68000 - The CPU ahead of its time

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Those were the days... Motorola prominently placed ads for the 68020 on the back cover of German computer magazines. This one from the 68000er/ST-Magazin August 1988 issue.

#AtariST #retrocomputing #motorola #MC68k

Forty years ago today, the Commodore Amiga 1000 was released to the world. With its unprecedented graphics & sound capabilities, powerful 16-bit CPU and custom chipset, and UNIX-like multitasking OS, the Amiga was a truly revolutionary system for its time. And, many are still in use to this day, with the platform seeing new software and hardware development from month to month.

I presently have three, myself. :-)

Happy 40th, Amiga!

#Amiga #CommodoreAmiga #vintagtecomputing #retrocomputing #retrocomputers #computinghistory #computers #MC68K #AmigaDOS #AmigaOS #tech #technews #vintagetech

I am looking for an Amiga 2000 CPU accelerator that features a physical enable/disable switch.

Anyone have one sitting around they're looking to sell? I'm using a 68020 accelerator now, so anything would be faster.

#Amiga #Amiga2000 #hardware #vintagecomputing #retrocomputing #retrocomputers #accelerators #CommodoreAmiga #MC68K #Motorola

AmigaOS updated in 2025 for some reason

: Hyperion ships another patch, which is nice

The Register

Thinking of NEXTSTEP this morning...I'd guess many aren't aware of the unusual color display arrangement.

The NeXTstation, which was the first "affordable" color solution for NEXTSTEP, has a 16-bit framebuffer, but instead of rendering the desktop in 65,536 colors (as per Windows or Mac hardware, say), it rendered in 12-bit color with 4-bits of alpha channel (transparency).

That means it had a palette of 4096 colors, with all colors available at once on the display (not like, say, the Amiga or Apple IIgs with a 4096 color palette, but video modes with a small subset of those colors available (yes, yes, HAM mode excluded). Additionally, anything on the screen had 16 levels of opacity available.

It's interesting to see in person, on the actual hardware (especially on a good LCD display). With dithering, it looks very close to 24-bit truecolor.

(The NeXT Dimension color board for the Cube allowed 24-bit color with 8-bits alpha, but that was not so frequently used -- less so than most NeXT hardware even...)

But that's not nearly the weirdest that NEXTSTEP-capable hardware got, when it came to color video display...

#NeXT #NEXTSTEP #NeXTstation #NeXTCube #OS #OpenStep #DisplayPostScript #PostScript #GUI #UNIX #MC68K #vintagecomputing #retrocomputing #computinghistory #SteveJobs #tech

Oh le joli microprocesseur 8/16/32 bits (c'est compliqué).
Il va falloir que je fasse quelque chose avec ça !
#mc68k

@techokami @koakuma @stman @geerlingguy MC is the prefix for #Motorola Chips.