On Thu, Jun 30, 2016 at 9:18 AM, William Cheswick <ches@cheswick.com> wrote:

What a different world it would be if IBM had selected the M68000

Blame that on Moto, not IBM. IBM wanted the 68K. But Moto kept pushing the 6809 on them. IBM and Tek were two of the sites that had the experimental chip that I was referring. My friend Les Crudele related the story of IBM visiting Austin (Les and Nick Tredenick were the primary 68K guys). It seems IBM wanted to use the new chip and Moto marketing kept telling them it was an experiment and was not a product. The cool new product from Moto was the 6809 and they should use that. IBM knew they wanted a 16bit processor which it was not, so they looked elsewhere.

Then again, I might have my current job if Moto marketing not been so short sighted.

Clem

PS BTW: Les has equally great stories about working with Apple BTW. My favorite is that he says, Moto tried to get Apple to put a MMU into the original Mac, but Job's would not hear of it. Not needed for a PC and all that.