Re: IWM Does Not Exist?

[mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon)]

Laine Houghton wrote:

>"Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com> wrote in message
>20031025030428.27614.00000072@mb-m04.aol.com">news:20031025030428.27614.00000072@mb-m04.aol.com...
>
>> Of course the slot architecture is designed to be versatile and clean.
>> That's part of the genius of the Apple II.
>>
>> It provided:
>>
>> 1) a 16-byte "device select" address space for each slot (intended
>>    primarily for card control),
>> 2) a 256-byte "I/O select" address space for each slot except slot 0
>>    (intended primarily for control firmware), and
>> 3) a 2048-byte "I/O strobe" address space for all slots to share,
>>    together with a protocol for sharing,
>> 4) fully decoded slot-specific "device select", "I/O select", and
>>    "I/O strobe" signals.
>>
>> This was a very insightful design that encouraged "plug and play"
>> I/O cards incorporating device specific drivers, allowing bootable
>> devices to be designed without changing the computer or its ROM
>> (after the Autostart revision).
>>
>> Pretty clean and forward looking for its time, I'd say.  And we have
>> Steve Wozniak and Allen Baum to thank for this beautiful piece of
>> engineering.
>
>Michael,
>I wasn't aware of the name Allen Baum in connection with the Apple //. I did
>a google search and stumbled across an interesting site.
>http://tinyurl.com/sbx0
>
>
>interesting story here.
> http://tinyurl.com/sbws

Interesting site--I'll have to spend some time perusing it.  ;-)

Allen's name is in the original Monitor source.  I worked with him
when I was at HP Labs, so I got a little more of the story.  ;-)  He
had a lot to do with the Apple II I/O architecture.

-michael

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