Motorola 68000
Hacker ApprovedRanked 3 of 4 microprocessors by recommenders
Praised for its clean, C-friendly programming model and flat 32-bit addressing; critics cite complex addressing modes and slow interrupt response.
Praised for its clean, C-friendly programming model and flat 32-bit addressing; critics cite complex addressing modes and slow interrupt response.
22 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 17
- criticize it
- 5
- approval share
- 77%
Recommended in 9 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 17 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 3.4 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 9 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Enjoyable assembly programming model
“Motorola did a good job on the programming model, but you can tell that the 68000 is from the 1970s.”
Comment from 13 Dec 2025 in “Z8086: Rebuilding the 8086 from Original Microcode” “Programming 68000 assembly is a joy.”
Comment from 1 Nov 2025 on Hacker News Flat 32-bit memory addressing
“Give me a flat 32 bit memory address space any day”
Comment from 23 Jun 2026 in “8086 Segmented Memory was a good idea” “If 32 bit: 68K. Those are miles ahead of the 6502.”
Comment from 30 Nov 2025 in “LLVM-MOS – Clang LLVM fork targeting the 6502” Easy to decode, C-friendly
“The 68-k ISA, which used 16-bit encodings, was much easier to decode than x86”
Comment from 29 Mar 2026 in “OpenBSD on Motorola 88000 Processors” “I had no problems moving into the very C friendly 68000”
Comment from 2 Dec 2025 in “LLVM-MOS – Clang LLVM fork targeting the 6502” Fast, consistent lead over Intel
“Motorola succeeded to have a consistent lead in performance over Intel”
Comment from 29 Mar 2026 in “OpenBSD on Motorola 88000 Processors” “it blew my mind how incredibly fast it was”
Comment from 18 Apr 2026 in “Amiga Graphics”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Newer and costlier than 8086
“68000 had major flaw of being newer while 8086 had been available for longer and with second sources”
Comment from 29 Mar 2026 in “OpenBSD on Motorola 88000 Processors” “MC68000 was considered too expensive, while MC6809 was not future-proof”
Comment from 29 Jan 2026 in “Playing Board Games with Deep Convolutional Neural Network on 8bit Motorola 6809”
Other microprocessors people recommend
The three most recommended other microprocessors, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 4 microprocessors, rankedWhat people said
23 of the 25 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“These sorts of project should be using the 68000 or the 65816 which both give a 24 bit address bus.”
“68000 interrupt responsiveness was also pretty terrible.”
“I was drooling over the MC68000. I had a pre-release reference manual from 1979 and it was the most awesome chip around.”
“Give me a flat 32 bit memory address space any day”
“Motorola's 68000 CPU took so much inspiration from the PDP-11's ISA, it was almost a spiritual successor”
“a great CPU with 32-bit operands”
“the complex addressing of the 020/030 were what killed it.”
“the 68k did not perform in real life as well as people thought it would”
“it blew my mind how incredibly fast it was”
“The 68-k ISA, which used 16-bit encodings, was much easier to decode than x86”
“68000 had major flaw of being newer while 8086 had been available for longer and with second sources”
“Motorola succeeded to have a consistent lead in performance over Intel”
“68000s however had a problem: they couldn't return correctly from a page (MMU) fault”
“immediately at home with its powerful addressing modes and deep architecture”
“MC68000 was considered too expensive, while MC6809 was not future-proof”
“I surely did not find fun programming MIPS vs 68000/80x86, given how limited the Assembly and macro Assemblers were.”
“Motorola did a good job on the programming model, but you can tell that the 68000 is from the 1970s.”
“I had no problems moving into the very C friendly 68000”
“If 32 bit: 68K. Those are miles ahead of the 6502.”
“registers are actually pointer width, so you don't have to go through memory just to do arbitrary pointer arithmetic”
“I'd argue that 68K is simpler to learn and use.”
“x86 is not nearly as bad as 68k, more by lucky accident than design”
“Programming 68000 assembly is a joy.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.