Re: Official and LEGAL ways to emulate Apple II?

["Bryan Villados" <news003@macgeek.org>]

Another problem with cloning is that, by now, probably every 6502 Apple
person has seen the ROM listing at one time or another. When I worked at
Phoenix Technologies back in the late 1980's as a ROM-BIOS engineer, I had
to sign a waver saying I've never ever seen the ROM-BIOS source listing on
an IBM PC. Phoenix Tech was able to legally close the IBM ROM-BIOS because
they used the "clean room/reverse engineering" technique. I was considered a
"clean engineer" at Phoenix Tech.

The steps are:

1) Have a "dirty engineer" read the IBM ROM-BIOS code. Then write or
re-write, in English with no code whatsoever, exactly how each aspect of the
ROM-BIOS functions. For example, crank out 100 pages of written material
explaining exactly how interrupt 15h functions.

2) A clean engineer would then read the documentation, and write the source
code based on what he read. Hopefully the dirty engineer wrote the
documention properly.

3) Test, test, test.

4) If compability is bad, then the whole process repeats itself until
compatibility was at or near 100-percent.

So if a group of Apple hacks got together and cloned the ROMs, it would
probably be difficult not to have any Apple source code slip into the
process. And, if Apple did get around to it and sue the cloners, it would be
difficult to prove in court that the programmers didn't use the Apple ROM
listings directly as inspiration.

--- Bryan

"David & Barbara Schmidt" <davnbabs@airmail.net> wrote in message
news:b9eqkg$s9t@library2.airnews.net...
>
>
> Dosius wrote:
> >
> > There is the possibility that a "leet" 6502 hacker, or a group of
> > them, could perhaps clone the ROM themselves.  Takers?
>
> The problem is that Apple published the ROM assembly listings, so *any*
> address from $D000-$FFFF is a valid entry point.  $FDED is cout, but,
> so, to most people is $FDF0.  I'd consider any system that doesn't boot
> the proper drive with an FAA9G broken.
>
> David S.
>
> -- 
> "Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad
> judgment." --Barry LePatner
>