From: Cameron Kaiser (spectre_at_floodgap.com)
Date: 2003-11-07 02:51:46
> I think there's a document on some C= site that straightens out and details
> the whole story, but in general it's true. If I recall correctly, the gist
> of it is that while working at Motorola, they wanted to "do" a PDP-8 on a
> chip, which became the 6800. In the meantime, the PDP-11 had come out.
> They worked on a microprocessor version of that, but Motorola wasn't
> interested in developing it (we've got ONE microprocessor -- how many do you
> need?), so they left and started MOS. Their "PDP-11" work became the 6501,
> but because they'd worked on it at Motorola, the company considered it their
> intellectual property and sent their lawyers after MOS. MOS agreed not to
> market the 6501, and developed a variation, the 6502. -- Apologies for any
> details I've screwed up (it's been some time since I read about this), but I
> think that's pretty much the story, and in fact the 6800 and 6502 were done
> by the same people. Presumably they didn't entirely scrap their earlier
> work, and carried a lot of the design over to the 6502.
AFAIK, though, Motorola still sued them anyway, which led to Commodore's
acquisition of the company.
--
---------------------------------- personal: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --
Cameron Kaiser, Floodgap Systems Ltd * So. Calif., USA * ckaiser@floodgap.com
-- He who Laughs, Lasts. ------------------------------------------------------
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