Re: Laser 128 - questions...

[mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon)]

Roger Johnstone wrote:

>Here's a picture of it http://www.obsoletecomputermuseum.org/lsr3000/
>
>It predated the Laser 128 by a year or two. Its biggest problem was that 
>it was only Apple II+ compatible, not IIe compatible. It had 64KB of RAM, 
>80-column text and double-hires graphics (560x192, 6 colours), as well 
>as the RGB graphics mode, but all these extras were done differently 
>than the way Apple did it in the IIe.
>
>In some ways it was actually better than the original Laser 128, in that 
>it had a sound chip, ran at 2MHz and had a BASIC in ROM with commands 
>for using sound and the extra graphics modes.

Yet another example of the market-driven truth that "Being standard
is better than being better."

I used to work for a major company that made about a half dozen
"improved" PCs--all market flops, of course.  The improvements were
very promising, but the software support for them was non-existent
outside the ports that the company paid for.

This is a very important lesson for engineers to learn.  Unless the
benefits of an "improvement" in design are big and obvious to the
person who makes the purchasing decision, they are doomed.

A corollary is that a standard can only be upgraded when there
is no way to muddle through with the old standard--look at the
time it is taking to roll out the new IP version!

-michael

Check out amazing quality sound for 8-bit Apples on my
Home page:  http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/