Re: ADTPro beta available

[pausch@saaf.se (Paul Schlyter)]

In article <1153219859.475996.65040@s13g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
mdj <mdj.mdj@gmail.com> wrote:
 
> Paul Schlyter wrote:
>> In article <1153104005.198830.233830@35g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>,
>> mdj <mdj.mdj@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Michael J. Mahon wrote:
>>>
>>>> No, you have to look at it with a time machine.  The Apple II *was*
>>>> a big market, hence a big platform, and, to those who enjoy nostalgia,
>>>> that period is forever frozen in time.
>>>
>>> It was really three platforms in the end: 64k Apple II, 128k Enhanced
>>> IIe/IIc/IIgs, and IIgs.
>>
>> There were even more platforms than that:
>>
>> Up to 48K Apple II with Integer Basic in ROM
>> Up to 48K Apple II with Applesoft Basic in ROM
> 
> I was considering the three distinct Apple II platforms that existed
> simultaneously. Both the aforementioned platforms were effectively
> obsoleted by progression; a 64k II+ can run anything the older
> iterations can from a practical perspective, and those machines can be
> (and indeed most were) upgraded to II+ specifications.
> 
> Indeed, the 64k II+ is the definitive lowest common denominator Apple
> II platform, as all later machines are backwards compatible with it.
> Drop one machine (two if you count the unenhanced IIe, which I
> personally don't, as it too is obsoleted by a more or less defacto
> standard upgrade) and you have the next platform, being the 128k 65c02
> Apple II (which also guarantees a consistent 80 column firmware
> interface). Drop another two (or three if you want to treat IIc+
> seperately to IIc) and you're left with the IIgs (which again, left in
> it's original revision is useless as anything other than a fast IIe)
 
This is pretty much a semantic discussion.  How much of the hardware
and/or firmware need to be changed to get "a new platform" rather than
"a variety of an old platform" ?
 
>>> And always problematic for Apple as well: The third party market
>>> extended the 64k platform and 128k platform in ways that later
>>> 'official' Apple II platforms were not compatible with.
>>
>> ...yep .... Apple CP/M, Apple OS/9, DTACK grounded.... etc etc etc
> 
> These are useful for bringing other platforms to the Apple II, that's
> for sure :-)
> 
> Matt
 
CP/M was even less uniform than the Apple II.  Remember that CP/M
(starting with CP/M 2.2) ran on a wide variety of hardware which
could have very little in common with one another - the only thing
they had in common was an 8080 compatible CPU.
 
Due to the limitations of the CP/M BDOS and BIOS, a number of CP/M
programs were hardware specific.  Communications software frequently
accessed the hardware serial port directly.  And any kind of graphics
had to be performed in a hardware specific way -- including character
graphics which had to be performed by sending ESCape sequences to the
attached terminal, and these sequences were different for different
terminals (this was before VT100 became a de facto standard).  Turbo
Pascal for CP/M, for instance, had a set-up menu where you could either
choose among a few dozen of the most common terminals, or set up each
escape sequence individually in case your terminal didn't match any
of those in the list.
 
Was CP/M a platform, or a collection of many platforms?
 
-- 
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