> It was definitely a kluge, as Woz would be the first to admit. Back when
> he was homebrewing the machine that would later be known as the Apple, he
> had more time to program than money to buy components -- that's why the
> weird disk controller with no sector detect and the 65021 instead of the
> 8080 -- the 6502 was about a quarter of the price of an 8080 at the time.
And the marginal PSU, strange video addressing (to save a few TTL chips),
a couple of marginal timings, etc.
I believe Steve Ciarcia once printed a letter he had received from Woz (or
maybe the other Apple designer) explaining that they were designing a
computer and were using the 6502 because they couldn't afford the 8080. I
can't remember which issue of Byte that was printed in, though.
I can understand why the Apple ][ has a significant following - it was a
machine that was 'open', that hackers could get inside, etc. But I also
know that it's not a good piece of hardware design, and thus don't put it
high up my list of interesting machines.
> Ward Griffiths
--
-tony
ard12_at_eng.cam.ac.uk
The gates in my computer are AND,OR and NOT, not Bill
Received on Sun Jun 22 1997 - 21:36:12 BST