I’ve always liked the sheer chunky size of the 68000’s DIP package. Here’s one I keep on my desk for old times’ sake:
Not that I’ve got all that much experience with 68000 processors. Back during my degree (late '80’s) we did an assembly language project on a 68K development board. And, of course, we were using Sun 3/50’s & 3/60’s back then, which were also 68k based.
The processor on my desk came from an old CAMTEC PAD that I rescued from the skip many years ago.
Good rescue work! It is chunky - it’s almost like seeing a Lego Duplo version of a DIP. I think I first saw these at Uni, where there was an in-house construction, a sort of single-user workstation, like a desk-mounted small rack system. (Might have been an APM)
Packaging is a thing all of itself: I gather Intel’s 8008 was crammed into an existing 18 pin package (“a very poor choice, imposed by Intel management’s aversion to high pin-count packages.”) And I remember some discussion of whether a copper slug would be needed in some device, which would increase the cost. Maybe that was mentioned for the ARM… “Cheap meant it had to go in a plastic package, plastic packages have a fairly high thermal resistance, so we had to bring it in under 1W”.
The Fujitsu FM-NEW7 was a lower-chip-count version of the FM-7. (Lower still meant close to 100 ICs; Fujitsu really liked piling in the hardware in those days. It even had a second 6809 CPU to run the video and scan the keyboard.)
I opened mine up a while back and noticed that it has several seriously chunky ICs. Not only are they wider than the standard 0.6" JDEC package, but they also reduced the pin spacing from the standard .1" to .07" to pack in more pins. None the less, these are still 64-pin packages, like the 68000.
