286?
6809?
Everybody here can agree that that is a stupid question, 
because the list of answers is "OBVIOUS".  And yet a comparison of 
answers WILL have discrepancies.

Register size would be an obvious one.  But, as soon as provision is made 
for accessing half registers and double ones, it is open to variant 
interpretations even of what the register size is.

Should we classify them, instead by their heat output?


Which part of the elephant are we looking at?


--
Grumpy Ol' Fred     		cisin at xenosoft.com