22 Jun
1997
22 Jun
'97
8:23 a.m.
On Sun, 22 Jun 1997, A.R. Duell wrote:
I'll have to disagree with you there. IMHO the
Disk II controller is
nothing other than a kludge. It could certainly have done with a track 0
sensor (that would have stopped the heads from banging on start-up). And,
as a hardware designer, I don't like designs where most of the
functionality is handled in software.
It was definitely a kluge, as Woz would be the first to admit. Back when
he was homebrewing the machine that would later be known as the Apple, he
had more time to program than money to buy components -- that's why the
weird disk controller with no sector detect and the 65021 instead of the
8080 -- the 6502 was about a quarter of the price of an 8080 at the time.
--
Ward Griffiths
"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within
the system, but too early to shoot the bastards." --Claire Wolfe