March 28, 2026
Welcome to the Mac-that-never-was
OpenBSD on Motorola 88000 Processors
The forgotten chip some wish powered Macs sparks nostalgia and nerd awe
TLDR: OpenBSD’s look back at Motorola’s 88000 chip revived a lost chapter between old Macs and PowerPC. Commenters split between nostalgia and “why didn’t Apple use this?” while hardware fans praised its quirky multi-chip design—fueling an alternate-history debate about what personal computers could’ve been.
OpenBSD’s throwback to the Motorola 88000—the family’s "black sheep" between the famous 68000 and later PowerPC—sent the comments into full-on retro frenzy. One camp showed up clutching old manuals and memories: nostalgia mode activated. As one fan remembered it as their first taste of RISC (a simpler, speed-focused chip design), the big question lit up the thread: why didn’t Apple ever pick this thing?
Meanwhile, the hardware romantics were swooning over the 88k’s quirky party trick: separate chips for cache and memory management. In non-geek speak, it split some brain functions into extra chips, letting systems mix-and-match and even coordinate multiple processors—like Lego for CPUs. Cue zdw’s “this design is fascinating” love letter, praising how it could juggle one or multiple cache chips.
The drama? An alternate-timeline debate: the Mac-that-never-was. Commenters joked about the 88000 being “consigned to oblivion” as if it were a prog-rock album. Others argued the multi-chip setup was either genius modularity or a maintenance headache in disguise. Through it all, the mood was part wistful museum tour, part gearhead admiration—proof that even a forgotten processor can still steal the show when the community gets nostalgic and nerdy at the same time.
Key Points
- •Motorola’s 88000 (m88k) was a RISC architecture introduced between the 68000 and PowerPC eras.
- •The CISC-based 68000 series was widely deployed but faced performance scaling limits due to complexity.
- •First-generation m88k systems used an 88100 CPU with optional external 88200 CMMUs for cache and MMU.
- •NCD used the 88100 in X terminals, benefiting from designs that could omit an MMU for cost and speed.
- •The 88100/CMMU P‑Bus enabled automatic cache coherency and remote MMU operations, easing multiprocessor software.