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When did the 8-bit era end?

The HP35S I recently (shouldn't have) bought has an 8510. (The 6502 variant for the C128)

It's kind of sad that TI, the company that invented microprocessors for calculators has to use Zilog's processor.
 
It appears so. Is that one "designed" at HP? The 35S was a Kinpo design, I think.
 
KC9UDX said:
The HP35S I recently (shouldn't have) bought has an 8510. (The 6502 variant for the C128 )

It's kind of sad that TI, the company that invented microprocessors for calculators has to use Zilog's processor.
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I would prefer to think that TI chose to use the Z80 (eZ80 variant in some of them), and went with the chip that best suited the purpose.... but then again I am an old Z-80 hack....

It would be interesting to see why the Z80 was chosen for these calcs, since by 1990 when the family was started with the TI-81 the 65816 was available as well. There had to be a good reason for the use of the Z80, at least a good enough reason in the mind of the design engineers for the series.

And, for what it's worth, some other calcs in TI's graphing series have used the 68k and ARM processors. But due to the vast amount of software for the Z80-based calcs, and their ubiquity in high school math classes, TI is still building them and introducing new ones built with the trusty Z80.
 
I wonder if students today are still playing the "Drug Wars" game on their TI graphing calculators?

t1_drug_wars2.jpg
 
Another argument re: bitness is to do it based on capability. There, I'd actually do it based on directly accessible (not bankswitched) address space - the processors that we think of as the "8-bit" era are almost always 16-bit address spaces, the "16-bit" era is typically 20 to 24-bit address spaces (although early PDP-11s were 16-bit), the 32-bit era is 32-bit address spaces, and the 64-bit era is 64(ish)-bit address spaces.

It's worth noting that the HP Nut processor (as used in the 16C) has a bit-serial ALU (but a 56-bit ISA), and two separate address spaces - one ROM space of 16-bit addressing, 10-bit words (80 KiB), and one RAM space of 10-bit addressing, 56-bit words (7 KiB).

It's also worth noting that this is a thing: https://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/ Essentially, it's a project to compile 32-bit code in 64-bit mode for x86-64 CPUs, to get the improvements in architecture that came along with the 64-bit mode, without the memory bandwidth increase. Most of the RISC architectures, when they made their jump to 64-bit, could just keep running a 32-bit userland no problem, as they just extended their 32-bit architecture to 64-bit, and that's why 32-bit was recommended for everything that didn't need 64-bit's memory addressing.
 
*rimshot*

Of course, I forgot about something in my previous post. The 16-bit x86 CPUs really blur the line there - even though they support 20 to 24-bit addressing depending on model... they have 16-bit segment and offset addressing! (Split code/data, though.) That's barely removed from bankswitching schemes (although, in fairness, more flexible than a bankswitching scheme), as it's certainly not flat addressing.

And, IIRC, the 65816's addressing scheme is an 8-bit segment and 16-bit offset, and while you could use it as a flat address space, everything's oriented towards using it as segments IIRC.
 
I guess '8-bit era' also applies to the sound and graphics... You see a lot of people making '8-bit' graphics or '8-bit' music. By which they mean nothing more than low-res (320x200 or lower) low-colour (16 or less) graphics and music that sounds like it came from a popular 8-bit machine such as a Commodore 64 or some 8-bit Atari or console from Sega or Nintendo.

Thing is, the 16/32-bit Atari ST sounded just as poor as the 8-bit machines, because it used a common low-end sound chip.
Likewise, CGA/EGA look very '8-bit', even though you can find such adapters in 16-bit or even 32-bit machines.

So I guess some things depend on whether you view '8-bit era' merely as the CPU/chipset technology, or rather the overall 'look-and-feel' or sound rather, of such machines. Which is how hipsters apparently see things. They call something '8-bit' simply because that's how it looks or sounds. Not because it's necessarily 8-bit technology in any way.
 
Scali said:
Thing is, the 16/32-bit Atari ST sounded just as poor as the 8-bit machines, because it used a common low-end sound chip.
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It was still a lot better than the PC speaker, though. :p (Remember, the ST came out before any PC sound cards existed.)

The Apple IIGS had the best sound of that era thanks to its Ensoniq synthesizer, but it was crippled by an underpowered CPU and an 8-bit I/O bus. It was stuck between trying to compete with the ST and Amiga with its graphics and sound and trying to not compete with the Macintosh. (The Tandy Color Computer 3 was also intended to compete with the ST and Amiga, believe it or not, even though it was strictly an 8-bit machine.)

