Apple II: Atari-infused....

[Faicuai]

...For some time, I've been truly convinced that Apple, Atari and IBM are the "Holy Trinity" of personal computing, where all key dimensions of design, innovation and use converge (probably) the most... without mentioning how these companies' history actually connects in both space and time, for special reasons...

 

Some folks may be surprised (others not so much), but what better example than Woz's own words:

 

"A lot of features of the Apple II went in because I had designed Breakout for Atari. I had designed it in hardware. I wanted to write it in software now. So that was the reason that color was added in first — so that games could be programmed. I sat down one night and tried to put it into BASIC. Fortunately, I had written the BASIC myself, so I just burned some new ROMs with line drawing commands, color changing commands, and various BASIC commands that would plot in color. I got this ball bouncing around, and I said, “Well, it needs sound,” and I had to add a speaker to the Apple II. It wasn’t planned, it was just accidental… Obviously you need paddles, so I had to scratch my head and design a simple minimum-chip paddle circuit, and put on some paddles. So, a lot of these features that really made the Apple II stand out in its day came from a game, and the fun features that were built in were only to do one pet project, which was to program a BASIC version of Breakout and show it off at the club.

 

(Source: apple2history.org)

 

Gotta love the simplicity and ingenuity behind such a pure drive for innovation... 

[+gnusto]

Jobs himself worked at Atari briefly, as I'm sure many people know.

 

And Breakout deserves special mention as an oft-cited example of Jobs being a complete jerk, as he often was to those who worked around him. No doubt Jobs had his own genius, but early on his career he benefited greatly from those he worked with who were brilliant engineers or developers, while he took the credit.

[Faicuai]

14 minutes ago, gnusto said:

No doubt Jobs had his own genius,

Job's shrewdness, selfishness and ruthless business-instinct paid Woz back that bonus many, many times over.

 

Woz himself has stated how grateful he is / was to Jobs, after all.

[KG7PFS]

Maybe I'm crazy, but I always thought the Atari 800 was only partly inspired by the Apple II. Take a close look at the Video Brain. The Atari 800 looks like a greatly improved cross between the two. If it wasn't for Atari, Steve's fruit company wouldn't have existed. If it wasn't for Steve's fruit company, Atari wouldn't have made a computer. Without the Atari 800, there wouldn't have been a Commodore 64. It's horrible to think what could have happened to the home computer industry if the Steve's hadn't worked for Atari.

 

Edited September 1, 2021 by KG7PFS

[Mazzspeed]

And if it wasn't for the wheel none of it would have been invented. All praise the wheel as this thread is a circlejerk.

[xrbrevin]

i think i read somewhere that Jobs' said in an interview he should be hired because he has a friend that can program and design hardware..! (i.e. Wozniak)

an interesting rationale

[Albert]

47 minutes ago, Mazzspeed said:

And if it wasn't for the wheel none of it would have been invented. All praise the wheel as this thread is a circlejerk.

Congratulations for getting kicked from the thread!  If you don't have something positive to contribute to a topic, please move on to the next thread instead of crapping on the one you're reading.

 

 ..Al

[ClausB]

There were hundreds of microcomputer designs around in the day. If Apple, Atari, or commodore had failed there were many others ready to fill the void.

[_The Doctor__]

Heathkit / Zenith Data Systems Computers around '77, there were a number of diy build it yourself because you have to in the 70's

[Keatah]

3 hours ago, KG7PFS said:

Maybe I'm crazy, but I always thought the Atari 800 was only partly inspired by the Apple II.

Maybe. Other than the 6502 processor and memory quantity I don't see many similarities in design philosophy. Custom chips being a stark visible instantly.

 

I can tell you that the IBM PC took a lot of cues from Apple II. Many are visible straight away, the slots, the general layout. No specialized hardware at first. A hugely open architecture.

 

It's interesting. I believe a lot of the Apple II's expandability came from the industry's infancy. Nobody knew what to do with these newfangled micros. Not at first. And this is evidenced by Apple's warranty registration. They'd ask you all sorts questions like what you wanted to see developed, what slots you have populated with what expansion cards. What you used your II for. And so on.

 

As far as Woz' innovations go. I personally like the Disk II and its controller card. The state-machine, the simplification the Shugart drive went through to become the final retail product. The speed, capacity, and relative (to other drives) reliability. It also showed sophistication on the software side. As I kid I had learned Applesoft Basic through and through, and got tired of using cassettes. The Disk II integrated nicely and in an understandable way. Like magic, new commands were available, like CATALOG, or SAVE filexyz. Right from the BASIC prompt and even from within BASIC itself, in the same manner. Learn one, learn the other. To a kid, and at that time, this was huge!

