Motorola 680x0 prices in 1987

[redblade]

MOTOROLA ADDS 33MHz 68020, 16MHz AND CMOS 68000s April 5, 1988

By CBR Staff Writer

A 33MHz version of the 68020, a 16MHz 68000 and 16MHz CMOS 68HC000 were added to the line-up of microprocessors from Motorola Inc’s Microprocessor Products Group on Monday. The company claims that the 33MHz 68020 is the fastest clock speed 32-bit microprocessor on the market, although several companies, not least Intergraph with the Clipper, are likely to dispute that claim. Motorola also quotes Dataquest figures that suggest that 746,000 68020s were sold in 1987, making it the top-selling 32 bit part. The 16MHz 68000 should appeal to low-end users such as Apple with the smaller Macintoshes, Commodore International and Atari Corp, while the 68HC000 is likely to find its way into 68000 family lap-tops and in embedded applications requiring a totally enclosed environment. The announcement does not include the top-end 68030, but Motorola promises to come out with 68030s with faster clocks than the present 25MHz limit. The 33MHz 68020 is available on 60 days delivery at $571 for quantities of 100 to 499. The 16MHz 68HC000 is out now at $34.45 for quantities of 100 to 499. The 16MHz 68000 is on 60 days delivery at $18.90 for 100-up. The 25MHz 68030 is $485 for 100-up – $86 less than the 33MHz 68020.

Original URL
Wayback archive https://web.archive.org/web/20221223214354/https://techmonitor.ai/technology/motorola_adds_33mhz_68020_16mhz_and_cmos_68000s
This was added here for a price reference for 680x0 CPUs and how it may have affected decisions on certain Amiga hardware/expansions

[Bruce Abbott]

That's quite interesting - especially the price of the 16MHz 68HC000. Only problem back then was how to make an accelerator card with RAM for a reasonable price. By the time you added all the other stuff you might as well put an 030 on it, and get a real speed boost. But then the price ballooned.

[alexh]

Anymore who planned an accelerator in 1987 was in for a huge shock as 1988 DRAM prices went up 5x and stayed that way for over a year due to a perfect storm condition of oversupply leading to the decision to cannibalise live DRAM production lines while switching from 256Kb to 1Mb rather than build new ones in parallel

[Bruce Abbott]

Perhaps the high price of DRAM was partially responsible for the large number of 'accelerator' cards for the A1000 and A500 that didn't have any on-board RAM or any way to add it. Seems very short-sighted.

However early accelerator cards were often used more for the FPU than CPU, with the 020 provided mainly to make the 68881 work more efficiently. This attests to the popularity of ray tracing on the Amiga. I remember rendering scenes with Sculpt 3D on my A1000, and wishing I had something to make it go faster.

Another reason for not adding Fast RAM may simply be the complexity. Most early accelerator boards were rather amateur affairs, and the designers might have been happy enough just getting the CPU to work reliably. OTOH the ICD Adspeed and Supra Turbo 28 put considerable effort into caching the 68000 rather than including Fast RAM. I guess they figured the lower cost and greater application made it worthwhile, particularly as the 68HC000 was so much cheaper than an 020 or 030.

What a waste. Although those boards did as advertised, they could have been much better with a few MB of Fast RAM. In 1989 I bought a second hand Microbotics Starboard 2MB RAM board for my A1000. This was was much better value for general use than a hobbled 'accelerator' card. I had it set up with a 512k RAD disk so I only had to boot from floppy once on power up - after that the machine rebooted almost instantly.

In 1990 the A3000 was announced. I was assembling larger programs and the A1000 was getting a bit slow, so I pre-ordered an A3000 to replace it. However it didn't arrive until mid 1991. In the mean time I discovered and purchased Hisoft Devpac 2, which was five times faster at assembling code than my previous assembler, Assempro (which to its credit came with the excellent 'Amiga Machine Language' book by Abacus, and had a nice IDE). Turns out I didn't actually need the A3000, just more efficient software!

Unfortunately my A1000 was stolen along with everything that went with it, shortly after I bought the A3000 (before I even had time to set it up!). So I was literally forced to upgrade and put the A1000 out of my mind. Still holding out hope that it might surface again one day...

Many Amiga fans complain about how Commodore didn't produce a low end model like the A500 but with a faster CPU (until late 1992 with the A1200). But the truth is that with a reasonable amount of Fast RAM and efficient software the 68000 did a pretty good job for the price, as well as maintaining that all-import compatibility required for hardware banging games. Keeping the base level of CPU performance down discouraged developers from producing bloatware. It also kept the price down, which helped to keep sales up and grow the userbase.

[TEG]

Thanks for the link.