Microprocessor Family Tree
Below is a little microprocessor history. Perhaps some of the ol' timers here will recognize a few of these integrated circuits. I have a special place in my heart for the Intel 8080 chip.
Image copied, without permission, from the now defunct Creative Computing magazine, Vol. 11, No. 6, June 1985.
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Missing from the 6502 line: 65816. Missing on the 6800 line: 6805, 6808. I am using both the 65816 and the 6808 in robots, and DSP is being done as part of the robot's function to process the incoming RF signal and for sensor noise immunity.
While we're reminiscing, here is an app note for the MC1496 balanced modulator/demodulator, made by Motorola, which I used in a video modulator in 1983. It has eight (count-em!) transistors. You can still buy it today.
Neil
Hi Neil. It would be nice to have one of those MC1496 chips on an evaluation board for experimentation. Then I could find out if any of that "modulation theory" stuff is actually true.
One early computer to use the Motorola 68000 was the Hewlett Packard 9826A (and later 9836).
Back in 1982 the company I worked for used several of them as instrument controllers to drive Function Generators, Spectrum Analyzers etc via IEEE-488.
They were quite fast (for their time) and very reliable. As long as you were happy with HP basic.
Hi woodpecker. Wow! The cost of that HP 9826A in 2019 dollars is $22,500.
(It had 128k of RAM memory. Ha ha.)
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