On Nov 15, 3:59=A0pm, "Michael J. Mahon"  wrote:
> mdj wrote:

> > It's an excellent design. I never did figure out if the IIc versions
> > could interpolate the switching protocol somehow from the expansion
> > connector. One of these days I'll have to grab such an adapter and
> > test it out.
>
> > I always thought it a shame that the IIgs didn't support this. It did
> > provide a way to do colour/mono selection, but it was rare that I
> > found a mono-dhr application that didn't require me to activate
> > monochrome in the control panel.
>
> Apple had a very mixed record on "adopting" _de facto_
standards created
> by third parties, even when they were well thought out.
>
> The ThunderClock comes to mind as a winner, though its lack of a
"year"
> register led to the 5/6-year rollover in the year table in ProDOS--not
> a very clean clock, actually.
>
> The Zip Chip was adopted in the IIc+, though it is so invisible to
> software that only its control was an extension to the architecture,
> and even then, it wasn't carried forward to the IIgs.

And IIRC, the Zip Chip debuted after the release of the IIgs...

> The "standard" of slot 3 for an 80-column card was, I think, a third-
> party creation.

I could be wrong, but I think that standard was created by Apple
Pascal which scanned slot 3 for an external terminal. At the time,
this would have been a dumb terminal or modem connected via a Serial
Communications Card. I pretty sure the firmware ID bytes and protocol
for communications cards and terminal adapters is a 'Pascal' standard.

> It always struck me as peculiar that Apple never directly supported
> the usual AUX slot bank-switching memory expansion scheme, even though
> it was "market standardized" by AE and adopted by many others, with
> pretty wide software support.

Absolutely. I suppose the slinky approach had the advantage of working
on any Apple II, but it was far less useful. I remember being very
surprised to discover the IIgs could not access its extended memory
using this scheme when in emulation mode.

> On balance, Apple acted pretty "proprietary" when it came to others
> extending the _de facto_ Apple II architecture, even though they
> actively encouraged third party extensions...

The sad thing with RGB is that it *was* Apple supported. They supplied
the AppleColour RGB adapter to drive the Colour Monitor 100. The
design was licensed from Video 7. I suppose this was only done to help
clear the excess inventory after the demise of the III, and to allow
existing III owners to migrate to the IIe and recapture some of their
investment.

Incidentally, the supplied software with this card contained an
excellent DHR Ampersand library which used the excellent REL loader
from Apple's EDASM package (yet another forgotten gem!).
Unfortunately, they didn't document the more esoteric modes offered by
the adapter, only the DHR colour, mixed and mono. There is an example
of the 16 colour text mode on the demo, but I don't recall there being
a documented terminal driver for it.

The software is definitely worth a look though if you've not seen it.

Matt
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