NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/comp/sys/apple2/26205

Internet Message Format | 1993-01-01 | 1.7 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!news.claremont.edu!nntp-server.caltech.edu!toddpw
From: [e-mail] (Todd P. Whitesel)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
Subject: Re: Hardware Hacking
Date: 1 Jan 1993 07:35:48 GMT
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Lines: 23
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
NNTP-Posting-Host: punisher.caltech.edu

[e-mail] (Gregory Ross Thompson) writes:

>  I also seem to remember some story a while ago about the hardware
>dudes using that realestate for something else, although precisely
>what it was eludes me at the moment.  It could simply be yet another
>product of my imagination, but who's to say...

It's always a question of board real estate, since that is one of the dominant
factors of production cost for large runs of boards. In this case, the real
estate was used for filtering, the mixing in of the one-bit sound output, and
the software volume control. To do it in stereo would have required most of
that circuitry to be duplicated, and so the board area hit would have been to
the tune of a couple square inches, at least. That may not seem like much, but
it is when you are trying to cram gobs of surface mount on a two-layer board.

The scuttlebutt I heard was that the original plans were for a motherboard
shorter than the current one (i.e. nothing contained inside the "lip") and so
when they had to go to a larger motherboard to cram everything on, no one was
going to suggest they use even more space by building in stereo, especially
since the sound expansion connector would let third parties do it.

Todd Whitesel
toddpw @ cco.caltech.edu