page_title: Motorola 6809
section_title: Use
hierarchical_section_title: Motorola 6809 / Use
caption_attribution_description: English: Tandy/Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer 1.
context_page_description: The Motorola 6809 is an 8-bit microprocessor CPU with some 16-bit features from Motorola. It was designed by Terry Ritter and Joel Boney and introduced in 1978. It was a major advance over both its predecessor, the Motorola 6800, and the related MOS Technology 6502. Among the systems to use the 6809 are the TRS-80 Color Computer and Dragon 32/64 home computers, the Vectrex game system, and early 1980s arcade machines including Star Wars, Defender, Robotron: 2084, Joust, and Gyruss. Series II of the Fairlight CMI digital audio workstation and Konami's Time Pilot '84 arcade game each use dual 6809 processors.
  Unlike the 6800 and 6502, the 6809 allows fully position-independent code and fully reentrant code in a simple and straightforward way. It was one of the first microprocessors with a hardware multiplication instruction, and it includes full 16-bit arithmetic and a fast interrupt system.
context_section_description: The 6809 is used in Commodore's dual-CPU SuperPET computer, and, in its 68A09 incarnation, in the unique vector graphics based Vectrex home video game console with built-in screen display, and in the Milton Bradley Expansion (MBX) system (an arcade console for use with the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A home computer). The 6809E is the CPU in the TRS-80 Color Computer, the Acorn System 2, 3 and 4 computers (as an optional alternative to their standard 6502), the Fujitsu FM-7, the Canon CX-1, the Welsh-made Dragon 32/64 home computers, and the SWTPC, Gimix, Smoke Signal Broadcasting, etc. SS-50 bus bus systems, in addition to several of Motorola's own EXORmacs and EXORset development systems. In France, Thomson micro-informatique produced a series of micro-computers based on the 6809E (TO7, TO7/70, TO8, TO8D, TO9, TO9Plus, MO5, MO6, MO5E and MO5NR).
  In addition to home computers and game consoles, the 6809 is also found in a number of arcade games released during the early to mid-1980s. Williams Electronics was a prolific user of the processor, which was deployed in Defender, Stargate, Joust, Robotron: 2084, Sinistar, and other games. The 6809 CPU forms the core of the successful Williams Pinball Controller. The KONAMI-1 is a modified 6809 used by Konami in Roc'n Rope, Gyruss, and The Simpsons.
  The 6809 CPU was also used in traffic signal controllers made in the 1980s by several different manufacturers.
  Software development company Microware developed the original OS-9 operating system (not to be confused with the more recent Mac OS 9) for the 6809, later porting it to the 68000 and i386 series of microprocessors. Some years later, enthusiasts developed the NitrOS9 operating system based upon the original Microware OS9.
  Series II of the Fairlight CMI (computer musical instrument) used dual 6809 CPUs and OS9, and also used one 6809 CPU per voice card. The 6809 was often employed in music synthesizers from other manufacturers such as Oberheim (Xpander, Matrix 6/12/1000), PPG (Wave 2/2.2/2.3, Waveterm A), and Ensoniq (Mirage sampler, SDP-1, ESQ1, SQ80).  The latter used the 6809E as their main CPU. The (E) version was used in order to synchronize the microprocessor's clock to the sound chip (Ensoniq 5503 DOC) in those machines; in the ESQ1 and SQ80 the 68B09E was used, requiring a dedicated arbiter logic in order to ensure 1 MHz bus timing when accessing the DOC chip.
  Hitachi produced its own 6809-based machines, the MB6890 and later the S1. These were primarily for the Japanese market, but some were exported to and sold in Australia. There the MB6890 was dubbed the "Peach", probably in ironic reference to the popularity of the Apple II. The S1 was notable in that it contained paging hardware extending the 6809's native 64 kilobyte (64×2¹⁰ byte) addressing range to a full 1 mebibyte (1×2²⁰ byte) in 4 KB pages. It was similar in this to machines produced by SWTPC, Gimix, and several other suppliers. TSC produced a Unix-like operating system uniFlex which ran only on such machines. OS-9 Level II, also took advantage of such memory management facilities. Most other computers of the time with more than 64 KB of memory addressing were limited to bank switching where much if not all the 64 KB was simply swapped for another section of memory, although in the case of the 6809, Motorola offered their own MC6829 MMU design mapping 2 mebibytes (2×2²⁰ byte) in 2 KB pages.
  The very first Macintosh prototype, wire-wrapped by Burrell Smith, contained a 6809.
  The 6809 was used in the mid-1980s through the early 2000s in Motorola SMARTNET and SMARTZONE Trunked Central Controllers (so dubbed the "6809 Controller"). These controllers were used as the central processors in many of Motorola's trunked two-way radio communications systems.
caption: TRS-80 Color Computer
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