The 6800 had a three-state control that would disable the address bus to allow another device direct memory access. A disk controller could, therefore, transfer data into memory with no load on the processor. It was even possible to have two 6800 processors access the same memory. However, in practice systems of such complexity usually required the use of external bus transceivers to drive the system bus; in such circuits, the on-processor bus control was disabled entirely in favor of using the similar capabilities of the bus transceiver. In contrast, the 6802 dispensed with this on-chip control entirely in order to free up pins for other functions in the same 40-pin package as the 6800, but this functionality could still be achieved using an external bus transceiver.