No wounder old coders love the #MC68k!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njGWWg69B4A

#68k #motorola #RetroComputing #CPU #Architecture #Arcade #RetroGaming #DemoScene

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

Playing Rogue for the Mac.
. . .

#Rogue #Mac #Macintosh #macgaming #retrogaming #Epyx #Atari #AtariST #Spectre #MagicSac #emulation #vintagecomputing #retrocomputing #retrocomputers #CRT #MC68K #video #setups #vintageapple #games #roguelikes #ByteCellar

Hyperion releases AmigaOS 3.2.3, here in 2025. [The Register]

https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/10/amigaos_3_2_3/

#Amiga #AmigaOS #AmigaDOS #vintagecomputing #retrocomputing #Workbench #MC68K #Commodore #HyperionEntertainment #news #technews #OS #tech #blog

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

Here's a pretty thing that came in the mail today.

#MC68010 #Motorola #vintagecomputing #retrocomputing #CPU #retrocomputers #tech #vintagetech #SoC #desk #photo #ceramic #gold #MC68K #ByteCellar

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

• Also I've seen it always abbreviated as #mc68k in #FLOSS...

@koakuma @techokami also #UltraSparcT2 as cool as it was at release (including dual 10Gbit-NICs and hardware RNG on die) has a lot of things noone would want to deal with in 2024 (i.e. DDR2-FBDIMMs).

• Plus #RISCv unlike #SPARCv9 amd #OpenPOWER was designed on a clean slate in academia by people who had dealt with #RISC & #CISC architectures and needed something #OpenSource as they can't just violate NDAs nilly-willy for teaching.

Pretty shure @stman could write an entire curriculum on why #SPARC, #PowerPC, #s390x and even #ARM / #ARM64 should not be pursued and why #mc68k died alongside the unfixable-by-design mess that is #ix86 & #amd64.

• Plus RISCv's ISA has been an #OpenStandard from the get go, whereas the efforts by #Oracle nee #Sun and #IBM were mostly done in reaction to it and to keep the few invested licensees and co-designers onboard and not drop the platform entirely...

Look, I'd love to get my hands on some Sun SPARC Hardware but aside from making my room hot and noisy there isn't much to justify blowing likely over half a Euro per hour (electricity price: € 0,40/kWh) just to have it up and running, as compared to a #PiCluster like those @geerlingguy had built multiple times are more practical.

• For comparison: It's like driving a 2011 Ford CVPI-71 with a 11,9l SONNY'S SAR-729 engine for commuting from Leverkusen to Köln when there's ample of affordable, reliable and fast public transport that gets me faster from Opladen to Deutz than it takes to drive up the 15th deck of a parking garage just to find a spot to park that 5,7m long street yacht where one can climb out of it from the doors and not the trunk!

And that's just bottom-billing, low-cost ARM SoC tech designed for a price tag (to the point that until the #Pi5 they neither included a power button nor #RTC onboard!

• OFC RISC-V is still 5-25+ years behind #ARMv9 solely based off #patents, #budget and #PersonnelHours invested in it, so it's barely getting on-par with 10-20yr old ARM devices in terms.of power and support.

@polpo jealous the X68000 seems.to ne a cool machine!

#x68000 #x68k #mc68k

@stman @GrapheneOS @mikesixgolf @tasket yeah, the good ol' days of the "AIM Alliance" are long gone and #mc68k basically has been abandoned...

It's really depressing to see "good tech" get scrapped and sidelined (like #ppc64 / #ppc64le & #SPARCv9 as well as #mc68k) and abandoned.

To me #ARM64 is at best a "mixed bag" but I'd rather say it's a "fundamentally fucked up architecture" and I can't wait for good & auditable #RISCv to hit mainstream, even tho that'll take 10-25 years at minimum...

Are there any #MC68000 #mc68k gurus in the audience?
If a program running in usermode accesses the vectors via a data access instruction - what does the 68010 indicate on the function code pins?
Are vector reads escalated to being supervisor code/data reads, even though the code which triggered them is user-mode?

I'm trying to figure out why dereferencing a null pointer is 'fine' on a real #UnixPC but causes problems with the FreeBee emulator (if I disable vector access promotion).

Someone asked me about the PGA chip sitting on my Mac Studio in a recent toot showing some little glass figurines I brought back from Murano, Italy. They asked if it was a 386. It is, in fact, a ceraminc PGA 68-pin MC68HC000RC12. I didn't have a very clear shot of this chip I recently picked up off eBay, so I took one this morning to share with the person who asked -- and it turned out a rather striking image, to my eye.

I thought I'd share.

(I recently purchased the chip in new condition on eBay because of its nice, square purple ceramic and gold appearance (just to have as a desk bauble) and with a nod to the many MC68K systems I've used over the years -- and still use today.)

#coinforscale #Motorola #CPU #microprocessors #chips #hardware #Mac #Lisa #Amiga #AtariST #MegaDrive #AtariJaguar #PalmPilot #FreeScale #MC68000 #MC68K #ceramic #photo #coin #technology #vintagecomputing #retrocomputing

Latest book: MC68000 Assembly Language Programming Second Edition by B. bramer & S. Bramer

Looks like this book was never used as it's still got the original receipts from 14 Dec 1991

#retroComputing #books #mc68k #mc68000 #oxfam

@JohannessNilsson the only thing I'm not #nerd / #weeb enough is atrempt to make OS/1337 for #68k/ #mc68k or #PowerPC, cuz that's like @ActionRetro territory of #geek-ish absurdity...

But I'm not gonna stop anyone from trying to do so.
#OS1337

Looking for help with understanding the MC68000 instruction set. Or better yet, ROM hacking arcade games running on the 68k.

Context: I want to do a ROM hack for Dodonpachi. There was an extremely rare version that goes by "campaign version" or "blue label". Between CAVE saying they've lost the source code and the few people owning the PCB not dumping the ROM yet, it seems unlikely we'll ever get access to the official version. So I thought, "Fine, I'll do it myself."

Of course, I don't expect to be able to recreate it 100% accurately. Close enough is my goal.

1/2

#68k #MC68k #MC68000 #ROMHack #ROMHacking #Dodonpachi #STG #Shmup #怒首領蜂

I found a monitor cable included. I still had a DB15 to VGA adapter. Now the #PowerBook540 has at least some color display in the amazing resolution of 800x600 pixels on the flat screen TV.
#RetroComputing #Apple #MC68k

@LunaFoxgirlVT @stman Big #FPGA's can literally emulate a lot of #ISA's like #mc68k|60 or #RISCV but I'm shure they do take some time switching between those and loading the #VHDL code.

Also I'm pretty certain that unless one were to use #PSRAM it's not possible to retain any data in #RAM between those hot reboots.

Not to mention that this assumes equal #Endian|ness...