Re: What if we designed and built a "32bit" Apple II?

["Ranando King" <rk@magictouchcorp.com>]

This is actually a reply to both Michaels, Roy, and Wayne...

Your comments are quite reminiscent of my feelings about the Mac. I don't
"like the Apple II line," I LOVE the Apple II line. The simple fact is that
the hayday for these computers was the last time I ever saw complete
documentation on how to do absolutely anything and everything with my
computer. It was the last time a 7 year old kid could sit down and create
wonders without having to spend several hundred or even thousands of dollars
in additional software. It was the last time anyone could sit down and turn
on an otherwise "stripped down" computer and still expect to be able to use
it. It was the last time you could write a rudimentary disk operating system
in under a day and actually end up with a functional system for loading and
saving work. It was the last time a great many things were possible on a
personal computer. The Mac and the IBM PC behind it made things far too
complicated, too bloated, and far too under-documented to use with any
reasonable expectation of being able to do lots of amazing things on your
own.

2 notes on the 65832:

1. Western Digital is supposedly planning on developing this chip at some
point. I'm not sure I buy the line I got from their sales rep, but if they
do build it, they have stated that it will still be compatible with the 6500
series.
2. Even if they don't get around to doing so, I'm already working on the
layout for a similar chip that can be put on Xilinx or Q-Logic FPGA

About Memory:

Sure, more memory does invite the risk of more bloated software, but I'm of
the impression that modern day bloatware is mostly caused by lazy
programmers working with complicated, poorly documented interfaces. I'm also
of the impression that 16 mb should be all the address space this system
needs. To keep at least partially true to the Apple II programming style,
anyone wanting more memory than that can play the bank switching game.

About Emulation:

Those of you with IIgs machines end up emulating older II machines any time
you try to boot a P8 or DOS disk. You find yourselves emulating older II's
when your system has to switch to 1.02 Mhz to perform some timing critical
operation like disk access or whatever. It's all hardware emulation. So who
really cares? You love your IIgs machines anyway.

All I want to do is build another machine that is created with the same
design spirit as the II series. I want it to be compatible with the II's as
much as possible. If that means that some hardware components will have to
switch and act like older components at times, then so be it. If you're
going to complain about it being another emulator, then you should also
complain about your IIgs emulating a IIe, your IIe emulating a ][Plus and
your ][Plus emulating a ][. Otherwise, you should let us dreamers have our
dream.

Maybe you can even share in the dream, lending your rather obvious
skepticism to the more technical aspects of the design and implimentation of
such a machine. I'd much rather hear that this dream is a pipe dream because
it's technically impossible to have an easy to program computer with more
modern equipment in it than the comparatively complacent quibbling you 4
have posted thus far. Such a statement with logic to back it up would be
very helpful indeed.Now considering how amazingly some of the projects for
new cards in the II series have worked out, it might not be so unfeasable to
think that such a dream as mine may come to pass inside of 2-3 years...
assuming we can all work together on this.