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Great story - thanks for sharing :) In hindsight, do you think it was any different? (Microcomputer vs mainframe for the disassembled you were talking about building)

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Thank you! I went into more detail in another comment in the thread, but going from one instruction set to another just felt like having more than one way to say the same thing. Every instruction was different, but the concepts and kinds of instructions were pretty much identical. Once you've seen an overflow flag and a carry flag and registers and bit shifts and memory load and store on one CPU, you'll certainly recognize them on another.

I guess Steve thought the CPUs really were different, like, say, the difference between a CPU and a GPU.

I guess Steve thought the CPUs really were different, like, say, the difference between a CPU and a GPU.

There's a lot of revisionist history on the internet about Steve Jobs not being technical, but he had an incredibly detailed understanding of the 68000 by the time the Macintosh project was launched. Perhaps your encounter encouraged him to delve into that area of study.

Where did you hear he had such a deep understanding of the 68000? (Not questioning whether he did, just curious because I've never heard that.)

Reading old computer magazines from the library.

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