carlosefr,

Around the time I was born (1979), Atari's "Asteroids" was about to appear and Namco's "Galaxian" had improved over the previous year's "Space Invaders" with tile-based color graphics.

Both used existing 8-bit CPUs (MOS' 6502 and Zilog's Z80 respectively) but 1979 also saw the introduction of the two most significant 16-bit CPUs:

Intel's 8088 and Motorola's 68000...

1/2 🧵

#retrogaming #computing #history #arcade

Screen capture of Namco's "Galaxian" (September 1979) running under emulation (FinalBurn Neo). Galaxian's original hardware used a Z80 CPU (1976).

carlosefr,

Motorola's 68000, with its 32-bit registers and 24-bit flat addresses, was an advancement.

Intel's 8088 was just a cost-reduced (8-bit data bus) 8086. It might've been forgotten if IBM hadn't chosen it for the PC, over the 68000 no less.

But the 68000 still saw lots of use in arcades, consoles and computers – Neo Geo MVS, Mega Drive, Amiga...

Thanks to AMD, the x86 went 64-bit in 2000 and is still thriving, while the 68000 got replaced in 1992 by the PowerPC.

2/2 🧵

Microscope photo of a Motorola 68000 die. From: http://www.visual6502.org/images/pages/Motorola_68000.html

carlosefr,

The Intel 8088 had ~29,000 transistors. The Motorola 68000 had quite a few more, can you guess how many?

Yes... it had ~68,000 transistors!

https://spectrum.ieee.org/chip-hall-of-fame-motorola-mc68000-microprocessor

TIL 🤯

If you think the older Motorola 6800 had ~6,800 transistors, it did not. It had ~4,100.

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