Talk:Motorola 68000 series/Archives/2014

Latest comment: 10 years ago by 108.16.106.24 in topic IBM Compatable??


IBM Compatable??

"During the 1980s and early 1990s, when the 68000 was widely used in desktop computers, it mainly competed against Intel's x86 architecture, which to this day — other than a small minority of Transmeta VLIW processors — remains the only architecture used in IBM Compatible PCs. Generation 1 68000 CPUs primarily competed against the 16-bit 8086/8088 and 80286."

What is this about? It doesn't seem correct. Which m68k systems were IBM compatible PCs? Many m68k systems I can think of are personal computers, but not 'IBM Compatible PCs', I think. If we include other kinds of 'PCs' there doesn't seem to be anything notable left to talk about since there where many different PC architectures other than m68k and x86. If the claim is instead that some software to emulate x86 made it 'IBM PC Compatible' then: this seems to be the wrong way to say it and it has nothing to do with the m68k line of CPUs. It would only relevant to some computer vendor's historical marketing claim not to m68k generally. Emulators for x86 exist for nearly every platform today of course. ...But maybe I am misunderstanding the intended claim here? Since I don't actually understand what specific kind of PC we are talking about here... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.16.106.24 (talk) 00:50, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

What it's about is the x86 architecture; the "which to this day" clause refers to "Intel's x86 architecture". Guy Harris (talk) 07:47, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
Ok, I get it now. This seemed to imply to me that m68k was used in an 'IBM Compatible PC' (because of the way Transmeta was mentioned). I see now the point is rather it was an important architecture in PCs of that era. It still sounds a bit like there were no other major PC architectures (Z-80, ARM, and Power come to mind here), but certainly I could see arguing a case for m68k being one of the more important in this period of time and class of computer. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.16.106.24 (talk) 19:27, 18 January 2014 (UTC)