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These machines had good sales and a strong following (still today) in French speaking countries. In other places they were rather rate (*2). The MO6 was also OEM'ed by Olivetti as Prodest PC128.

Another successful machine was the British Dragon 32/64 series of 1982. They are often attribute as Tandy clones, but that's rather due the fact that both use Motorolas SAM chipset. Compared to the CoCo, they offer a better Keyboard and an on board parallel interface.

It doesn't surprise me that it was not used in any business computers. New = unnecessary risk to many of those potential customers. But most home users didn't care much about having a well-known operating system and large preexisting library of professional applications.

It might be less simple here. Professional users don't care about the machine or its CPU. They care about certain application. If a manufacturer supports its applications after switching the CPU, they gladly buy the new, incompatible one.

I guess that and for sure the usage of full 64 KiB where the main reasons for the University of Waterloo Computer Systems Group's development of a 6809 daughterboard for the PET - what later became known as SuperPET after Commodore bought the design in 1981 (*3).

In fact, the SuperPET has been one of many 6809 add on cards for existing machines. Like The Mill for the Apple II or the 6809 Tube Modul for the BBC.

At the time the 6809 became available the game was no longer played by some lone engineer starting a new computer, but bigger companies and driven by much more than just curiosity for a new chip. Still, a wide usage of 6809 systems as CPU in other systems, from knitting machines to street lights and telephone systems does show that engineers did appreciate the additional abilities.

Also, and maybe even more important, 16-bit CPUs (8086, 68k, 32k) became available about the same time as the 6809. And the Mac is a great example, that switching over to 16-bit did bring even more advantages, especially in terms of memory, than just using a more advanced 8-bit unit. Kind of a 'too little, too late' case.

*2 - Keep in mind, most machines had their home markets and respective companies were rather niche players in other parts of the world. For example Tandy was a big number in the US, but never really a thing in continental Europe. Much like Thomson machines were big in France, Belgium and Italy, but exotic in other parts of Europe. Interestingly they were somewhat successful in Britain. Similarly, Japan had a complete separate ecosystem.

These machines had good sales and a strong following (still today) in French speaking countries. In other places they were rather rare (*2). The MO6 was also OEM'ed by Olivetti as Prodest PC128.

Another successful machine was the British Dragon 32/64 series of 1982. They are often attribute as Tandy clones, but that's rather due the fact that both use Motorola's SAM chipset. Compared to the CoCo, they offer a better keyboard and an on-board parallel interface.

It doesn't surprise me that it was not used in any business computers. New = unnecessary risk to many of those potential customers. But most home users didn't care much about having a well-known operating system and large pre-existing library of professional applications.

It might be less simple here. Professional users don't care about the machine or its CPU. They care about certain applications. If a manufacturer supports its applications after switching the CPU, they gladly buy the new, incompatible one.

I guess that (and for sure the usage of full 64 KiB) were the main reasons for the University of Waterloo Computer Systems Group's development of a 6809 daughterboard for the PET - what later became known as SuperPET after Commodore bought the design in 1981 (*3).

In fact, the SuperPET has been one of many 6809 add-on cards for existing machines. Like The Mill for the Apple II or the 6809 Tube Module for the BBC.

At the time the 6809 became available the game was no longer played by some lone engineer starting a new computer but by bigger companies, and driven by much more than just curiosity for a new chip. Still, a wide usage of 6809 systems as CPU in other systems, from knitting machines to street lights and telephone systems does show that engineers did appreciate the additional abilities.

Also, and maybe even more important, 16-bit CPUs (8086, 68k, 32k) became available about the same time as the 6809. And the Mac is a great example, that switching over to 16-bit brought even more advantages, especially in terms of memory, than just using a more advanced 8-bit unit. Kind of a 'too little, too late' case.

*2 - Keep in mind, most machines had their home markets and respective companies were rather niche players in other parts of the world. For example Tandy was a big number in the US, but never really a thing in continental Europe. Much like Thomson machines were big in France, Belgium and Italy, but exotic in other parts of Europe. Interestingly they were somewhat successful in Britain. Similarly, Japan had a completely separate ecosystem.

*1 - Thomson somewhat screwed their own success by making the MO5 not fully compatible. While the Hardware is quite similar, they mixed up the memory map, thus making exchangeable programs less common.

*1 - Thomson somewhat screwed their own success by making the MO5 not fully compatible. While the hardware is quite similar, they mixed up the memory map, thus making exchangeable programs less common.

• Hitachi MB6890 of 1980 and the later
• Hitachi S1 series.
• Canon CX-1 business system of 1981.
• Fujitsu FM8 and FM-11 series (1981) as professional desktop machines and
• Fujitsu FM7 series (1984) for the semi professional/home market

• Hitachi MB6890 of 1980 and the later
• Hitachi S1 series.
• Canon CX-1 business system of 1981. (MCX Operating System)
• Fujitsu FM8 and FM-11 series (1981) as professional desktop machines and
• Fujitsu FM7 series (1984) for the semi professional/home market