Re: Adept: Discwasher calling-four

["Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com>]

TomCh wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Anyone know what a "Discwasher calling-four" is?
> > From Adept's option screen, press Ctrl-C and it'll display a message
> about what slot you have it installed in.

A Google search turns up this excerpt from the NY Times archives:

================

October 11, 1983
PERSONAL COMPUTERS; SPLITTING THE APPLE, FOUR WAYS
By ERIK SANDBERG-DIMENT

...

Now along comes a game port expander, from Discwasher. It is an add-on 
board that fits into one of the expansion slots within the Apple, and to 
it, in turn, you can connect up to four controlling devices; for 
example, a joy stick, a trackball, a touch tablet and a paddle or, when 
software becomes available for it, one of those electronic rodents 
called a mouse.

That is a lot of connecting, but once it is done, it is done forever. 
There is no more unplugging the computer, popping off the cover, 
disconnecting one peripheral and connecting another every time you want 
to switch. Instead, you insert Discwasher's Calling Four card into slot 
number seven of the Apple's main board, which is no problem at all if 
your Apple is accompanied by its manual. A connector from the expansion 
card then plugs into the spot where the joy stick, say, would normally 
plug into the computer, and the joy stick plug goes into the new card, 
along with those of any three other controllers you might want to use.

The Calling Four card has a little four-light indicator which, if you 
slip its cable through the back of the computer, can be fastened just 
about anywhere on the console or display monitor by means of an attached 
double- sided tape. The four red lights, labeled zero through three in 
computer fashion, indicate which controlling device is active.

To switch from one controller to another, all you need to do, or so I 
thought, is to type in a single command. True, only a single command is 
involved, but there are preliminaries to be attended to, and here the 
manual accompanying Calling Four begins to let the novice down. Before 
you can give the command to switch controllers, you have to load a disk 
that comes with the Apple and contains both the operating system DOS 3.3 
and the computer language Basic. THEN, too, under the heading 
''Applications Software,'' the manual tells us that while number seven 
is the preferred slot for installing the Calling Four card, any slot can 
be used if necessary. The manual then goes on to list the appropriate 
command for each slot number. For someone who merely wants to slip a 
disk into the drive and run a program, however, being told to enter a 
computerese command like ''POKE -16144,3 CR'' may be confusing. Being 
greeted - as he will be - with that ubiquitous and annoying response 
from the computer, ''syntax error,'' is needlessly frustrating.

A ''poke'' statement allows you to put a specific value into one of the 
Apple's 65,536 memory locations. In the case of the command ''POKE 
-16144(3) CR,'' you are entering the value three, representing the last 
of your four controller attachments, into location 16,144. If you do not 
use the ''poke'' statement, the value in this memory location will 
remain zero, meaning that the first of your four controllers will be the 
active one.

...

================

-michael

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