Why did the Motorola 68000 processor family fall out of use in PCs?
There are many contributing factors as are being mentioned. I would say the most dominant one is the success of the x86 PC. That success depended on the continued cost&#x2F;performance value. M68k systems on the whole were considered workstation machines that looked down upon less capable hardware. Exceptions to this were the Amiga and Atari ST, which unfortunately competed themselves out of existence rather than against the PC market which was squeezing them out. The Macintosh was more capable due to its software rather than CPU.<p>Once you have the success of DOS PCs and add growing exposure of Windows 2.x (e.g. Windows&#x2F;386) filling in capabilities it&#x27;s hard to compete with technically better but also much more expensive systems except in smaller or niche markets over time. Even the server market switched from the likes of Sun SPARC to x86 systems.<p>The theme is that cheaper and minimally viable has a larger market potential that wins if able to find a way to survive. An earlier&#x2F;smaller example of this is how the 6502 ate the lunches of other&#x2F;better 6800 or Z80 based systems. That success later failed due to stagnation of the hardware and operating systems, and again in-competition. The x86 PC-compatible market allowed competition between vendors while still using the same ISA and ecosystems DOS &amp; Windows.<p><i>I grew up in this era having multiple Atari 8-bit &amp; ST systems, using Apple ][, Macintosh, and rare access to Amigas. I was extremely disappointed with DOS+Windows prevailing over the more exciting systems from a graphics&#x2F;sound gaming perspective. Market size won.</i>