13 Nov
2007
13 Nov
'07
11:17 p.m.
An even better example is the C-64. The disk drives
on that are
netoriously slow, but were computers in their own right, having a CPU as
part of the drive electronics. One trick (assuming you have at least two
disk drives) was to program the disk drives to copy a disk,
The 64 was emblematic of the best and worst features of this. The
intelligent serial peripherals could talk amongst each other, such as
the disk drive becoming commanded to TALK and the printer to LISTEN,
which is essentially a print spooler.
On the other hand, there was the 6551 ACIA emulation in software for
the user port, which was buggy to boot. People may make fun of the Plus/4
but at least it had a real ACIA.
--
------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ --
Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com
-- 1-GHz Pentium-III + Java + XSLT == 1-MHz 6502. -- Craig Bruce --------------