Re: Illegal Clones

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

macvaya@mindspring.remove.this.com (Cali Ruchala) wrote:

>This is purely academic. A friend of mine and I have a running 
>bet about one of the AppleII clones, called the LASER. Did this 
>come with its own ROM, or did it require a ROM from a working AppleII? 
>I seem to recall reading about a company that built "build-your-own 
>AppleII-kits" which had everything but the ROM, and I'm not as 
>certain as I'm pretending to be in this dispute whether or not 
>that was the LASER or a different computer altogether.
>
>I've still never seen one of these in the... err.. plastic. Where 
>did LASERs come from, and how were they sold?

Lasers were completely legal.  The Laser ROM was "cleanroom"
reverse engineered from the Apple one just like Compaq
reverse engineered IBM's BIOS and just like your PC with
Award BIOS is not illegal today so too was the Laser legal.

Apple actually sued Video Technology in several different
countries but lost in ALL cases.  Video Technology did the
Laser right.

Lasers were sold through mail order outlets and through
places like Sears and K-Mart.  They were sold next to
models like the Commodore 128.

My Laser 128EX/2 was one awesome 8-bit machine.  It
had MIDI, two serial ports, one parallel port, a built in
memory card capable of supporting 1MB in plug in RAM
chips, 3.6Mhz processor (3 and 1/2 times the speed of
the IIe), a Universal Disk Controller capable of daisy-
chaining one 3.5" and two 5.25" drives, a built-in 3.5"
drive, and a battery backed clock/calender with control
panel (similar to PC BIOS setup which stored all your
port and drive settings).  And both RGB and CGA video
out.