On Thu, 22 Apr 2004 11:21:16 -0700 (PDT)
Vintage Computer Festival <vcf_at_siconic.com> wrote:
> 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.
>
Tightly optimized TTL designs are a lost art. I remember how offended I was when a RAM Tester design I came out with had a timing problem and my boss insisted that I put a 'glitch catcher' in (a cap to eliminate a logic 'glitch') rather than adding one more cascade on the clock that would have let me 'deglitch' it syncronously and correctly.
Received on Thu Apr 22 2004 - 22:00:43 BST