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To: HamiltonJay
but the vast majority of the early personal computer market were 6502 based

Besides the Z-80/Z-80A computers mentioned earlier (and omitting the earlier 8080 and 8080A first generation home computers), There were a number of none of the above, some of them selling very well. The TI-99/4A was a good seller, and of course sported TI's own processor (16 bits!)

Apple/Commodore/Atari were a good chunk of the market, but I wouldn't call it vast. More like Chevy vs. Ford vs. Chrysler than Cisco.
12 posted on 05/18/2016 10:48:54 AM PDT by Dr. Sivana ("There is no limit to the amount of good you can do if you don't care who gets the credit."-R.Reagan)
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To: Dr. Sivana

About 3 million TI-99/4A computers were sold. The C-64 (based on the 6502, but with 6 extra I/O pins) sold around 17 million units (best selling computer model of all time). The VIC-20 did about another 3 million on that.

The 6502 really was the dominant processor of the time. The Z-80 was around, but was outsold about 6 to 1 by the 6502 cores.


31 posted on 05/18/2016 11:15:17 AM PDT by Shanghai Dan
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To: Dr. Sivana

If you wouldn’t call Commodore, Atari and Apple the vast majority of the personal computer/home computer market in the early 80s then I have to question where you are getting your numbers from.

C64 alone sold about 17 Million units, to this day it is still the number one selling PC of all time.. TI 99/4a was an interesting box, but they were out of the game by 83 it was discontinued, with a total sales volume of 2.8 Million units.

The Vic 20 sold 2.5 Million units over its life, and it too was a 6502 based machine.

Add the C128 which sold about 5 Million world wide, which was also a 6502 derivative, although it actually did ship with a z80 as well, for CPM mode, which was rarely used by owners.

Then you add up all the APPLE computers up to the IIGS (which was still a 65xx processor, but was a 8/16 instead of a pure 6502 8 bit architecture)... Plus the various models of the Atari PC’s and all the z80s spectrums and what not, don’t come remotely close to the volume of PC’s that were running 65xx cpus in the day.

By Volume the 65xx processor powered the overwhelming majority of personal computers in the home during this time frame... nothing else was even close in volume.


44 posted on 05/18/2016 12:28:45 PM PDT by HamiltonJay
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