Allison wrote:
Cant speak for the 6502, but NS* did it with minimal
hardware a few years
earlier and it was a respected design. Not a whole lot of ttl on the board
either considering it was S100, Boot prom and FDC.
Yes. But the part that makes Woz's design interesting is that he did
it *without* an FDC, and it only ended up as seven TTL chips *total*
(eight if you include the boot PROM).
With an FDC chip, there's certainly a range of design styles available;
I've seen simple and reasonably elegant designs, and gross disgusting
kludges. But the most elegant FDC-based design is still not even in
the same class as Woz's design.
Note that I'm not claiming that Woz's method would be the right thing
to do today. But at the time he did it, it was awesome.