Re: The IBM PC's slavish devotion to the Apple II

["Chuck Morris" <nospam@nospam.net>]

Bill Garber <willy46pa@comcast.net> wrote in message
BJucnU8vsuSVh3CjXTWJgQ@comcast.com">news:BJucnU8vsuSVh3CjXTWJgQ@comcast.com...
>
> > > I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but card edge expansion devices
> > > did exist before the Apple II, otherwise there would have been no
> > > card slots to buy to put in them. They existed, maybe not in a
personal
> > > computer, but they did exist. I should know. I inserted many a new
card
> > > into the control of an NC machine in the early '70's.
> >
> > Bill, that's not what they said. They were discussing the devices that
> > ended up being put into those slots, not the technology of slots
> themselves.
> >
> > Roy
>
> No Roy,
>
> I read it right. I talked about devices to go into slots too.
> Most all expansion devices do some type of control and/or
> communication. That all existed long before the Apple II.
> Woz worked for HP, correct? What do you think they made?
>

Actually you did miss my point it seems, Bill.  I nowhere implied that Apple
invented the concept of expansion slots.  I was merely pointing out that
Apple made a wise decision in deciding to incorporate expansion slots in the
design of the Apple II, no matter where the concept of such slots
originated.  That decision made the addition of other devices a simple
matter, as well as providing some incentive for 3rd parties to develop
devices that could be used in them.  Commodore for one went another
direction with the C64, and while that allowed them to develop a machine
with a smaller form factor and at a lower production cost, it also was a
limiting factor in the machine's expandability.  The fact that this allowed
Commodore to sell the C64 at a much lower price than the Apple II enabled
them to sell enormous numbers of machines relative to the Apple II, but I
would hazard a guess that as a percentage of the total number of units sold,
more of the Apple II's are still in use than are the C64's, largely due to
that expandability.  When the IBM PC came along, IBM also opted to include
expansion slots, which to my way of thinking was absolutely the right
decision to make.  They may or may not have given any thought whatsoever to
the fact that the Apple II had been noted for it's ease of expansion when
they made their own decision to include such slots, but however they arrived
at that decision, they were effectively following in the same path that the
Apple had taken earlier.  Even if the IBM PC's designers had been kept in
seclusion in a cave for the preceding 5 years and had been unaware that any
other personal computer had ever been sold, they still made the right design
decision IMHO.