21 Mar
2005
21 Mar
'05
1:50 p.m.
On Mon, 21 Mar 2005, Eric Smith wrote:
Sellam wrote:
IMHO, this is a good example of proper application of patent law. Unlike
some of the complete garbage getting accepted currently, the GCR technique
was a non-obvious, unique method for dealing with a system of hardware,
software and mechanical devices that is not 100% predictable (speed
variations, bit dropouts, etc.)
Just my 0.02..
Steve
I am pretty surprised that I can't find any
good technical descriptions of
the Apple ][ disk controller. It's not in the DOS manual and, come to
think of it, I can't think of any publication Apple came out with that
describes it. I wonder why this is?
Because Apple considered it somewhat proprietary. Though there's
a patent on it:
http://www.brouhaha.com/~eric/patent/us/4210959.pdf
There's also a patent on the later IWM chip, which was basically
a single chip version with a few improvements:
http://www.brouhaha.com/~eric/patent/us/4742448.pdf