Re: Laser 128 - questions...

[Jeff Blakeney <CUTjblakeney@sympatico.ca>]

On Thu, 08 Apr 2004 07:10:33 GMT, Wayne Stewart <waynes@telus.dot.net>
wrote:

>I had a hard time understanding the why of the IIc+. They spent a lot
>of money and time designing the IIc+ when they could easily have made
>a IIgs motherboard without the slots in almost no development time.
>They likely could have upped the speed to 4 mhz easily enough.
>Building in a SCSI card would have been easy. Then they would have
>had something to get the Apple II community talkingand without using
>hardly any resources.
>
>The only thing that really makes sense is the story of the IIc+
>that they just decided to build a model of the IIc with a 3.5" drive
>and as an afterthought added a built-in ZipChip.

I could never understand the thinking behind the IIc+ either.  They
release a 16 bit computer with lots of bells and whistles, upgrade it
only slightly and then release another 8 bit computer with nothing in
it that a regular IIc user couldn't do (with the possible exception of
booting 3.5" disks, I've never been sure how that works with the IIc).
Just add a ZipChip and a UniDisk and away you go.  Heck, doing it that
way you could even get an 8 MHz IIc instead.  :-)

Then there is the Mark Twain that was in the works that, without
slots, would have fit nicely into a IIc style case.  The Mark Twain
used SIMMs for memory and had a built in SCSI interface so they could
have put a hard drive instead of a floppy in the case.  With the
external floppy port, it would have been a great computer even if it
didn't run any faster than the original IIgs.

-- 
 Jeff Blakeney - Dean of the Apple II University in the
                 Apple II Community on Syndicomm.com
 CUT the obvious from my address if you want to e-mail me