Date   : Sat, 04 Jul 2009 15:00:09 +0100
From   : mike@... (Mike Tomlinson)
Subject: Advocacy...

In article <4A4A2FE4.1020901@...>, Jules Richardson
<jules.richardson99@...> writes

>Nothing quite like trying to plug a bunch of things in *underneath* the 
>machine, is there? :-) I think that's one of the beeb's major design failings, 

I can't agree with that.  It hid the cables beautifully. And how often
did you need to disconnect/reconnect?

>actually - the bus connectors should have been at the back of the PCB,

No, come on, a Beeb with a load of ribbon cables hanging off the back?
One of the beauties of the machine was how neat it looked next to e.g. a
Spectrum with all sorts hanging off the wobbly expansion port.

>TBH I think the PC did come close (and lets face it, they've been 'domestic 
>market' for a long time now too) - but was hampered by a crappy choice of CPU

Yes, it was a crappy choice, but my, look how far it's come with
constant development and competition between Intel and AMD.  The Z80,
68000 etc. would be nowhere in sight today.

>and support chips, crappy firmware, and a lack of easy-to-interface ports as 
>standard (a uni-directional byte-wide parallel port does not count)

Uh, hello?  Expansion slots?  Which have also evolved...

>. Worse 
>still, it was hampered by a company who provided lots of expansion potential, 
>but then seemed to go out of their way in encouraging third parties not to use 
>it.

And look where that got them...

-- 
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(='.'=)  Bunny says Windows 7 is Vi$ta reloaded.
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