The 65816 is an interesting beast. I used to have a prototype version of this chip somewhere, though after the nth move I have no idea which of the many crates it lives in or if I may have accidentally thrown it out (I seem to have misplaced my heirlooms as well :( ).<p>The reason why this is an interesting chip is because if offers a window on what an &#x27;alternate universe&#x27; might have looked like if Motorola and Intel had had a third viable contender when the CPU wars were still in their infancy. Unfortunately the chip never found itself in a machine that was spread out widely enough and with powerful enough hardware that its potential could be seen. And that&#x27;s a pity because it had some pretty nifty features, the processor that it is easiest to compare to was the 80286.