Apple III motherboard

From: Douglas Quebbeman <dhquebbeman_at_theestopinalgroup.com>
Date: Fri Jun 16 12:39:40 2000

> sheesh, just because it wasnt the greatest of designs doesnt
> give you carte blanche to disparage the person wanting to fix
> one. I have a /// that still boots off its profile drive, but
> i wonder when it will stop working. 2 years ago i gave a
> nonworking /// to a friend who ebayed it. he actually got $60 for it.

Nothing I wrote was disparaging to Louis.

I never had trouble getting one to boot, I had trouble with
it working as any reasonable person with programming skills
would expect a computer to operate.

Let me elaborate. I was developing a job costing package
for a small local construction firm. We didn't have one
to do development on, so I had to work on the customer's
machine. While I understand that SOS (wasn't that the
name of the OS, Apple SOS, pronounced "Applesauce"?)
did have other development environments available, Pascal
coming to mind, I was directed to use the native Basic
interpreter.

Well, I'd be typing in my code, when randomly, without
warning or notification, the /// would pick a point in
my source code, and either delete a chunk out of the
middle, or from a point to the end of the code.

And I mean randomly; it would truncate in the middle
of a line number! Clearly, what was happening is that
I was overflowing the interpreter's symbol table. But
nuking my source code is not an acceptable way of
informing me as a user that it could not handle what I
was asking of it. Hell, at least it could have started
beeping when I'd try to enter a new line of code. So
I'd start saving to disk every 5 lines. Since I compose
to paper (and still do and cannot understand why some
programmers compose directly into thr machine), at
least I didn't _really_ lose anything except peace of
mind.

As I said, I had to work at the customer site, and since
they had to use the machine during the work day, that
meant I had to work the remaining hours. It became
customary for me to still be there in the morning when
they'd come in, although I tried like hell to be out
by 6am. One morning around 8am, one of the owners asked
me "how much longer it would take", to which I replied
"it would've been done by now if you'd bought a different
computer." That was my last day on the project and if
I could do it all over again, I'd have defenestrated
the computer before his very eyes.

'Nuff said; I intended and maintain committed no disparagement
of Louis, only of the Apple ///. I was this very day going
to compose and post a message about Computers I Love to Hate,
but the timing of his posting changed the opportunity.

cheers,
-doug q
Received on Fri Jun 16 2000 - 12:39:40 BST