Apple II hardware design

From: Sam Ismail <dastar_at_crl.com>
Date: Mon Jun 23 11:53:26 1997

On Mon, 23 Jun 1997, A.R. Duell wrote:

> > > This is true, but if you want to do strange things with PC (or any other)
> > > hardware then design the card you need. It's not that hard, and it won't
> > > affect the machine's performance in other areas.
> >
> > But its much faster and easier to do it with software. One of the
>
> Maybe for you. I find it a lot easier to solder up a card (which has a
> good chance of working first or second time...) than to write and debug
> software. In all my recent projects the hardware (quite complex hardware
> - 10's of chips) has taken a lot less time than the (minimal) software.

Depends on your forte. Mine happens to be software. I'll bet I can
write the software faster than you can solder the board. HOWEVER, I'll
also wager that you have a lot more flexibility since you can design in
features to your hardware that I cannot program in to my software.

> > things that made the Apple so nice was that it was an excellent
> > prototyping machine. You had all sorts of inputs and outputs with which
> > to play with. You didn't need to spend time designing an interface card,
> > the Apple was experimenter ready! Just add software.
>
> The standard I/O (on the games port) consisted of (IIRC) a few
> resitor-reading ADCs, a few single-bit inputs and a few outputs. Not a lot
> IMHO. The BBC micro had 8 I/O lines, another 8 outputs if you didn't use
> the printer port, handshake lines for all those, 4 ADC channels (10 bit, I
> think) _and_ a system bus with a couple of decoded chip select signals on
> it. That's what I call an experimenter's machine.
>
> And is it that hard to design an address decoder? It's one chip these
> days, probably 2 or 3 at the time the Apple 2 was 'current'

Probably or you know for sure?

Sam
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Received on Mon Jun 23 1997 - 11:53:26 BST