Please consider a donation to the Higher Intellect project. See https://preterhuman.net/donate.php or the Donate to Higher Intellect page for more info. |
Motorola 68000
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
In 1979, Motorola introduced the MC68000 microprocessor. Although the Mac was not the first computer to use the chip (computers such as the Apple Lisa and Xerox Star also ran on this graphically-oriented chip), the Macintosh’s future was firmly tied to it when it was selected as the brains for the Macintosh.
The 68000 processor seems very antiquated today with its 68,000 transistors and its hybrid 16- and 32-bit buses, but at the time of its development it was leading-edge. The processor could handle information internally in 32-bit chunks, although it transferred its data back to RAM or I/O in 16-bit chunks. The 68000 did not have room for cache memory, and ran at 16.67 MHz.
Gallery