Re: _Infinite Loop_ by Michael S. Malone

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

Rubywand <rubywand@swbell.net> wrote:

>> filled with the simplest componentry imaginable -- all superfluity having
>> been winnowed out over the previous nine years
>
>     Pure nonsense. The IIgs is the most complex, least simple personal
>computer ever built.

(See my reply to Dennis)

Are you kidding!  I can plug in a card on the IIGS without worrying about
IRQs or DMA channels.  I can plug in a drive without worrying about PIO
modes or master/slave conflicts.  The IIGS is remarkably simple from the
users' point of view.  And the chip count was drastically reduced from that
9 years prior to the IIGS.  Compare the chip count of the IIGS to that of
the Apple II or II+.  The IIGS was elegant.  The II and II+ generated heat
almost as badly as a modern PC (I had a CPU chip failure on my PC
recently, yuck).

Maybe you mean from a design point of view.  It is true that the IIGS has
lots and lots of circuitry in order to handly both the IIGS side and the
IIe emulation side, but you have to admire the way the engineers (Woz
was one of them) who designed the IIGS.  They took a complicated task
and made it work so well, a complicated design on paper that is so simple
in execution, the IIGS is simply the most beautiful piece of engineering
Apple ever created.  They may deny it.  They tried to deep-six it.  But
the IIGS was one of the finest Apple computers (that includes Macs) ever
built.