Re: Commodore and Apple

[Niklas Ramsberg <bacon.not@someisp.se>]

On Sat, 05 Mar 2005 15:13:46 -0700, White Flame (aka David Holz) wrote:

> Well, if the show "Pirates of Silicon Valley" is to be believed (Woz
> himself says it's quite accurate about the history of Apple), he was
> building a self-made computer for a hobby, and along with Jobs, started
> building & selling them to computer user clubs & mail order after
> everybody started drooling over them, eventually turning into a business
> more reputable than selling phreaking equipment. ;)  I doubt that during
> the development of the original Apple that they were anybody that a chip
> manufacturer would approach about using their chips.  However, it does
> seem sensible that hackers soldering together computers in their bedroom
> would be reading up on the CPU industry and desire to use the latest,
> most interesting, and affordable chips.

That's more or less the same story Steven Levy presents in the book
Hackers - Heroes of the Computer Revolution; he says that Woz, after
complaining about the cost of hardware, was given a box of parts which
would would work with a Motorola 6800 processor. He started designing the
computer (which would become the Apple I) and then went to the Wescon
computer show where he "went by the MOS Technology booth and found that
they were selling early models of their new microprocessor chip, the 6502,
for only twenty dollars. Since the chip wasn't much different from the
Motorola 6800, he bought a handful, and decided that the 6502 would be the
heart of his new machine." Other processors like the 6800 or 8080 were
much more expensive.

-- 
Niklas Ramsberg
aka
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