The comparison with an early PC is not imaginative.
Think of the original Sinclair ZX81 with 1K of RAM and 8K ROM. Swap out the Z80 for a 6502 to get approximately the same register count. Without a screen to worry about (it took up too much RAM + CPU time) and you could do a lot, e.g. 1K chess or, as the adverts said, run a nucular power station with it. You could also service I/O with hardware interrupts.
Comments
The comparison with an early PC is not imaginative.
Think of the original Sinclair ZX81 with 1K of RAM and 8K ROM. Swap out the Z80 for a 6502 to get approximately the same register count. Without a screen to worry about (it took up too much RAM + CPU time) and you could do a lot, e.g. 1K chess or, as the adverts said, run a nucular power station with it. You could also service I/O with hardware interrupts.