Re: Laser 128

["Ernest" <ernestls@home.com>]

Bryan Villados wrote in message
<110820001847515379%news001@nospam_macgeek.org>...
>In article <pu0l5.201$hg.19279@dca1-nnrp2.news.digex.net>, Frank
>Townsend <ftownsen@iamdigex.net> wrote:
>
>> Just got one of these machines.
>>
>> Aside from the build quality which is middling, really a fairly elegant
>> machine, and quite fast.  Very configurable (not saying much, I suppose,
in
>> comparison to the closed box design of the IIc).
>>
>> Kind of like an expandable IIc Plus.
>
>What I thought was cool about the Laser 128 is their expansion cabinet
>(sold separately), which could hold one or more Apple II-compatible
>cards.
>
>But to twist the subject a bit... I lack quite a bit of information
>about the legal matters of the Laser 128. I was wondering why the Laser
>128 was able to be manufactured in the early 90's when Franklin was
>shot down quickly for doing the same thing in the early 80's, that is
>manufacturer an Apple II clone? Did the people who made the Laser 128
>approach the box differently than that of Franklin?

They probably followed the same basic process that Compaq used to create an
IBM compatible Bios -which was to lock away several programmers who had
never seen or worked on the system that they were trying to mimic. Then,
they would tell the programmers what to do, and the programmers would write
a new Bios. The folks at the company would analyze the Bios, and if it was
to close to the original, they would send it back to the programmers and
tell them to do the same thing a different way. Eventually, the programmers
would write a Bios that functioned just like the Apple II but was written
differently by people who had never seen the original.

Then, when Apple sues them, they can argue that they created this Bios
completely on their own, and it just "happens" to match the Apple II. There
wasn't much that Apple could do to stop them so VTech could legally sell a
true Apple II clone.

Jobs must have gone volcanic over that one but imagine how furious IBM must
have been? Nobody screws with Big Blue!

E

Ernest