Re: Mimic Spartan(s) for me!

["Ernest" <ernestls@home.com>]

"Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com> wrote in message
20010512014820.15897.00002532@ng-mb1.aol.com">news:20010512014820.15897.00002532@ng-mb1.aol.com...
> Ernest wrote, about the Mimic "Spartan":
>
> >It turns out that he (Derick Smith) was one of the original developers of
> >this project, and that he has several boxes of Spartan proto-type boards,
> >ROMs, notebooks, about it's developement -and a couple of the actual
> >devices, still in their shipping boxes, with the display boxes inside.
One
> >is a proto-type, and the other is a normal retail version. They both have
> >the employee signatures on the inside. He even has one of the original,
> >first five wire-wrap boards! I guess he had to hit every Radio Shack
store
> >in the area to get all the parts, and he went on to explain how their
> >emmulation was so good that the Spartan even displayed the same bugs that
> >the Apple II had, without directly copying any Apple code, so he says.
>
> Hmmm.  When I looked at the web page you supplied:
>
> >http://www.applefritter.com/appleclones/spartan/index.html
>
> I found the following quote from the software developer:
>
> "The software features of the Spartan included a compatible Applesoft
BASIC --
> very compatible, since it was created by disassembling the binary from the
the
> Applesoft ROM and reordering assembly level instructions so that the
binary
> image of the software would be different, but behavior when run would be
> identical."
>
> Now that isn't what I'd call a "clean room" reproduction.  In fact, it's
very
> clearly a "derived work" and subject to the same prohibitions that put
> Franklin out of business.  Just two differences:  1)  It's marginally
harder
> to demonstrate that the code is copied--even down to the bugs (!), and
> 2) you'd have to fight Microsoft as well as Apple!  Just as well that
Mimic
> never got to be very big on the radar screen...

You're right, I guess I should go and destroy them now, huh -and to think, I
was actually excited about getting this stuff for a minute there. Boy, that
was a close one. Thanks, and I'll be sure to call him a turd for you, OK.

E.