This is an interesting read -- a bunch of Motorola employees discussing the genesis of the 68K.
The remarks are quite frank, including those of one participant who said, "Our manufacturing practices were pretty bad back then, low yields, long cycle times and poor productivity. In 1978, Motorola and Hitachi entered into a technology exchange venture. [...] I traveled to Hitachi about 10 to 12 times a year for about three years. Each time I went I took a couple of people with me; operators, technicians, engineers, manufacturing supervisors. [...] We brought a lot back and injected it into our manufacturing and it helped greatly, especially when we built our newest factory in the early eighties. That became the factory that built most of the 68K products – a new 5 inch factory, MOS-8."
The discussion moderator, Dave House (an Intel employee), makes some revealing comments as well. "I think it was pretty well acknowledged by those of us over at Intel that the 68000 had a superior architecture. The software people preferred—the programmers and customers preferred the 68K architecture over that of the 8086, which had a lot of vestiges of the 8080 and past history."
Also mentioned of course are IBM and the IBM PC and Steve Jobs and the Lisa.
One final excerpt: "But I don't think people today can understand the sense of excitement daily; it was palpable, in the halls. And the 1979 through 1985 timeframe, and the sense of empowerment that it created, at least in the design community, and at our customers—of people getting excited, “Hey, this means that life as we know it with mainframes and minicomputers is on the way out.” And that opens up totally new vistas."
cheers
Jeff
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. Don't even get me started on that hack of a network they had back then.