Re: The Apple ][ was cool!

["william strutts" <wrstrutts1@nospam.home.com>]

"Roy Miller" <millers@inebraska.com> wrote in message
3B5522F2.662F33B1@inebraska.com">news:3B5522F2.662F33B1@inebraska.com...
>
> 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

Cool.  I'm sure they just sold TONS of those monitors. In other words,
I have never heard of them.  I am sure it sold real well with those
IBM RT machines.  It seems to me that Sun and Silicon Graphics
were beating IBM back then too in the workstation market.

> 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.)

Oh yeah. Microchannel machines.  Another real chartbuster there.

>
> 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.

Well, in order to run Pagemaker, you had to run a GUI which wasn't
quite ready on the PC until 1991.  The Mac came with a GUI which
helped usher in the development with software that desktop
publishers used.  I would say that they went hand in hand.  Of course
with the release of Postscript printers in 1995, it helped usher in
getting the "killer app" on the Mac first.

> Well, IBM still didn't have Postscript with True Type. The two are two
very
> different technologies.

True. But how many people still use Postscript today?  With the advent of
True Type, you saw the ability of fonts to be platform independant.  The
Apple IIgs, Mac and PC use them.  ATM is now a foot note in the history
of font development.  Maybe it is still required in High End pre-press
systems but most businesses don't need it today due to the advent of
True Type fonts.  Any cheap inkjet or laserjet printer will now produce
good quality documents.

> 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?

Why not.  I am sure a Unix user could use Postscript printers since it
is just a page formatting language but the tools were much more useful
on the Mac.  The printer did all the work and hence, it didn't require
a powerful computer to use it.  I'm sure some dedicated PC Drone
was using Postscript printers in the 80's but I often heard them
groan about the poor quality of the publishing tools they had.

> 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.

I believe Compaq was the first to market with the 386 processor.  IBM
was late to the market on that one.  They  miscalculated the markets
desire for faster processors than the 286 so their line was laden with
286 machines. (later corrected but not before the crown fell to
Compaq)

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

Nor was IBM.

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

Actually, I believe the Mac Plus could have used up to 8 meg but
they crippled the machine but not supporting higher than 1 meg
density simms.

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

It seems to me I heard of large RAM cards for 8088 machines
but I could be mistaken.

>
> 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.
>
History calls it an 8-bit computer due to the 8 bit data bus.  The same
can be said for the 6809 which was also a 16 bit processor with an 8-bit
data path.  They refer to it as an 8 bit processor.  The 68000 is referred
to as a 16-bit processor when it had a 32 bit processor with a 16 bit
data bus. Go figure.

> 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

DOS didn't multitask.  Xenix and Unix wasn't exactly a popular OS
option in most users minds. The difficulty of setting up and running
such an OS was not in most small/mid size business users minds.
I suppose if you were a large IT department that it might have been
an option but most PC owners didn't run Unix variants.  Look at
the sales figures.

> 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.


I beg your pardon.  The 6809 machines could multitask using
OS-9.  The TRS-80 Model 16 could multitask using Xenix.
It had a dual processor if I recall:  a Z80 for I/O and a 68000.
The DEC Professional was a PDP-11 based computer
and could run various OS's designed for that machine.  Then
of course you have the Sun's and other workstation manufacturers
that build Unix boxes.  The Amiga released in 1985 could
multitask.

> 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.

Well, a lot of accountants that I knew also swore by their Apple II's
and Visicalc too.  If you recall, Excel was developed for the Mac first
before the PC version came out.  The Mac had several other spreadsheets
back then too. However, it was always the complaint that the Mac
was too slow for true spreadsheet usage until the Mac II's came out.

> It was silly then too!
> I'm not sure that the limit was in the OS though. I think it was in the
> hardware.

It was an addressing thing in hardware. The high order bit would be decoded
to determine if the Mac was addressing ROM or RAM.

> 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.

True but not too many business apps were ever written to take full
advantage of the Apple IIgs.  Most Apple II users could be content
with the 1-2 megs that Apple supplied with the system via the
Apple memory card which only came in a 1 meg version. (depending
of course on the ROM version you owned but in 1986 it would
have been 256K plus whatever else was on the memory card)

<snip>
> 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.

Well it is rather difficult to compare a computer invented in 1981 to
one invented in 1984.  They both have different development timelines.

<snip>
> > and the Mac Plus was what
> > 8mhz?
>
> 1986.

The original Mac was 8 mhz in 1984.  The majority of DOS machine
at that point in time only had 128k - 256k standard.  Extra memory
was put on memory cards.  That probablly changed with the AT that
came out that year but I never used one so I am not sure.

> 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

True but the Mac and the PC were not going after the same customers.
The Mac was going after people who were afraid of computers
and hence it had the GUI interface and the PC was going after the
hardcore command line users who were normally more computer
literate.  These tend to be the guys who have been involved in computer
usage since the beginning...your accounts, bankers and number
crunchers.  The Mac was making inroads into getting first time users
into computers.  The creative types liked the Mac because they
didn't have to understand the computer and its jargon to get their
work done.  That is why Desktop publishing was so big in that
arena.  I know of many of these types that you would have to
pry their Mac from their dead cold hands before they would give
up their Mac.  When I was at GM, the business communications
department was still using Macs but they were being forced
kicking and screaming into the Windows world.

<snip>

> 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?

Exactly.  IBM/PC was a business number cruncher machine in the line
with the old "big iron" machines of the 60's and 70's but the real creative
forces were working on the GUI's of the day.  Different markets.  Different
users.  Their ground breaking work would bring us the X-Windows,
Windows and Mac OS that we all have seen today.  What I have refuted
is your likening the Mac and such machines to the *toy* category.
The Mac did not have too many games developed for it.  All the
good games came out for the PC.  Does that make the PC a toy
computer?

The Mac could have been and should have been a driving force
in the market with their advancements.  However, due to Steve Jobs
insitence on making a commodity computer that was like a toaster,
it had severe limitiations in the beginning which gave the Mac a
slow start.  The IIgs was a better platform to develop the GUI
but again, Apple blew that one too by hatching the machine and
then expecting it to raise itself.  If the IIgs platform were developed
properly, you would have seen faster processors and SCSI
included out of the box like the Mac.  However, the IIgs was only
seen as a temporary solution to help Apple keep the Education users
until they could develop the Mac into that market.

<snip>
> 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!

Go to a computer store and examine the motherboards and you
will be  hardpressed to find a board with a legacy slot on it. Microchannel
was dead out the box.  The IBM licensing scheme was not favorable
to PC manufacturers and the only licensee of it was Tandy with
the 5000 series.  It didn't sell well.  It was eventually dropped leaving
IBM as the sole vendor of microchannel machines in the market.
EISA was a bit more supported since it had a consortium of major
hardware vendors backing it.  However, PCI and other local
bus schemes supplanted the EISA architecture too.  Fortunately,
the PCI bus is now standard across a variety of platforms including
the Mac, PC and some other legacy machines like the Amiga.
--
--
William R. Strutts - wrstrutts1@nospam.home.com - Whatever!

C'est moi!  http://www.facelink.com/wrstrutts

Just hacking away...

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