> Steve Wozniak's Disk II is a combination of a brilliantly simple and reliable disk controller
Wozniak was the first to realize how much hardware can be replaced by software. The cassette routines were the same - the hardware an Apple II uses to read and write to tape (and to use the speaker) is minimal as well, entirely driven by the 6502. This is one of the reasons it’s complicated to increase the clock (or use an improved 6502) of an Apple II, since everything depended on perfect timing.
Wozniak was the first to realize how much hardware can be replaced by software. The cassette routines were the same - the hardware an Apple II uses to read and write to tape (and to use the speaker) is minimal as well, entirely driven by the 6502. This is one of the reasons it’s complicated to increase the clock (or use an improved 6502) of an Apple II, since everything depended on perfect timing.