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Only in 8-bit (and some 16 bit) operations and in interrupt responsiveness. And it's a royal PITA to program for, especially if you're working for anything larger than 64k.

3 registers. In two modes. None can hold more than 16 bits. Sometimes only 8 bits. Direct page (nicely movable) so you can .. sort of... have more registers. But none of those have an ALU and they take more cycles than a register.

You can address 24-bits, but never hold a pointer to any of that in a single register. So real fun doing framebuffer operations, etc.

Writing a compiler for it totally sucks.

The 816 looks great on a spec sheet until you actually try to write programs for it.

People did neat things with the IIgs. But I'm pretty sure they did it with their teeth clenched.




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