22 Jun
1997
22 Jun
'97
12:27 p.m.
On Sun, 22 Jun 1997, A.R. Duell wrote:
Yes, but it some cases the 'kludges' led to
problems later on - 'trivial'
problems like a total incompatability between the Disk II and just about
any other machine in the world, 'mariginal behaviour' like a case that
overheated, a PSU that was beyond the design limit when running a system
board, language card and 1 drive, things like that that caused some
machines to crash after about 1 hour, that _crazy_ slot addressing scheme
and the saving on chips/PSU consumption by switching the power line to
the I/O card ROM - I may be old-fashioned, but I don't like driving input
pins past the supply rails..., etc
Saving components is only 'good' when it doesn't affect performance. I am
not convinced that this is the case with the Apple ][
OK, now you're just outright wrong. I've never had any of the problems
you mentioned above with any of my apples. The only problems I ever had
was when I pulled the disk controller card from my ][+ when it was still
powered on (I was young and lame). As far as the system over-heating,
nope. Never happened. PSU beyond the design limit when running a system
board? What on earth are you talking about? Crashed after an hour?
Mine never, ever spontaneously crashed, and I've owned several. Crazy
slot addressing scheme? I think it wored rather well. And the language
card was for the ][+ to have backward compatibility with the ][. That's
bad design? Actually, that's called "customer friendly".
Of course, you're entitled to your opinion Tony, but I think it's driven
mostly by ignorance (I don't mean that in a bad way) or just plain bad luck.
Oh, please don't think I am picking on Apple. The
PERQ (my favourite
machine) has a number of _very_ marginal timings. The various CPU board
clocks are delayed with respect to each other by a string of TTL inverters
and buffers. Some memory cards will only work in landscape mode - the
timing is 'on the edge', so that the portrait mode doesn't work. And for
those that do work in portrait mode as well you often have to change a
coupld of chips to slower versions (say a 74S157 -> 74LS157) to get it to
work correctly.
If what you described above is correct, then did it work? If so, it
wasn't such a bad design after all, was it? If not, then yeah, the design
sucked. What you describe here, in contrast to the Apple design, is in
fact poor design. The Apple ][, as designed the way it was, worked fine.
Sam
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