The utilities, tools, schematic diagrams, Excel files, and Edraw files that Mr. Vrbancic created and utilized for his knowledge-based resources in the development of DOS 4.5.06 and for this publication can all be obtained through www.applecored.net as TAR files.
Walland Philip Vrbancic, Jr., received his BS degree in Zoology in 1970 from the University of California, Los Angeles. In 1973 he obtained a post-graduate degree as an Orthopedic Physician's Assistant from the University of Southern California Medical Center. While he worked as an OPA for over nine years, he studied Electrical Engineering at California State University in Long Beach. In 1980 he was graduated with a BS degree in Electrical Engineering from that University. He joined the Space Shuttle Simulation Laboratory at Rockwell International in Downey, California, in November, 1980, which was about five months prior to the launch of STS-1. It was at this time he became fascinated with the Apple ][ computer. While Mr. Vrbancic worked at Raytheon beginning in 1985, he began designing, developing, and programming very, very High Speed Data Transcription Engines and its Real Time software for tactical radar and sensor systems that were hosted on SGI high-end graphic computers. The most significant and celebrated software project that Mr. Vrbancic designed, developed, and programmed for Raytheon was a Digital Playback System.
As Mr. Vrbancic observes "I have always viewed software development as a set of very complex strategies that involve highly developed problem solving techniques. To develop such programming skills requires passion, perseverance, and practice. One cannot be expected to perform a Fiorillo Caprice overnight without expending a little passion, a little perseverance, and a little practice. Learning how to utilize and manage the memory of the Language Card partition in the Apple ][ computer is, in itself, very complicated, problematic, and certainly not intuitive. When that memory is managed correctly, the utilization of the Language Card partition provides great opportunities to expand one's programming skills. But those skills are still considerably simple compared to the skills that are required to utilize and manage Auxiliary memory. Only with passion, perseverance, and practice will the Apple ][ hardware reveal itself and yield its total computational power to that competent software and hardware engineer."
