Hey, been a while! How are things? I have been a busy bunny doing almost no retro, except for my new SHARP PC-G850V![0]
Same. It is a delightful cpu. Was thankfully simple enough for kids to understand without too much trouble. I got most of mine through magazines and a rough copy of the 6502 dtatsheet.
Prior to the 68K, I got to enjoy the 6809. Actually enjoy that one a bit more than the 68K as long as the project or data fits the overall capability. (It is no fun on any CPU when that becomes true)
I only did some small projects on the 68K. Still, more than enough to appreciate how Moto did things.
Havent done much retro beyond a restoration of an Outrun coin op. Alas it’s a project for a friend and once done it will be going to a new home.
[0] The SHARP is roughly an Apple 2 type, 8 bit workstation in your pocket! It has BASIC, C compilier, machine monitor, assembler for both the Z80 and PIC, and a PIC programmer in ROM! The BASIC is full featured, a lot like Microsoft Extended BASIC, and the other tools are solid enough at first glance.
Graphical display like the Model 100 too! And if that were not enough, the thing offers the user 32K and has 11 GPIO pins on one side, and a full system bus, cartridge slot style, on the other!
That pretty much describes my Apple 2, which I do use as an 8 bit workstation. Many developers did just that back in the 80's. Apples developed many Atari, C64 and NES games.
There have been some expansions made for the Sharp. Haven't really gone looking.
Anyhow, very interesting device.