Re: Past Blast - "Wonder Woman 1984" - Corp Guy Using PET

On 2025-04-05, c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> wrote:

...
>
    I still see debate over whether the 6502 was 'better'
    than the 6809. The 6502 was envisioned as the 'improved'
    6809 by the Motorola defectors - and in some ways was.
    However they also left out some registers that were
    convenient to compiler writers. So, no verdict.

 I don't have chapter and verse to quote, but back in the day I
was told that the original design of the 6502 _WAS_ superior to
the 6809, but Motorola sued on a basis of IP theft or similar,
and the 6502 was dumbed down by removing registers and/or
crippling the indexing modes.  One of the first things that
struck me about the 6502's indexing and other addressing modes
was that it looked/smelled crippled.
 Around 1980 or so, I had a short assembly program for 6502.  It
may have been a college assignment.  Just for fun, I rewrote it
for 6800 and then for 6809.  Then, I counted the number of
instructions in all three versions.  The 6800 version used 2/3
the number of instructions as the 6502 version.  The 6809 version
used half of the instructions of the 6502 version.