Posted By
BilHerd
on 2017-05-12
16:02:35
 |  Re: Hardware rarities from Rob Clarke's...
Notice in the pic that all parts are socketed, this was a West Chester system (264) and my office system. The programmers could have had other ROM's which proved the concept of "Application Rom Sockets" which was a new concept for us. Maybe for the industry?
Regarding illustrator, I can only confirm that it was on the ROM inserted into the machine 30 some years ago while still in the R&D environment in West Chester. It was my personal system, no one has touched it until Rob.
The C16 prototype you saw is real, Okobo-san (manager of Tokyo office engineers) sent me a telex warning it was coming (His words were Gomen nasai B-san), they briefly examined the cost savings of making a single sided board with limited solder-mask, etc., vs the cost of dual sided and smaller. MY gut is that the jumper insertion (0 Ohm resistors) was too problematic, or the square area of the PCB, even single sided, didn't justify the offset in other costs. I had to grin like a madman when I first saw this unit (The one on eBay probably has my fingerprints on it including my now missing finger) as this kind of cost savings out-of-the-silly-box thinking was the heart of CBM's mass production mentality. Apple was selling for $1,799 and we were trying single sided PCB's and custom ICs... Woot!
|
