Thought esperiment: What if the orginal IBM PC used the 6502?

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1

We all know IBM went with Intel, but what would happen if IBM went with the 6502 instead of Intel and QDOS was was written for it? Like what would it be like? Would Desktop CPUs be more of a free market?

I'm sure they would pretty much get the same extensions like MMX and would eventually be 64-bit and Server/Workstation Class. I'm also sure we would have had Hackintosh kits and amiga compatibility expansion modules 30 years ago. I find it weird that Commodore didn't go with the 16-bit 6502 used in the SNES and Apple IIgs. Oh and a weird thing about the IIgs was it was downclocked so it wouldn't compete with the Macintosh, but I think if the 6502 were more successful, I think the Macintosh would have used it. I heard Woz said the 16-bit variants of the 6502 was twice as fast as Motorola per clock cycle.

The 6502: The original RISC Processor.

2

I don't know what to think about that...

But what I do think about is if Commodore somehow hired Steve Wozniak. We could have prevented the abomination that is Apple, and had some seriously sexy equipment in the early 80s.

3

They also hired Microsoft to write Commodore BASIC for the PET and I'm not going to say which coder at MS programmed it, but I will say MS only had 3 staff members at that time and Steve Balmer can't program and Paul Allen didn't know jack about the 6502.

So, by process of elimination that leaves...