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Re: Laser 128 - questions...
Michael J. Mahon wrote:
Roger Johnstone wrote:
Here's a picture of it http://www.obsoletecomputermuseum.org/lsr3000/
It predated the Laser 128 by a year or two. Its biggest problem was that
it was only Apple II+ compatible, not IIe compatible. It had 64KB of RAM,
80-column text and double-hires graphics (560x192, 6 colours), as well
as the RGB graphics mode, but all these extras were done differently
than the way Apple did it in the IIe.
In some ways it was actually better than the original Laser 128, in that
it had a sound chip, ran at 2MHz and had a BASIC in ROM with commands
for using sound and the extra graphics modes.
Yet another example of the market-driven truth that "Being standard
is better than being better."
I used to work for a major company that made about a half dozen
"improved" PCs--all market flops, of course. The improvements were
very promising, but the software support for them was non-existent
outside the ports that the company paid for.
TI Professional, Digital, and Tandy 2000.
Same basic deal. Oh! IBM PCjr.
Roy
This is a very important lesson for engineers to learn. Unless the
benefits of an "improvement" in design are big and obvious to the
person who makes the purchasing decision, they are doomed.
A corollary is that a standard can only be upgraded when there
is no way to muddle through with the old standard--look at the
time it is taking to roll out the new IP version!
-michael
Check out amazing quality sound for 8-bit Apples on my
Home page: http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/
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