Re: Input/output on the Apple ][

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

Paul Schlyter wrote:
> In article <1pGdnfY54_COlX_fRVn-ow@comcast.com>,
> Michael J. Mahon <mjmahon@aol.com> wrote:
>
> > Paul Schlyter wrote:
> >
> > > In article <eu-dneft2PYQAnzfRVn-rw@comcast.com>,
> > > Michael J. Mahon <mjmahon@aol.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > > sam124@operamail.com wrote:
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > > How can I do I/O on the Apple ][?
> > > >
> > > > The Apple II probably presents more options for doing I/O than
> > > > any other computer.
> > >
> > >
> > > It's good that Apple II enthusiasts are still around.  But aren't you
> > > a little overly enthusiastic here?  Can the Apple II be used for e.g.
> > > capturing digital video over a Firewire connection?  Are there radio
> > > and/or TV/video cards for the Apple II?  And what about Gigabit
> > > Ethernet - is that available for the Apple II?  And of course we have
> > > the ubiqutous USB-2 to which you can connect a lot of devices - does
> > > that work on the Apple II?
> >
> > Forgive me for speaking in the context of the Apple II and
> > other "retrocomputers" of its time...clearly I should have
> > added "of its time" to my statement.
> >
> > Of course, since nothing that we exclaim about here is worth
> > any exclamation except in the retro context--perhaps I can be
> > excused for leaving it implicit.
>
>  
> You should at least have used past tense, like e.g.:
>  
> # The Apple II probably presented more options for doing I/O than
> # any other computer.
>  
> or (even better):
>  
> # The Apple II probably presented more options for doing I/O than
> # any other computer of its time.
>  
> However, you did use present tense:
>  
> # The Apple II probably presents more options for doing I/O than
> # any other computer.
>  
> and that does give the impression that you claim the Apple II is
> superior in this respect even compared to the computers of today.

OK.  My apologies for misleading you.  ;-)

> But I'm not even sure that:
>  
> # The Apple II probably presented more options for doing I/O than
> # any other computer of its time.
>  
> is correct.  We also had the S-100 bus computers (Altair, Imsai,
> North Star Horizon, and several others) which indeed had a lot of I/O
> options too, including the possibility to design and build your own
> hardware I/O boards.  And they could handle interrupts and do DMA.
> You could also bank switch the entire 64 kB memory space - one
> multitasking multiuser OS (MP/M) assinged one 64 kB memory bank to
> each user.  The S-100 bus computers were considerably more expensive
> than the Apple II's though.

And all of this is also true of the Apple // (though some trickiness
was needed to use interrupts reliably prior to the //e).  Because
of the different application domains for Apple II's and S-100 machines,
multitasking OS's never became prevalent on the Apple II--though they
could have been developed along the same lines.

And I expect that there were at least as many boards produced for
the Apple II as for the S-100 bus, particularly if we exclude the
many versions of RAM cards.  The variety of I/O cards created for
the Apple II was amazing.

-michael

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