 

Other things like the aforementioned sound and paddle circuits. They were simple, seemingly just one step ahead of the Atari VCS. Very close to the software. And that added to versatility.

 

Previous single-board micros didn't really interface much with the user beyond a display and keyboard. But, here, with the II, we had color, sound, and analog/digital inputs out-of-the-box. And user-understandable documentation on how to use it all. And again that was huge.

[drpeter]

10 hours ago, KG7PFS said:

the Atari 800 was only partly inspired by the Apple II

In some ways, you could argue, aspects of the 800's design were a reaction to the Apple II, being a (perhaps over-elaborate) attempt to move from a 'techy-oriented' to a 'consumer-oriented' product.

 

This is shown most clearly in the unique OS/RAM cartridge slots, designed so that both could be changed without even opening the main case never mind taking the product back to the dealer.  This was probably overkill- expanding the RAM through a dealer- as many 400 owners did- wasn't an issue to most and replacement OS cartridges were never issued.

 

Ironic maybe, given the way Apple later moved down the path of 'do it our way' proprietary closed systems, closer to the Atari design philosophy, while IBM clones went on to inherit the open architecture approach.

Edited September 2, 2021 by drpeter

[drpeter]

11 hours ago, Faicuai said:

a lot of these features that really made the Apple II stand out in its day came from a game, and the fun features that were built in were only to do one pet project, which was to program a BASIC version of Breakout

Fascinating. I wondered in another thread whether the 400 was the only example of a hardware design being substantially changed in order to facilitate the playing of a particular game (in that case Star Raiders).  It seems not!

[Faicuai]

14 hours ago, KG7PFS said:

but I always thought the Atari 800 was only partly inspired by the Apple II.

Absolutely so.

 

Products like the 400 and 800 do not come out of good-will or altruism. For one, there's a "school of thought" or "design philosophy" that makes up the whole (like a partially intangible asset brought-in by the design team and their prior "schools", e.g. Fairchild, National Semiconductor, and the likes of their time).

 

But, on the OTHER hand, you have the COMPETITIVE landscape dominating the scene back then. The reference / product to beat was Apple (1977-1980). The way the market had responded and embraced its design and concept was a clear statement for any other newcomer... thus the ensuing products like the 800.

 

Another back-drop of all this was the technical and economical reality of key system resources, like RAM. This was an absolutely key element on most of these designs, because it was EXPENSIVE, power-hungry and not as widely available (density-wise) as we would have liked (even the manufacturing process of the time). So you've got to have a system design that would allow you to get you off-the-ground from a base-configuration, but also designed to grow easily with you (also present on the 800's final version).

 

And it all shows in the numbers: last time I read an estimate of R&D costs of the 400/800, it came about US $100 MILLION (~US $450 million inflation-adjusted 2021), which is staggering, for the time!

 

 

 

 

[xrbrevin]

4 minutes ago, Faicuai said:

R&D costs

do you think costs were listed so high in order to reduce tax? i suppose the revenue authorities wouldve been clueless to challenge it..

 

RAM price was a massive factor, hence so many micro manufacturers offered a lower RAM version of their main computers - to cater for smaller budgets. Also why later revisions got more RAM (altho this is more apparent in the 16-bit age)

[Faicuai]

 

4 hours ago, drpeter said:

This is shown most clearly in the unique OS/RAM cartridge slots, designed so that both could be changed without even opening the main case never mind taking the product back to the dealer. 

 

What's funny is also looking at this from TODAY's perspective, including available hardware upgrades, bus-logic resources snd silicon density.

 

And the 800 architecture turns out to keep paying off: Incognito sits on the OS personality slot, user-accessible at all times (a battery replacement take 60 secs), and (interestingly) TOTALLY replacing OEM system-RAM (there are no DRAM chips left anywhere), while bringing-in and separating programability of bus-logic / control, all of this amounting to a ton of space reclaimed in the expansion bay, a full 40% reduction in power-consumption, and (oddly) making it a more capable "XL" than my own 800XLs (!)

 

Apple-II's closest equivalent to Incognito / 800 is the production-limited, VERY expensive (and sought after) CFFA-3000, plug-and-play, that is now being re-manufactured again under licensing by ReactiveMicro:

 

https://www.reactivemicro.com/product/cffa-v1-0-rev-c-rm-for-ii-ii-iie-and-iigs/

 

When you read the specs, you will be surprised! ??

