Re: The Apple ][ was cool!

[Roy Miller <millers@inebraska.com>]

william strutts wrote:

> "Roy Miller" <millers@inebraska.com> wrote in message
> 3B54AAC2.337E7AE0@inebraska.com">news:3B54AAC2.337E7AE0@inebraska.com...
> >
> <snip>
> > It was the Mac Plus, coupled with a hard drive, and with the LaserWriter
> > AND Adobe Publisher that gave the mac the lead. Not the color Mac II.
> BTW -
> > by that time the PC had VGA, so in some sense the Mac was just catching up
> > with the PC.
>
> The Mac II was released in March 1987 and I believe the PC standard
> at the time was EGA (4-bit color with 640x350 pixels) versus Mac II
> color (8-bit 640 x 480).

Yes, a three year old standard, that was *finally* being surpassed. Except
that, 1) you forgot the PGA that IBM also created, a very expensive, very high
quality color graphic display that was about as good as VGA that also came out
in 198; nly high end CADD work was done on it however; 2) April 1987, one month
after the Mac II, came the release of the PS/2 line (with IBM's second 32 bit
machine, the first being the 32 bit PC RT, VGA and the announcment of OS/2
(which never became useful until AFTER M$ gave it to IBM.)

> Besides the Mac ruled desktop publishing
> until the early 90's when Window 3.1 finally made the PC a serious
> GUI.

I'm not denying that. But Desktop publishing started much earlier than the Mac
II. It really started on the Fat Mac (512K) and took off with the Plus.
Besides, it wasn't the computer so much as the Printer and the software.

> The Mac had true Postscript fonts in the 80's on the screen
> using ATM and the PC didn't have it until True Type came out in
> Windows 3.11.

Well, IBM still didn't have Postscript with True Type. The two are two very
different technologies.
BTW - Don Lancaster used Postscript and a LaserWriter with an Apple //e and
AppleWriter //e. Cool huh? But then, Postscript wasn't an Apple technology, was
it?

> Most of the Desktop publishers in the late 80's
> used the Mac.  I used to be able to take my Mac Plus disk to
> a copy shop and have them run off stuff from my disk.
>
> > No, it didn't. And his point was in 1981 the PC could have 640K and the II
> > could only have 64K (or the Kaypro, or the Morrow, or the Compupro, or the
> > TI, or Atari, and so on) Besides, what about 1984 when Macs could only
> have
> > 128K?? And PC came standard with 256? Or in 1985 when the Fat Mac had 512K
> > and PC were standard with 640, and many had EMS?
>
> The Mac II in March 1987 was upgradeable to 68 meg and the PC had
> how much memory?  16 megs you say.

That was the limit of the 80286. Availible in 1984. With Macs you had to wait
until 1986 to break 512K. Your upper limit was 4 megs until March of 1987. In
April 1987, one month later, IBM released the PS/2 Model 80 with the full 32
bit 80386, a 4 gig address space, plus, of couse, it's virtual memory built
into the CPU.

The point is that Apple while a leader, wasn't always that far ahead. And in
some areas, it lagged.

>
> http://lowendmac.com/ii/ii.shtml
>
> <snip>
> > The reason for EMM (1987) or EMS (c 1985) was that people wanted to run
> > PC-DOS software, and DOS was limited to 1 meg of memory, and IBM had
> stolen
> > 1/3 of that!
>
> I believe a lot of that "stolen" memory was mapped to interrupt vectors,
> BIOS ROM's and the like.

Just as Apple did with the upper 12 meg of the Mac Plus' memory.

> EMM memory was developed because the
> 8088/8086 used a 20 bit address bus that limited the memory to 1 meg.

No. EMM only works with the 80206 or higher CPUs.

>
> Considering that the architecture of the PC was based on the 8-bit
> processor with a 20 bit address path, it was logical that IBM would
> utilize an OS that had was limited to that much memory.

Huh? The 8088 was a 16 bit CPU, with an 8 bit data bus, and a 20 bit address
bus.
The 8086 is a 16 bit CPU with a 16 bit data bus, and a 20 bit address bus.
Neither was an 8 bit CPU. An 8 bit CPUs have (normally) 16 bit address lines.

