from the April 1977 issue of Interface Age magazine

by Adam Osborne

The first small signs of a long predicted shake out are beginning to appear among microprocessor manufacturers. The first two casualties are the Elecronic Arrays EA9002 and possibly the Rockwell PPS-8.

The EA9002 simply took too long to develop. The smallest EA9002 system has three chips: The EA9002 CPU with read/write memory, external read only memory and I/O ports. In mid-1976 that still stood a chance of making it; but now, for simple applications, the EA9002 has to compete with the one-chip F8 from Fairchild and Mostek— and the 8048 from Intel. In more complex applications the EA9002 must compete with the two-chip 8085 system from Intel and the two-chip 6500 system from MOS Technology. Mark the EA9002 as the first stillborn 8-bit microprocessor.

from the May 1977 issue of Interface Age magazine

by Adam Osborne

Now that the Intel 8085 and 8048 are here, IMSAI is going for these two products; IMSAI is not planning to offer a Z-80 CPU card. I wonder why the Z-80 and the Intel products have to be mutually exclusive?

I have had a chance to examine the 8085 and the 8048— and I believe some intriguing user patterns are likely to emerge.