On Fri, 9 Apr 1999, Richard Erlacher wrote:
> The TRS-80 could have been put out with (1) an 80x24 display rather than the
> 16x64, it could have solidly supported double-density FD's (in the model 3)
> and it could have operated at about 4MHz rather than the 2.-something it
> used, and it could have switched in and out the ROM so it could run CP/M but
> for the greed of Tandy Corp. It would have cost them an additional $5 and
> change to put those features in their model 3, but they thought "well, we're
> going to sell a million of these . . . " and decided they preferred having
> the dollars. Had they gone the other way, they probably would have had the
> "personal computer" market all to themselves. They had a huge distribution
> network, a huge sales force, a huge service network, unlike any other
> microcomputer manufacturer of the time. Within a year, Apple owned the
> personal computer market, particularly with respect to businesses, even
> though Radio Shack had better packaging by the time the Model 3 came out.
> That was also about the time it became common to see the 80x24 displays, the
> 8"disk drives, the nearly 4MHz Z-80 running CP/M, the extra 16K memory, etc.
> on the Apple II. If Tandy had gone with the better design, which was on the
> table, there probably would be no IBM PC today.
This is a highly simplistic view of the early home computer market. He
with the biggest dick didn't always go home with the babe. There was much
more to the computer to entice someone to buy it than just the speed of
the microprocessor. Available software and overall marketing effort
played the bigger role, and Apple exploited this by advertising the figure
of "Over 10,000 programs written for the Apple".
As far as a comparison between the 6502 and Z80, its been argued over time
and again, but the consensus is generally that each processor could
perform some task faster than the other, and overall, applications running
on both seemed to perform equally. Of course, when you involved
subsystems like disk access, the Apple tended to have an advantage over
some Z-80 systems (and even other 6502 systems).
Sellam Alternate e-mail: dastar_at_siconic.com
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Received on Fri Apr 09 1999 - 13:49:20 BST