Comparing a 1980s memory map to the Raspi Pico

4 days ago

The memory map from 1989 featured local RAM (192KB) and global RAM (512KB) on Motorola VME bus boards, with round-number allocations in 64KB units and unused spaces for clarity.
A 320KB message area in global RAM was designed for 50 bps TELEX communication, taking ~20 hours to fill, making memory feel abundant and enabling luxurious, simple allocations.
Comparing to modern hardware, the 68000 system's local RAM is similar in scale to a Raspberry Pi Pico (260-520KB), though with different architectures and access methods (VME bus vs. QSPI).
The communication system from the 1980s could likely be implemented on a Pico today due to significant improvements in clock speed (8 MHz to 133 MHz) and 32-bit architecture.
In that era, communication speed (50 bps) was the bottleneck, not memory, with 1MB rarely fully utilized; but by the early 1990s, demands shifted to image processing, requiring up to 48MB.
Revisiting this design shows how memory needs evolve rapidly, with simplicity prioritized when resources seemed ample, yet the sense of 'not enough' persists as demands grow.

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