On Mon, 4 Jan 2021 at 17:42, Bill Degnan <billdeg...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Agreed. > > A fully provisioned IBM PC / XT in 1981-4 was pretty expensive too, that's > why 8-bit machines continued to sell well into the later 80's. 16-bit was > overkill for most home needs. Apple would not have survived the 80's without > their 8-bit machine sales, and Commodore, Atari, Tandy.... Definitely true. And one thing that interests me is the double factoid: [1] The companies that threw away their 8-bit line and did something totally new for their 16-bit lines generally did better, and attempts at backwards-compatibility failed _except_ [2] For Intel/MICROS~1, who somehow managed to smoothly transition from 8/16 → true 16-bit → 32-bit → 64-bit → multi-CPU → multi-core/multi-CPU, across multiple expansion buses, memory architectures and more... -- Liam Proven – Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk – gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven – Skype: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 – ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
