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first microprocessor - MP-944 and the F-14 CADC
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RayHolt:
Loved the 6502. I knew the design team headed by Chuck Peddle. Used it in 1974 on the Jolt ,  Super Jolt series, and later on the SYM. Had shipped over 5000 boards with 6502 before Apple, or Steve Woz, decided to use it.  I would definitely vote the 6502 as the most influencial in the early days.  Intel struggled.  Intel could not sell it's 4004, 8008 series because existing product logic designers did not know how to programming. They hired me, my partner Manny Lemas, and Gary Kildahl of Digital Research to travel the country teaching 4004, 8008, and 8080 basic programming. Gary taught his PL/M. This started the "explosion" of micro chip computers by Intel.
coppice:

--- Quote from: RayHolt on January 04, 2019, 02:35:51 pm ---Loved the 6502. I knew the design team headed by Chuck Peddle. Used it in 1974 on the Jolt ,  Super Jolt series, and later on the SYM. Had shipped over 5000 boards with 6502 before Apple, or Steve Woz, decided to use it.  I would definitely vote the 6502 as the most influencial in the early days.  Intel struggled.  Intel could not sell it's 4004, 8008 series because existing product logic designers did not know how to programming. They hired me, my partner Manny Lemas, and Gary Kildahl of Digital Research to travel the country teaching 4004, 8008, and 8080 basic programming. Gary taught his PL/M. This started the "explosion" of micro chip computers by Intel.

--- End quote ---
All MPUs struggled for some time, getting a lot of interest but few serious volume sales. Many MPUs looked interesting, but when you put all the chips together to make a working solution you had something rather big and expensive, making it unworkable for most potential applications. Its was the TMS1000 (pretty much the first MCU) which first saw serious volumes, as in one reasonably priced package you had a complete solution for many simple tasks.
RayHolt:
Well, I guess we will have to tell history that our space program did not influence the work we live in. Not all was secret but those very knowledgeable engineers and scientists left NASA and its vendors and went on to product development companies and used their knowledge.  Jay Minor on the Amiga, Jim Kawakawa on the AMD microprocessors, Brian Schubert at Intel heading the graphics design team, are not home names but their product influence was tremendous.  Even my own SYM-1 6502 board was used in the first two military robots and influenced the direction of what we have today.  Intel's commercialization and high volume of an idea is mostly good but it does not stand in a world alone of technology and electronics.  Two books that tell the real stories best are:

The Accidental Engineer
http://www.lulu.com/shop/http://www.lulu.com/shop/raymond-holt-and-leo-sorge/the-accidental-engineer/paperback/product-23442802.html

and

Commodore: A Company On The Edge
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0087HTJNC/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B0087HTJNC&linkCode=as2&tag=cornerstonebooks&linkId=97db7bf227b0459acf20eaab1cf19668
Sparky49:
Maybe the 6502 was used in the first American military robots (?) but the Germans and Soviets were using robots as early as 1940 with the Goliath tracked mine and teletanks.
chickenHeadKnob:
I was always curious about the milstd  - 1750. How did it come about?, what was the design history and principle movers. When I was a teen age lad during the mid to late 70's I was researching computer architectures with a particular focus on arithmetic/CORDIC algorithms and other  realizations of the elementary functions because I was fascinated by hand-held calculators. That led to various IEEE papers and occasional references to 1750 based guidance computers but not much was in the open literature.
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