 

[Faicuai]

7 minutes ago, xrbrevin said:

do you think costs were listed so high in order to reduce tax? i suppose the revenue authorities wouldve been clueless to challenge it..

Possibly, but we would have to see what Apple had reported, at some point...

 

There would be other references as well, including own VCS2600 R&D, for instance.

[zzip]

14 hours ago, Keatah said:

Maybe. Other than the 6502 processor and memory quantity I don't see many similarities in design philosophy. Custom chips being a stark visible instantly.

I think RAM sizes were more a function of cost.

 

However I wonder if the use of color artifacting in Atari high-res mode might have been inspired by Apple II?   Most other computers of the era didn't rely on that trick.

 

16 hours ago, Mazzspeed said:

And if it wasn't for the wheel none of it would have been invented. All praise the wheel as this thread is a circlejerk.

Screw the wheel!  If it wasn't for the damned wheel, we'd all have hover boards and flying cars by now!  ?

[carlsson]

When I saw the topic, I thought someone had ported Apple II ROMs to run on Atari 8-bit, similar to the project that runs C64 ROMs on Atari which we brought up the other week. Or at least someone who had repeated what The 8-Bit Guy did in his video, simulate an Apple 1 on the A8 in case Apple II is one bite too much to chew.

 

I'll admit I'm a tiny bit disappointed now, but it is not too late for someone to actually take on the task and make me impressed.

[Faicuai]

16 minutes ago, carlsson said:

Apple II ROMs to run on Atari 8-bit, similar to the project that runs C64 ROMs on Atari which we brought up the other week.

Well, I think a PBI-based (XL/Incognito) or Personality-Board-based solution (800) would be much more interesting and potentially appealing, if we move along that line of thinking.

 

Sounds to me that attempting to run Apple-II stuff without access to its system architecture pretty much misses the entire point about it (unless there is a piece of personal code that for some historical reasons is imperative to get it up and running, even beyond the original HW incarnation...)

[R.Cade]

6 hours ago, Faicuai said:

But, on the OTHER hand, you have the COMPETITIVE landscape dominating the scene back then. The reference / product to beat was Apple (1977-1980). The way the market had responded and embraced its design and concept was a clear statement for any other newcomer... thus the ensuing products like the 800.

 

The 2600 chipset was designed way before the Apple, and the next Atari chipset that was used in the 400/800 was already in development before the Apple II existed. They are from two very different worlds with different philosophies and designs that just came to market together around the same time. The chipset being turned into a computer rather than a gaming system was a later decision.

 

The Apple was never a big seller, due to the price. Radio Shack was killing both Apple and Commodore in sales until 1980. I think Atari may have very briefly been the market leader for very short time in the home market until the Vic-20 and then C64 came out.

 

Total share: 30 years of personal computer market share figures | Ars Technica

(If it is to be believed)

Edited September 2, 2021 by R.Cade

[_The Doctor__]

heh, Atari was creaming Apple in the trinity years but they put apple as the third in the trinity.... at least that's the way graphs present, does the marketing campaign still continue?

[Faicuai]

41 minutes ago, R.Cade said:

and the next Atari chipset that was used in the 400/800 was already in development before the Apple II existed.

No, no, it is the other way around:

 

The Apple II was introduced in 1977, and CTIA (the successor of 2600's TIA) began development work around that same year, 1977.

 

I am not sure ANTIC and POKEY were developed before 1977, either. Do you have a reference / source for this? 

[Faicuai]

50 minutes ago, R.Cade said:

The Apple was never a big seller,

If you were to plot those graphics in terms of $-margins per-brand (bottom-line), I suspect we would have quite a shockingly different view...

[R.Cade]

5 minutes ago, Faicuai said:

If you were to plot those graphics in terms of $-margins per-brand (bottom-line), I suspect we would have quite a shockingly different view...

Not talking about profit from it. Obviously Apple made the most profit, as it was at least 3x what it's competitors charged in the early years. But they didn't sell nearly as many of them.

 

Edited September 2, 2021 by R.Cade

[Kaj de Vos]

On 9/2/2021 at 11:52 AM, drpeter said:

Fascinating. I wondered in another thread whether the 400 was the only example of a hardware design being substantially changed in order to facilitate the playing of a particular game (in that case Star Raiders).  It seems not!

It goes on. Jay Miner designed the Amiga chip set to be good at flight simulators.