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Comment by teddyh | Hacker News Reader

What computer and game could this be? Looking at Wikipedia reveals that the Motorola 6809 was not used for many computers, and not any that I recognize as being very popular.

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Oh .. just a few video arcade games you might have heard of .. Defender, Joust .. Juno First .. and so on .. so, actually quite a few games machines use the 6809 cpu ..

Those are not computers.

Sir, I beg to differ. I personally know of two individuals who are regularly reprogramming their 6809-based arcade boards, freely, with new software.

So, I urge you to reconsider your opinion; I believe it may be wholly incorrect.

By that metric, an abacus is a computer. This is not a workable definition for the discussion at hand.

Sorry, but wut? We're talking about systems that utilize the 6809 processor. This CPU is a general-purpose processor, used in quite many video game machines. What does an abacus have to do with anything?

I notice you called them “games machines” and not “home computers” or even “computers”. It seem to me that you knew very well what I was talking about, but choose to be obtuse.

I grew up in an era when in fact the most potent computing power I had access to, as a hacker/programmer, required 20c.

Alas, I realize not everyone thinks the way I do, but I consider among the worlds most functional 'computing experiences' occurred during the Arcade era, where, indeed, one could wonder at the .. sheer .. computing power .. being used to render sprites. With 256 colors.

So, at the risk of perhaps moving the goal-posts, let me just say that while the 6809 might've been a 'games console cpu', at the time, it was also used in a few .. relatively interesting .. micro's.

Anyone returning to that era, in their own way, contributes what they can. In my case, I consider the still-functioning Joust and Defender machines in my neighbourhood, at the very least, accessible through a repository ..

The article says this was done on "a 1980’s-era PC" with a 6809 processor. teddyh was clearly wondering which PC (Tandy CoCo 3, it turns out) and which game, not asking for a random list of arcade games that happened to use the 6809. I'm not sure why he's getting downvotes when you're the one being obtuse.

Not general-purpose computers, no, but how were they not computers?

Computer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_computer

Computer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer

Hmm

"The 6809E was featured in the TRS-80 Color Computer (CoCo), the Acorn System 2, 3 and 4 computers (as an optional alternative to their standard 6502), the Fujitsu FM-7, the Welsh-made Dragon 32/64 home computers,"

I know and have/had almost all of them. Maybe more popular in Europe?

The Dragon was basically a CoCo clone. Don't recognise those Acorn computers (assuming this is the UK Acorn, those were all named "BBC Micro Computer" and had model names like "A", "B", "Master" etc), I'm pretty sure the Acorn used 6502, but it did have the option to interface to other processors (e.g. Z80) so 6809 would not surprise me.

The Acorn System computers are rack mounted computers that pre-date the Acorn Atom - http://fjkraan.home.xs4all.nl/comp/atom/history/index.html

Aside from the video titles mentioned below, Williams used the 6809 for every pinball machine built from 1990 to 1999. Probably a hundred thousand machines or so.

And I can also confirm that they also used the PSHS/PULU hack to do some very fast memory copies and blanks.

royjacobs recognized that first here in his comment to forktheif's top: it was Tandy Color Computer 3. The article author answered that question in the comments.

I used to spend my afternoons waypoint'ing all the computer shops I could access with a single days bus pass. This was a regular jaunt in the late 70's, early 80's, and .. at the time .. was a great way to prove ones chops. When you only had 20 minutes to type something in, it better be funky. (Coz the sales guy/gal is either going to let you save it to their "DEMO" floppy, or kick you out of the shop.)

Until you come back and decide to buy something, and suddenly .. it mattered which CPU you chose. Z80, 68xx, the rumoured 68k, and .. so on. It was a bewildering time.

(Thankfully, the still-functioning, embedded Video Game Arcades were able to provide some relief. I knew a few arcade owners, lets just say.. ;)

Anyway .. there was a Tandy shop, and I had a CoCo section in my (long-lost) notebook. There were some funky things, no? But still .. in the Amstrad invasion, the Atari megalith, the Commodore death spiral.. Tandy kind of lost the plot. Strangely so. The CoCo were somehow 'tainted' in my mind, back then, because of the TRS80 connection. Things didn't have to be so grey.

Nevertheless, if the connection with the Arcades had been made, I'm sure the CoCo could have kicked some serious ass. What heady times!

I think he means "Personal Computer" and it could be a Tandy or a Dragon, both Motorola 6809 based.

The Tandy CoCo was fairly popular in its day; The Commodore and Apple II were more popular, but before the IBM PC became the dominant platform there were lots of different microcomputers that competed, and required porting of games.

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