On Thu, 12 Jul 2001, Richard Erlacher wrote:
> The Apple][ is not a terribly good system for introducing someone to
> microcomputers for a couple of pretty simple reasons. (1) it was
> designed from the ground up as a video game, with emphasis and many
> compromises on the graphics and little real attention to the more
> basic aspects of computing. (2) it was designed around BASIC, rather
Here we go again. At the risk of offending Dick with historical fact, the
Apple ][ was NOT "designed from the ground up as a video game".
Certainly it implemented graphics and sound features, but these were just
clever hacks by Woz that added these powerful features without significant
additional circuitry.
I don't know why I even welcome the eventual flood of nonsense from our
friend Dick by even bothering to respond to his message, but nonsense
coming from anyone should not go unanswered.
> than around a more elementary debugger/assembler, though there were,
> in the later models, provisions for assembler, which is probably the
BZZZT. Wrong again, the original Apple ][, as I just previously
mentioned, had an assembler built into the ROM.
Thanks for playing. Your consolation prize is a vat of molten iron.
Just to keep things in perspective, when Woz designed the Apple-1, and
subsequently, by way of evolving the design, the Apple ][, he very much
had in mind the design elements and structure of mini-computers of the
day. Woz told me personally that he was very inspired by the design of
the Data General Nova (mostly because of the simplicity of it's
circuitry). The big difference was that the Apple was designed around a
cheap microprocessor, rather than implementing his own processor, which I
think even you will agree makes more sense, considering the time
(1975-76). The monitor feature was there from the start, and was the main
interface by which the user interacted with or programmed the computer.
Creating a BASIC interpreter was obviously an attempt to make the computer
more immediately useful to the average computer geek of the time.
> best tool for learning about the architecture and about microcomputers
> in general. That doesn't make it a bad choice as a first computer,
> but it does mean one has to take a number of things into
> consideration. I don't think it matters terribly whether one has an
> Apple][, ][+, ][c, or ][e, in that regard. They all have the same
> entaglements with the video hardware, hence, don't allow much
> understanding of the workings of the system until a pretty complete
> understanding of how NTSC video works is acquired.
More nonsense. The Apple ][ is a very good introduction to modern day
PCs. It's cheap, abundant, and easy to use and program.
> The video-targeted compromises made in the Apple][, e.g. splitting the
> video memory into separate portions, serve to make the process of
> learning about the interaction of the video subsystem and rest of the
> machine more cumbersome, though, ultimately, that's not a bad thing.
What better way to learn about video than to HAVE to confront the video
system limitations head on and basically write code to emulate what would
amount to video hardware in other machines?
Anyway, I'm putting my armor back on in anticipation of the impending
battle.
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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International Man of Intrigue and Danger
http://www.vintage.org
Received on Thu Jul 12 2001 - 13:28:33 BST