When Exxon Wanted To Be a Personal Computing Revolutionary

An anonymous reader writes with this story about Exxon's early involvement with consumer computers. "This weekend is the anniversary of the release of the Apple IIc, the company's fourth personal computer iteration and its first attempt at creating a portable computer. In 1981, Apple's leading competitor in the world of consumer ('novice') computer users was IBM, but the market was about to experience a deluge of also-rans and other silent partners in PC history, including the multinational descendant of Standard Oil, Exxon. The oil giant had been quietly cultivating a position in the microprocessor industry since the mid-1970s via the rogue Intel engineer usually credited with developing the very first commercial microprocessor, Federico Faggin, and his startup Zilog. Faggin had ditched Intel in 1974, after developing the 4004 four-bit CPU and its eight-bit successor, the 8008. As recounted in Datapoint: The Lost Story of the Texans Who Invented the Personal Computer, Faggin was upset about Intel's new requirement that employees had to arrive by eight in the morning, while he usually worked nights. Soon after leaving Intel and forming Zilog, Faggin was approached by Exxon Enterprises, the investment arm of Exxon, which began funding Zilog in 1975."

Comments

Re:Ah the Z-80

[Anonymous Coward]

Z80 also had a radiation hardened version so It's used in a lot of special locations, rabbit semiconductor, now digi, still makes them and includes support current network technologies

Z-800?

[calidoscope]

ISTR Z-800 as being the designation for the Z-80 extended to 16 bits. My recollection was that it didn't start shipping until sometime past 1980. If Zilog got the Z-800 out late 1978, and sweet talked DRI to porting CP/M to it, and with that port capable of running Z-80 executables...

Reality was that Intel had announced the 8086 in 1978, had silicon shipping early 1979 and Tim Paterson got an 8086 board up and running in May 1979.

Re:Ah the Z-80

[AmiMoJo]

8 bit MCUs are still very common and have many advantages of ARM. Cheap as ARM is it doesn't tend to get down to the few tens of cents range that 8 bit MCUs do, and the cores often require much more support hardware (such as voltage regulation because they can't run from 5V, or need 1.8V to get the power consumption down). Developing for them is also much more involved and particularly for high reliability applications it can be harder to audit the code and guarantee safe operation.

ARM has a lot of advantages too, but when you just need a cheap, easy to use (software and hardware wise) MCU that consumes next to now power 8 bit is still king.