jhamby on Nostr: So you get 16 MB total address space, the same as an original 68000, but instead of ...

So you get 16 MB total address space, the same as an original 68000, but instead of just loading/saving a 32-bit value for the memory address, you have a 16-bit offset and an 8-bit bank. The Apple IIGS and WDC C compilers use 32-bit pointers, but they have a notion of "memory model" similar to 16-bit x86.

The one big win of 65C816 is that 8086/88 overlaps its 16-bit segment and 16-bit offset so much a 32-bit long pointer only addresses 1 MB of RAM. The '816 bank+offset has no overlapping bits.