Re: Homemade Apple II

["Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com>]

David Wilson wrote:
> On Dec 14, 1:31 am, mwillegal <m...@willegal.net> wrote:
> > I'm just amazed that this wasn't done in wire wrap.  I can't recall
> > ever seeing another micro-computer constructed this way.
>
> It looks familiar to me :-)

This is my "prototyping" style, as well.  I consider a soldered
board to be more reliable than a wire-wrapped board (from my
experience).

> I designed and built two Apple // cards using prototype cards and
> soldered wire-wrap wire - a dual port serial card and a ROMDisk card.
>
> > It looks like the builder color coded data bus, address bus and
> > control signals, which is a pretty nice touch.
>
> I also color-coded my wires - it would have been insane to try to use
> a single color...

Exactly.  Color-coding makes things easier, not harder!

> I did not use wire-wrap sockets as it would have made the cards too
> thick put in adjacent sockets.

They can be useful to try out things, but sacrificing two slots for
a card is unsuitable for "production" use.  ;-)

> While I was able to build a couple of cards this way, I am impressed
> that someone managed to build an entire computer.

It takes that certain something that engineers have lots of--I think
its skill + obsessive tenacity.  ;-)  (Of course, if you have obsessive
tenacity, then skill develops naturally.)

-michael

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