I wouldn't call it more open. Just different markets with comanies beliving to have a chance. In case of Thomson, try to imagine if GE had come up with a home computer in 1982 to match some government recomendation for a nation wide school system. That might give a comparable picture.

@scruss The 6502 wasn't independant, as they could just work interleaved. The same mechanics are true for the Z80. Then again, there have been real independant cards for the Apple II where the additional processors had seperate Memory and could realy work in parallel.

If you insist on using divis where it shouldn't occur, OK. But care to explain why the suggest was making "drastic changes"…"deviating" when the whole intent was only to fix grammar and unclear sentence constructions? (eg conclusio: "was successful" … "to late to successfully" is confusing). I learned your divis quirks and leave them be; but I would like to save your time – and mine in the future.

@LangLangC First of, I realy apreciate you effort (and the one otehrs invers) to improve my way less than acceptable spelling. No doubt, without it would be a horrible read. Still, not every change is an improvement. It might b less noticable to you, but there have been almost fights about spelling in some - including multiple changes between US and English spelling and back. Or people changing passages more about taste than content. I usually go along, and enjoy how people think their variation of grammer is the only one to go. Where I'm not going along is ...

... when people change meaning. In this case, you changed "many successful" to "many relatively successful". That's inserting an unitended notion and the reason why I choose to select the item of unwanted changes. I learned to trust your corrections, and only do a very quick skimming, not expecting any issue, only looking at larger changes. As more did this suprise me. Again, I very much apreciate your help, and while I would prefer English grammer and spelling over US style, I'm the last to argue about grammer and spelling at all. ...

Regarding hypens of any kind, periods or more so the use of HTML, I do active shun them. I considere them at best being unneccessary eye candy, but more often than not harmful. I try to stay to plain ISO646-IRV, as these are guaranteed to work almost everywhere. And yes, I am using non-Unicode and non-8850 codeset machines on a daily base. Heck, Im usually not even using German umlauts. Crap like using SUP is even more devastating, as copying text, will drop it, thus possible changeing the meaning. The way I write is impenetrable against such conversion problems - well proven since usenet time

Ah well. I write in British myself and keep US in edits if present (and I notice). Avoiding edit-wars and keeping changes to the minimum in meaning, most similar in style. Only in this case I interpreted the two "successful"s as being on the same level of meaning unintentionally. If they are intentionally the way they are I'd still disagree a bit in style and ease of comprehension, but see what this should accomplish now. Indeed my error, as that's opinion then; and your post. Thx for the explanation, dialing back a notch on interpretation ;)

The hyphen issue is just the one thing I learned by myself from your edits. No problem for me – if communicated – as I like the typographic correctness but our shared time not wasted even more. –– & yeah I still write 7bit ASCII in mail subjects, but my professional writing very much benefits from unicode and visually appealing use of typography, as paper is the medium of choice. Multiple personalities sometimes overlap, that's the only time any confusion arises.

@LangLangC Ah, Now I see. I have to admit, that I only did a fast check and therefor not checked the environment for bad style due double use of the wame wird. Great job, except in this case it dont know of any way to avoide it, as its about two different issues, and in my understanding successful is the best word in both cases: That the machines on themself where successful /which was part of the question), but they (in total) where to late to be successful against the upcoming 16 bit - which describes the whole dilemma of the 6809 in general. I'm always open for suggestions to improve

How about "There have been many successful 6809 systems (in their time). But then it was already too late to successfully compete with the upcoming 16-bit systems."?

@LangLangC Well, I do enjoy a good typography, but I have to disagree about the notion that there is a 'correct' one. It's a matter of culture and maybe moreso of personal style. Typography is an art to please and can be good in many ways. It starts by the lenght of a hyphen used for each purpose. The ones offered here are way too long for my background and look plain uggly. Much similar the use of 'wrong' quotings instead of '»...«' :)) ... and many others. Beside being portable, 7 bit encoding also eliminates all possible missuse :))

Still got twice successful in it - anyway, got to get some sleep. Got to get up early tomorrow and do some interviews and finally sign the leastfor a nice little exhibition Im prepareing - ofc, all about old computers, from punch cards to PCs.

With typographical correctness I just meant that Geviert und Halbgeviert are DIN standardised and I see and read them as different; usually. With the SE editor it's impossible for me to distinguish the two in source (f-ing font doesn't distinguish), but easy when it's rendered, sigh.

If you insist on twice successful either inserting then or italicising compete would alleviate the initial confusion I had with the double and keep your intentions. If you prefer another word –to make it 7bit compatible– "to be thriving against competing and even more successful 16bit systems"?

And kapla after a good night.