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From: rickman on 3 Mar 2010 22:21
On Mar 3, 1:05 pm, "Peter Seldon" <peter373...(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> BTW, Rick - usenet is text-only.

Whhhaaaaat???

Rick
From: Walter Banks on 4 Mar 2010 06:22


Dombo wrote:

> Chris H schreef:
>
> >
> > Read In search of Stupidity....
> >
> > http://www.insearchofstupidity.com
> >
> > Not specifically about Zilog but it is about the Sw /IT /Computing
> > industry and the complete mess some companies made of a sure fire
> > success.
> >
> > The premise is the top dogs are not the top because they are good but
> > that they made fewer obvious mistakes.
>
> Another interesting read about this subject is "On the Edge: the
> Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore".

The Zilog Z80 development was largely the work of one person
who decided that he could make a better mouse trap for
8080 and did. The key to its early success was the vast amount of
software and the promise of better performance. The Z80 lived
up to its promise

All the chip companies at the time had short memories on
how hard it was to introduce a new product and put a
software base in place.

The Z8 probably should have had a bigger presence than it
did in embedded systems it was a remarkably powerful instruction
set and had hardware designed so that complex peripherals were
combinations of silicon and interrupt handlers, There were a lot
of Z8's in many of the disk drives produced in the 90's

Commodore was almost a victim of its success. They became
the one to beat. Tramiel with all his business skills could do little
to change the public expectation that the next new hot toy would
come from a new start up. By the mid 80's he faced serious
competition from apple and IBM and games were not basic
based anymore. He continued to play around in the industry
with Atari.


--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: news(a)netfront.net ---
From: Tim Wescott on 4 Mar 2010 11:46
Walter Banks wrote:
>
> Dombo wrote:
>
>> Chris H schreef:
>>
>>> Read In search of Stupidity....
>>>
>>> http://www.insearchofstupidity.com
>>>
>>> Not specifically about Zilog but it is about the Sw /IT /Computing
>>> industry and the complete mess some companies made of a sure fire
>>> success.
>>>
>>> The premise is the top dogs are not the top because they are good but
>>> that they made fewer obvious mistakes.
>> Another interesting read about this subject is "On the Edge: the
>> Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore".
>
> The Zilog Z80 development was largely the work of one person
> who decided that he could make a better mouse trap for
> 8080 and did. The key to its early success was the vast amount of
> software and the promise of better performance. The Z80 lived
> up to its promise
>
> All the chip companies at the time had short memories on
> how hard it was to introduce a new product and put a
> software base in place.
>
> The Z8 probably should have had a bigger presence than it
> did in embedded systems it was a remarkably powerful instruction
> set and had hardware designed so that complex peripherals were
> combinations of silicon and interrupt handlers, There were a lot
> of Z8's in many of the disk drives produced in the 90's

So many, in fact, that if you wanted to talk to Zilog in the late 80's
and 90's you had to be working for a company that was going to buy
thousands of parts per month, or they wouldn't talk to you. Since I was
either a student or working for small companies at the time, I was less
than dirt in their eyes.

They trained me well: now when I reach for processor data sheets, I
quite naturally don't reach for Zilog.

--
Tim Wescott
Control system and signal processing consulting
www.wescottdesign.com
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