So I guess some things depend on whether you view '8-bit era' merely as the CPU/chipset technology, or rather the overall 'look-and-feel' or sound rather, of such machines. Which is how hipsters apparently see things. They call something '8-bit' simply because that's how it looks or sounds. Not because it's necessarily 8-bit technology in any way.
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"8-bit" music usually refers to chiptunes: music produced by -- or made to sound like it came from -- pre-wavetable, pre-FM Synthesis sound generator chips, such as the SID, POKEY, 2A03, AY-3-8910, SN76489, etc.
 
bhtooefr said:
The 16-bit x86 CPUs really blur the line there - even though they support 20 to 24-bit addressing depending on model... they have 16-bit segment and offset addressing! (Split code/data, though.) That's barely removed from bankswitching schemes (although, in fairness, more flexible than a bankswitching scheme), as it's certainly not flat addressing....
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And then there is the 8-bit eZ80, with its 24-bit ALU and flat 24-bit addressing. Quoting from the Zilog eZ80 manual, 2015 revision (2015 revision!):
The eZ80® CPU is Zilog's next-generation Z80 processor core. It is the basis of a new
family of integrated microcontrollers and includes the following features:

Upward code-compatible from Z80 and Z180 products.
Several address-generation modes, including 24-bit linear addressing.
24-bit registers and ALU.
8-bit data path.
Single-cycle fetch.
Pipelined fetch, decode, and execute.
Click to expand...
 
The USM-1 was an advertised sound and speech card for the IBM PC from 1983 so PC sound cards predated newcomers like the Atari ST. Though at a listed price of $445, the USM-1 probably didn't sell many units even if it included two parallel ports and a game port and a run-time clock.
 
vwestlife said:
It was still a lot better than the PC speaker, though. :p (Remember, the ST came out before any PC sound cards existed.)
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Problem is, I had a C64... the Atari ST actually sounded WORSE than a C64, so choosing between an Atari ST and Amiga was VERY easy for me.
The sound on the Atari ST is so out-of-touch with the rest of the system... completely ruins the thing in my opinion.

vwestlife said:
"8-bit" music usually refers to chiptunes: music produced by -- or made to sound like it came from -- pre-wavetable, pre-FM Synthesis sound generator chips, such as the SID, POKEY, 2A03, AY-3-8910, SN76489, etc.
Click to expand...

Yes, the irony being that 'chiptune' is somewhat of a retronym, invented for Amiga tracker music which was 'size-optimized', and had a bit of an '8-bit' sound to it because of the short and simple waveform samples used.
People think the 'chip' refers to the soundchip producing it, but that's not true at all. The Amiga was neither 8-bit nor did its sound chip produce the waveforms itself.
It is even possible that 'chip' refers to a thin 'slice' you cut from a sample (just one period) to get the characteristic samples of a chipmod song, like this: https://youtu.be/DqexDnT2H20
 
Scali said:
Problem is, I had a C64... the Atari ST actually sounded WORSE than a C64, so choosing between an Atari ST and Amiga was VERY easy for me.
The sound on the Atari ST is so out-of-touch with the rest of the system... completely ruins the thing in my opinion.
Click to expand...

You have to remember that Tramiel was trying to market the ST as a "serious" computer to compete with the Macintosh. Gaming was not its top design priority, although it was certainly adequate for the time. The STe series added better graphics and sound hardware, but by that time 16-bit video game consoles like the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive were hitting the market and the STe was left lacking game developers for it (plus it got a bad reputation as not being 100% backwards compatible with the ST).

People think the 'chip' refers to the soundchip producing it, but that's not true at all.
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Wikipedia even considers FM Synthesis to qualify as "chiptune" music, so the definition is indeed rather broad.
 
I suppose you could say the 8-bit era for computers technically ended in 1989 as that was the year the Commodore 128 was officially discontinued.

I think?? that the C128 was the very LAST 8-bit mass market computer to be sold.
 
CanadaPhil said:
I suppose you could say the 8-bit era for computers technically ended in 1989 as that was the year the Commodore 128 was officially discontinued.
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Alternatively you could look at the last commercial software to be released for 8-bit computers.
I know there were new games released for the C64 into the early 1990s.
 
Scali said:
Alternatively you could look at the last commercial software to be released for 8-bit computers.
I know there were new games released for the C64 into the early 1990s.
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And MECC was still developing educational software for the Apple II series until 1995 or so.

The Apple IIe-based Tiger Learning Computer was introduced in 1997, but was discontinued after being test-marketed, so it never got a nationwide release. Two major drawbacks were its lack of disk storage, and although it came with AppleWorks, it was intended to be connected to a home TV set, which made 80-column mode difficult to read on the typical CRT TVs of the day.

Also around that time Brother was selling Z80-based laptops marketed as an inexpensive alternative to a "real" laptop (for $300 vs. over $2000 for a PC laptop of the time).

 
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