9 Oct
2011
9 Oct
'11
12:30 p.m.
There's a difference between being able to find
some obscure adapter,
and making SCSI integral in motherboards, which Apple did with the Mac
Plus ~ 1987 and successive products.
I am not sven sure that Apple were the first to put SCSI on the
mainboard. What about Sun? In any case, a 'motherboard' or mainboard is
meaningless for some types of computer.
The Mac Plus _did_ have an Apple-designed interface:
The ADB port.
Did it? I thought that the Mac+ had the old-style keyboard interface
usign a telphone-type modular connector, and a DE9 socekt for a
quadrature-output mouse. In fact I am darn sure mine does.
However, as usual, this was thoroughly documented on
the hardware and
software side, and many third party peripherals were built. Ditto
Where can I get the _full_ ADB spcification? Yes, there were 3rd part
peripherals, and even chips (Microchip sold a ADB mouse controller which
was obviously a programmed PIC), but I didn't think you could get the
complete specification to design your own stuff without being a
registered developer, signing NDAs, etc. Maybe that's changed, but I
never managed to get it. I don;t think it was in Inside Macintosh, for
example.
Appletalk serial - fully documented and specified,
many third party
peripherals.
I have no problem with a manufacuter coming up with a new, custom
interface. I have a lot of problems wehn they give it a stnadard name.
Like calling the Mac II expanison slots Nubus. They are _almsot_ Nubus,
but there are differences.
Ditto, Apple rolled it out across the whole product
line - New World
Macs - obsoleting the floppy and serial ports at around the same time.
AS an aside, I've yet to see a USB floppy drive that can do everythign a
real flopy drive linked to just about any normal floppy controller chip
on the processor bus can do. And there seem to be plenty of issues with
USB-RS232 interfaces.
Oh well...
-tony