On Thu, 22 Apr 2004, chris wrote:
> >Jobs met Wozniak when he was still in high school (introduced to each
> >other by Bill Fernandez). Wasn't it Jobs who got the job for Woz at
> >Atari?
>
> I wasn't sure when they met, but I did seem to recall that Jobs did get
> Woz the Atari job. Wasn't that where Jobs was working, and they wanted to
> design a handheld game, and Jobs got Woz to do it, and he did it so well,
> Atari couldn't figure out exactly how he did it.
Yes. The story goes that Jobs was given the job to do a Breakout game.
He "outsourced" it to Woz. Jobs got $5K for the job and gave Woz only
$350. Woz recounts the story on his website here:
http://www.woz.org/letters/general/91.html
As far as the design, Woz optimized it to such an extent (not letting any
gate on any TTL go unused) that the Atari engineers could not follow the
logic or the physical layout of the wirewrap...something like that. I
asked Woz about it last year and he sent me a reply that was something to
that effect.
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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Received on Thu Apr 22 2004 - 13:21:16 BST