stepping machanism of Apple Disk ][ drive (was Re: Heatkit 51/4 floppies)

From: Allison J Parent <allisonp_at_world.std.com>
Date: Fri Apr 9 18:20:26 1999

<I grew up on the Z80, and for a time I thought that the 6502 was a

Same here.

<horrible little chip. But then I got to use a 6502 in the BBC micro and I

I didn't have that opinion. It took a bit of getting used to having 256
registers that happen to be in the base memory page though. ;)

totally revised my opinion of it. The 6502 instruction set was simple and
<fairly clean. For high-level languages it was a fine processor (BBC basic
<on a 2MHz 6502 was faster than similar BASICs on 4MHz Z80 machines).

In the speed race they were close enough that how an app was structured and
written had a greater effect.

<No. Never forget the 3 magic letters 'IBM'. That's why the PC was
<succesful. Technically there were plenty of better machines around at the
<time, but they didn't have the appeal of coming from a company that
<_every_ computer centre and DP manager had heard of.

That is a fact! IBM legitimized the desktop machine even if it was
inferior design.

Allison
Received on Fri Apr 09 1999 - 18:20:26 BST