For anyone wanting to build sprite type code on the Apple II, you really should read this article in Byte magazine:
Preshift-Table Graphics on your Apple
by Bill Budge, with Gregg Williams and Rob Moore. A23
Move blocks of pixels across the screen with only 3K bytes of overhead
It's kind of hard to find, it's in the December 1984 Byte magazine, but an additional magazine at the end of the PDF, Bytes Guide to Apple.
At the time this was huge, Bill Budge was probably the most well known game programmer, so getting a look inside how he wrote code was a big thing.
Of course, as mentioned elsewhere, graphics is hard on the Apple II because of the complex memory layout due to Woz wanting to save a few chips. This can be contrasted with the Atari and Commodore computers that had custom chips that made graphics a lot easier.
I've implemented both UPnP discovery and mDNS, and mDNS was quite a bit easier to make reliable than UPnP. However, if they did have a reliable UPnP system, it would almost certainly destabilise the software for any transition like this. There's just so many different network issues to deal with, it's tough to debug when a user reports a problem and it's probably an issue with their router which is only sold in Germany. It is very frustrating class of bugs, when the app just doesn't find devices on the network.
I liked this comment because it said what I was basically thinking. In my last job I kept everything seperate, a lot of people didn't and when we all got made redundant, I just closed my work laptop and walked away, some of the others were scrambling to disentangle everything and had all sorts of problems.
But in my new job I'm doing work on my personal laptop. It started because, I travel by plane to work regularly. I was carrying three laptops, my personal one, my work one, and one provided by my current client. It was just so much easier to combine everything into one laptop and just carry that. It's working out really well. Before I was constantly moving from one laptop to another just to check messages.
I think doing work on your personal computer is less bad than having personal stuff on your work computer, I wouldn't do that.
I got an 8" Android tablet instead of an iPad mini. What I wanted, was to have something really compact that I could use emacs on, mainly for org-roam, notes and writing in general, not for writing code. It works well with termux, I don't think there is a good way to have a local version of emacs on iOS.
The keyboard is the most important part really (although I did want a good screen too). I'm on my second keyboard, they are only about $30 each, which is better than iPad prices. The first one wasn't so convenient to unfold quickly, the new one is working really well.
The trouble is there is no way to turn it off. I've nothing against that kind of thing in the right place, but for me Facebook is not that place, and it sneaks in no matter how hard you try and prevent it.
Here's some funny fail videos...of girls in bikinis. Here's some sport images for the sport you are interested in, with far too revealing angles/images.
So I don't use Facebook any more, and feel much better for it.
I've come to a similar conclusion lately. I used to spend a lot of time jumping on my latest idea, researching and even writing a bit of code to get started. I'm much better off writing my ideas down, hopefully in a form where I can consolidate the ideas into a few projects, but even if it just stops me wasting time on an idea that I'll lose interest in soon, it's worthwhile.
On the other hand, I've got one large ongoing series of projects that are relatively pointless, and that is the whole point of them. I'm learning from them and I don't have the pressure of completing anything (although I would really like to). From time to time they have been really important for my mental health, and I value them for that.
I'm also quite aware now that I need to feel achievement to keep me motivated, and if I have a plan and can check off an item on that plan then that counts as a good day. Work doesn't always give me that sense of achievement, so having something else that does can be really valuable.
I think the built-in keyboard idea had run its course, so any possible Apple IV would probably end up looking a lot like an Apple IIgs. The little keyboard extension on the IIgs case is kind of reminiscent of the Apple ///.
It would have been good to end the line with what was planned for the Mark Twain, internal floppy and hard disks would have made the whole system a lot better. And of course if we could have got a 14 MHz 65C816 as well then it would have been a really interesting system.
It can still look like a /// with a detached keyboard that’s a continuation of the main case. Commodore did that with their office machines (the rounded ones).
I think the beige is important as part of the apology ;-)
Frankly, I’d accept a beige Mac Mini with a rainbow Apple logo on top and call it a day.
Given how there's plenty of market for retro nostalgia kit, I'm surprised nobody is making a modern desktop PC that pushes the same aesthetic buttons.
Beige paint is no more expensive than white or black. A desktop form factor would be good for today's super-heavy video cards. Since we no longer design around internal optical drives, etc, you could probably whip up something micro-ATX that looked a lot like an IIgs or the IIsi mockup, maybe with some USB ports in the front "lip" for convenience sake.
It slowed down to 1 MHz for I/O and Apple ][ compatibility.
I wouldn't call it a disaster, sales and marketing wise mainly, but that also had a lot to do with the IBM PC coming out around the same time.
It was probably the most complex 6502 design, and mainly consisted of discrete logic chips rather than custom chips that other manufactures were starting to use. It had advanced features like an additional addressing mode to access up to 512k RAM without bank switching. (Plus two speed arrow keys)
Rockwell and WDC had 65C02's up to 4 MHz relatively early on, but the 4 MHz versions seemed to be quite rare. WDC now has 65C02's rated at 14 MHz, but they go quite a bit higher than that if you've got fast enough RAM.
There are some technical details on why a 4MHz Z80 is roughly equivalent to a 1MHz 6502. As always with processor design there are tradeoffs in every decision. The Z80 had a 4-bit ALU, but I'm not sure if that slows it down.
The Z80 has a more complex architecture than the 6502. A 6502 clock cycle is one bus cycle and simple instructions can execute in one clock cycle. For the Z80 a clock cycle is called a T-state, and one machine cycle consists of multiple T-states. A simple instruction like INI takes 4 T-states.
There is also some tiny pipelining at play: the 6502 needs to access (read or write) memory on every clock cycle. A 2-cycle instruction reads the opcode on the first and the actual work is done on the second. This leaves the second cycle's memory access open for doing something cool like fetching the next instruction's opcode.
Preshift-Table Graphics on your Apple by Bill Budge, with Gregg Williams and Rob Moore. A23 Move blocks of pixels across the screen with only 3K bytes of overhead
It's kind of hard to find, it's in the December 1984 Byte magazine, but an additional magazine at the end of the PDF, Bytes Guide to Apple.
At the time this was huge, Bill Budge was probably the most well known game programmer, so getting a look inside how he wrote code was a big thing.
Of course, as mentioned elsewhere, graphics is hard on the Apple II because of the complex memory layout due to Woz wanting to save a few chips. This can be contrasted with the Atari and Commodore computers that had custom chips that made graphics a lot easier.
https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1984-12/page/n397/...