22 Jun
1997
22 Jun
'97
3:21 p.m.
I can
understand why the Apple ][ has a significant following - it was a
machine that was 'open', that hackers could get inside, etc. But I also
know that it's not a good piece of hardware design, and thus don't put it
high up my list of interesting machines.
It depends on how you define "good". Wozniak clearly had a different
definition - he would fret for days about reducing chip count by
using some clever scheme. From the hardware manufacturer's point
of view, a couple dozen assembly language instructions are free, while
chips (and board space) costs real money. Wozniak's attempts to reduce chip count aren't
very different than
the efforts that radio manufacturers have made to reduce tube counts.
Almost all consumer-grade superhets will combine the local oscillator
and the mixer, for example.
Well, in the UK, a 'pentagrid converter' was very uncommon except in
battery sets. Most mains superhets used a triode-hexode frequency changer
- one 'bottle', but separate oscillator (triode) and mixer (hexode)
sections.
Tim. (shoppa(a)triumf.ca)
--
-tony
ard12(a)eng.cam.ac.uk
The gates in my computer are AND,OR and NOT, not Bill