Wozniak: I didn't reduce chip count for manufacturing. I wanted to prove I was clever

Computing pioneer Steve Wozniak didn't set out to revolutionize the computer industry. He just wanted the respect of his fellow engineers. Steve Wozniak, seated at the Civo Navigate US event (pic: Civo) Steve Wozniak at the Civo Navigate US event – click to enlarge. Pic: Civo During a Q&A session at Civo's Navigate event in …

[Neil Barnes]

state-of-the-art silicon (6502 then...)

But you _can_ still go down to the shops - or at least a couple of online mainline suppliers - and get hold of current 65c02; not as cheap as e.g. ARM chips with a hundred or so times the performance, but cheap enough to play with, and slow enough to work on breadboard. And amazingly, you can still buy 74xx series logic in DIP packages.

And really, isn't the respect of our fellows entirely what engineering is about?

[may_i]

Re: state-of-the-art silicon (6502 then...)

The continued availability of TTL, CMOS and analogue chips in DIP packages is something that I'm very grateful for. There's still a lot of test equipment out there that provides amazing performance and functionality that is designed around the 74- and 40- series logic chips and classic op-amps. Without the parts to repair these machines when they break, many still entirely useful machines would end up in a landfill and that would be very sad indeed.

Admittedly, more obscure things like memory chips in ZIP-20 packages are getting harder to find, but there's still plenty of collectors selling them on eBay.

[Anonymous Coward]

'Woah… what a brilliant engineer.'

He gets my respect.

I just wish he'd embraced Linux.

[agurney]

Re: 'Woah… what a brilliant engineer.'

"I just wish he'd embraced Linux..... "

it may be a bit late, but what is his Raspberry Pi Zero using?

[werdsmith]

Re: state-of-the-art silicon (6502 then...)

It's fun and easy to get hold of little FPGAs and put all your TTL logic in one.

[StrangerHereMyself]

Re: state-of-the-art silicon (6502 then...)

I was thinking the same thing. You don't even have to leave the comfort of your home. You can just order them online.

I thought this was a weird comparison. And a dumb one too. Information is so easy to find these days that people are doing much more interesting stuff, like building complete operating systems, compilers, microkernels, games, programming languages.

And if you have a good idea and get in early you can still beat the big guys. Of course most people are lazy and sell out to the big guys just so they can sit on their asses the rest of their lives.

[juice]

Re: state-of-the-art silicon (6502 then...)

> cheap enough to play with, and slow enough to work on breadboard

It does seem like a strange comparison.

When even the CPU in a toothbrush is powerful enough to play Doom, the problem doesn't lay in finding cheap hardware to experiment with.

I mean, look at how many products have spawned from the Raspberry Pi and/or Arduino; the former in particular offers a (fairly) cheap general purpose computer which is powerful enough to run a full OS and which can easily be hooked up to physical hardware via the GPIO pins.

If anything (and without wanting to sound like I'm paraphrasing the "640k is enough for anyone" quote), hardware has arguably peaked; while there's still plenty of need for number-crunching supercomputers, there's arguably very few mass-market problems which can only be solved by throwing more powerful computers at them.

Instead, it's all about software these days.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: state-of-the-art silicon (6502 then...)

And not only that, what's being discussed was the birth of market that didn't previously exists. Not even in the imagination apart from maybe a very few, such as some SF writers.

Everything the microcomputer revolution is being compared with are existing markets with $something added or improved. I have no idea what might be "the new Apple", but to be anything even close it has to be a totally new invention with a totally new market. The only thing I can think of that might be even close is the so-called "green revolution" and the industry around solar panels and win turbines, and even they aren't new, as such, just improvements on already existing inventions.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: state-of-the-art silicon (6502 then...)

I've got a load of 74xx and 40xx DIPs I inherited and was wondering what to do with them.

[Blue Pumpkin]

Re: state-of-the-art silicon (6502 then...)

Have I got a project for you ..... https://pong-story.com/elektor0376.htm

[Andy 73]

We don't need world changing...

Woz didn't set out to change the world, he set out to improve it.

Unfortunately the mega corporations are only interested in world changing stuff... Improving our everyday lives? Less so...

[O'Reg Inalsin]

Re: We don't need world changing...

From changing to charging (for) life.

[trevorde]

Some things are still as easy as the 1970's

Like screwing your best friend out of his share of a bonus, eh, Steve Jobs?

[FragrantStarch]

SOM module fun

You may not be able to buy the chip off the shelf, but you can buy a SoM or development board with a very capable device and then make some cool SW and FW to put on it.

The idea has always been the hardest part, and yes, creating new architecture in silicon is (still) a big boys game, but there is much fun to be had in small companies with novel ideas about how to wrestle the most out of current SoC tech. I wasn't born in the 70s, but I can not imagine they had more fun than we have today...

[Brave Coward]

Apples and juice

> "Everything in technology grows hugely, but now it's consolidated to basically a few main companies that control everything [...]"

So, capitalism as usual, isn't it ?

[Robert Halloran]

These days, piece-parting something together out of a bare CPU & discrete TTL logic is barely worth the effort other than showing off your soldering / breadboard skills. Back in The Day being able to get anything together that was functional was an achievement in itself.

That Woz can walk around with a Pi Zero in his pocket as a honeypot would have left him gobsmacked in those same halcyon days of hardware hacking. The fun these days is working out how best to leverage the cheap-as-chips (pun intended...) hardware now readily at hand...

[conscience]

Except Woz and Jobs couldn't get anything working. It took an SOS call to Chuck Peddle and his inline circuit emulator to get their project off the ground.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

What about ESP32 ? Instead of 6502...

Just a suggestion. That is currently the bottom-up revolution chip, used in SOOOOOO many devices - literally billions already.

Lets hope RISC-V might follow, it tries...

[that one in the corner]

Re: What about ESP32 ? Instead of 6502...

Well, the ESP32-C3 is RISC-V ...

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: What about ESP32 ? Instead of 6502...

I think his point is that once you try and go from dev-board to product. The Broadcoms and Qualcomms of the world aren't even going to talk to you unless you are the size of Samsung.

RaspberryPi only got going because Broadcom gave former employees special access and support at the early stages

[BartyFartsLast]

How the wheel turns

I was about to type something about how engineers would be thrilled to even appear on Woz's peripheral radar and it would probably (excepting my kids) be the absolute greatest thing I could hope for if I'd got his respect

But, then I realised, I work in a place where there are kids in tech roles who have never heard of Woz or Jobs and explaining why they deserve (yeah, even Jobs) such starry eyed respect would be nigh impossible.

Their lives are poorer for that.

I love that Woz is still pranking and around to share his sense of fun as well as his obvious and ongoing love for tech.

[Mike 'H']

Teen Tinkerer Tailors Tech

All of that said, one high schooler was able to make an open source laptop in about 6 months using mostly off the shelf hardware and software.

https://www.tomshardware.com/laptops/student-builds-open-source-laptop-in-6-months-uses-4k-amoled-screen-and-has-7h-battery-life