There was a little known original internal
engineering effort at MOS Technology with the goal
of developing a 32-bit processor called the 65E4
relative to the 68K which was coming into
popularity at that time. The extra digit in the
exponent was a brainstorm which could only have
originated in the marketing department.
Anyway the "merger" with Commodore terminally
sunk that project.
http://www.hpmuseum.org/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/hpmuseum/archv021.cgi?read=213654The author of the post seems to be a past MOS/C= employee...
I wonder what C= would achieve if they indeed had produced a 32 bit chip? Could have been a big source of income if they retained the same cost efficiency as with 8 bit line and a big competitor to 68K and early x86 designs. It could have made possible a C900 like UNIX workstation earlier than 85'. Amiga could have been made even cheaper by making everything in house...
Edit... it should have been 65E4 in the thread title, can some of the mods fix it
