10 Apr
1999
10 Apr
'99
4:40 a.m.
On Sat, 10 Apr 1999, Richard Erlacher wrote:
The RS people had their heads wedged, probably due to
politics. They used a
strange mix of parts, seemingly cobbled together from various vendors' app
notes. Their FDC used a TI TTL VCO, a Motorola phase detector, and a
Western Digital controller chip. Additionally they used some wierd TI clock
generator and some other stuff I couldn't justify. Their clock recovery
circuit was pretty poor, i.e. poorer than average, and cost about 6x what I
was used to seeing. Their dynamic memory handling wasn't any sort of slick,
nor was their video circuit.
Rumor has it the Model 1 design was stolen from a third party consultant
by a less than talented head engineer at Radio Shack, and purportedly made
into the production model, bugs and all, so its not surprising that other
RS hardware was designed shoddily.
Sellam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com
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