> The 80286
> processor wasn't a consideration in 1981 when DOS was created
> so hence the limitations.  The larger address space of the 286 wasn't
> even a consideration at the time.  Hence the work arounds were
> created

You seem to be babbling here. Of course the 286 (release in 1982) wasn't the
target of DOS. And EMS wasn't created until people were creating worksheets in
Lotus that were crowding the PCs 640K limit. EMS allowed for (depending on the
version) up to 32 megs of memory, and supported multitasking with the right
software. But that was only because people were trying to do on PCs what
couldn't be done on any other micro at the time.

> but the Mac required no workaround.  It already had a processor
> that had a 24 bit address line and could support up to 16 meg of RAM.
> That was in 1984 but Apple limited it to 128k.

And in 1985 the limit was 512K.
And in 1986 the limit was 4 megs.
Accountants in 1986 on PC-ATs were often using up to 8 megs of EMS.
Hey, it worked. It did what was needed. It also did what the Mac couldn't do at
that time.

> The Lisa wasn't limited
> to the memory limitation.

A Lisa is limited to 2 megs of RAM. Half of what the Mac Plus was to have.
I wish the Lisa could have more RAM. I own a Lisa 2/10. I also wish it ran at
more than 5 mhz.

> The Mac OS was limited to 8 meg because
> apple used the high order bit to select RAM/ROM.  They gave the
> Mac an 8 Meg ROM space which is silly on todays standards

It was silly then too!
I'm not sure that the limit was in the OS though. I think it was in the
hardware.
Please note that when the IIgs came out the most that a Mac could have was 4
megs of RAM (top end was the SE at that time) while the IIgs could have 8 megs.
It wasn't until the Mac II came out, 6 months later that Mac surpassed the IIgs
in memory and color graphics.

> but
> when you consider that in the late 80's a 1 meg simm cost 500-1000
> dollars, it was a reasonable assumption.
>
> > Of course, most people who used ATs used them as very fast PCs crunching
> > numbers, and that 287 chip was very helpful there.
>
> And how fast was that new fangled AT?  around 6 mhz?

1984

>  8 mhz?

1985?

> The
> Mac II was 16 mhz and supported a FPU.

1987

>

You are still comparing computers from different eras. A month after the Mac II
IBM had released the Model 80 with a 20 mhz 386.

> You needed that coprocessor
> because the PC was only what 4mhz

1981  And it was 4.77 mhz.

> and the Mac Plus was what
> 8mhz?

1986. And for word processing, or for spreadsheet work, the PC was faster. Why?
It didn't have to spend so many clock cycles supporting a graphical display. It
spent it's time doing work

>  How many apps actually used the coprocessor?  Not too many
> unless you did do number crunching.  Most home users wouldn't

> have had the coprocessor or needed it.

But IBM had it for those who needed it. CADD work, and heavy duty accounting,
or engineering work. After all, IBM creates "business machines", their home
computer was the deformed Junior. That was a real success wasn't it?

>
>
> <snip>
> > That's what killed the II, and the 800 and the 64. Their creators created
> > new machines and didn't (except for the IIgs) come close to keeping up
> with
> > the development that was happening elsewhere. Wintel stinks, but when you
> > consider that a new Wintel computer is the direct descendant of the 1981
> > PC, and (if it has one ISA slot) can even use cards from that humble
> > computer, well it makes me sick when I think what the II could still be.
>
> Not many have ISA slots these days.  That slot technology is dead.
> Most PC's use PCI based slots even the iMac's.

Some Wintels still have an ISA or two - usually for modems. But I agree, the
ISA 8 and 16 bit is about as dead as EISA. Though not as dead as Micro-channel!

Roy

>
>
> But you are right that the II could still be alive if the company that
> made it still believed in it.  The IIgs is an amazing machine considering
> the time in Apples history for which it was made.  I won't dispute
> that with you one bit.  I think the IIgs is a neat machine that was
> met with an untimely death due to neglect.
>
> --
> --
> William R. Strutts - wrstrutts1@nospam.home.com - Whatever!
>
> C'est moi!  http://www.facelink.com/wrstrutts
>
> Just hacking away...
>
> Remove nospam to reply.