Apple II hardware design

A.R. Duell wrote: I'm a newbie to the world of Apple, spending my early years with Timex-Sinclair's and TRS-80's. I would have to say that your statement above though depends on what you call a 'good piece of hardware design'. For me, it ranks up there with the ZX-81 as an ingenius hardware design due to it's simplicity. I mean heck, as far as boards go, the Apple II mainboard is almost beautiful in it's layout due to this. I often find it interesting to think about the total 180 degree turn Apple did between the ][ series and the Mac's as far as expandability and such. They went from a totally open system to a totally closed system. They should've stuck with the open. As for the difference in a system using hardware to drive things or software, just look at the difference in some floppy drives used in various other things. The drives used for like the Atari 8bits were extremely flexible, as were those with the Amiga, while drives used on any PC, regardless of age unless it has a special controller, are very limited to just what the hardware will let them use. Of course, I don't have anywhere near the knowledge in this area that people like Allison do! Jeff jeffh(a)unix.aardvarkol.com -- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Amiga enthusiast and collector of early, classic microcomputers http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/lakes/6757 (corrected URL)