22 Jun
1997
22 Jun
'97
2:36 p.m.
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.
And the marginal PSU, strange video addressing (to save a few TTL chips),
a couple of marginal timings, etc.
I believe Steve Ciarcia once printed a letter he had received from Woz (or
maybe the other Apple designer) explaining that they were designing a
computer and were using the 6502 because they couldn't afford the 8080. I
can't remember which issue of Byte that was printed in, though.
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.
Ward Griffiths
--
-tony
ard12(a)eng.cam.ac.uk
The gates in my computer are AND,OR and NOT, not Bill