The Legendary Apple II Turns 35 Years Old

[Guest]

Apple's Apple II, widely considered to have been Apple's first significant product, is celebrating its 35th birthday today.

The Legendary Apple II Turns 35 Years Old : Read more

 

[drwho1]

let rest in peace.

 

[samuelspark]

Those beastly specs.

 

[southernshark]

People did a lot with those specs... all things considered. If programmers today had to work with those limitations, most of them would be all fail.

 

[christop]

I have one in my bedroom that still works..

 

[spookyman]

What about the Apple IIe?

 

[Onus]

I have some pretty fond memories of my Apple ][+, from programming it to running games like Wizardry on it. As the IBM PC and its clones took over, Apple lost more and more relevance to me. Turbo Pascal under MS-DOS was the shizznit.

 

[f4phantom2500]

8 MG of RAM? O...MG!

 

[memadmax]

I remember stealing a 3.5inch floppy drive from a IIGS and trying to hook it up to my 386 puter...
Lo and behold, it didnt work(at first, some massaging of the drive fixed that)
This was the beginning of my long standing hatred for apple products......

 

[levin70]

Fond memories when I came home from school and saw the Apple IIe on the kitchen table in December 1979. It was a blast to program and play games. Fond memories of playing wizardy and zork

 

[ta152h]

Bad information, as usual, from Tom's. The Apple IIe was the most successful, by far, and not only was released before the IIGS, it was discontinued after the IIGS.

Shakespeare was wrong about a name meaning nothing though. Apple, through their unfortunate choice of names, made an agreement with another Apple (think Beatles) so that despite the IIGS having hardware capable of stereo sound, it was mono due to their agreement. Sad, but true.

In all fairness to Apple, it has always sucked balls. A lot of youngsters have jumped on the band wagon of hating Apple lately, and that's nice and all, but keep in mind they have always sucked. The Apple II was always an overpriced, underpowered piece of crap. It lasted a long time because it got entrenched in education, but even by 1981 or so was completely obsolete, and later iterations did not change that. On top of that, they were very expensive, a nightmare to program video on, and had the miserable 6502. Their slots were bizarre in that they were not like a PC where (theoretically) any card could go into any slot. Their video was such that in some modes the color choice depended on your location on the screen. The memory mapping for video was convoluted as Hell. And did I mention it was expensive? For this crap.

To their even greater credit, they released the even more expensive, even more pathetic, Apple III. If you had problems with it, the solution from Apple technical support? Pick it up and drop it. I wish that were a lie. And it was obscenely expensive, and still had the remarkably poor 6502. Really, I'm not lying.

 

[marraco]

8 Mb of ram on 1986? Wrong data.

 

[jkflipflop98]

Oregon Trail FTW!

 

[lemlo]

Yeah 8 meg of ram, I think that's wrong. 8 meg was big in the mid-early 90's.

 

[bystander]

1986 for $1000, the IIGS had a 2.8 MHz processor, 8 MG of RAM as well as support for 4096 colors.

What is 8MG? At that time, I'm sure it couldn't have been 8MB, as we didn't see 8MB's until the mid 90's.

 

[thety6on]

Apple. Overpricing products since 1977.

 

[darkavenger123]

IIGS had a 2.8 MHz processor, 8 MG of RAM as well as support for 4096 colors.

What is MG?? 8 milligram of RAM?? LOL. Yeah, i remember the IIGS, my school computer club brought it in as tech demo to us. And emphasize on the wavetable chip to play real instruments music...cool.

 

[jonathan_rg]

[citation][nom]bystander[/nom]What is 8MG? At that time, I'm sure it couldn't have been 8MB, as we didn't see 8MB's until the mid 90's.[/citation]
"Memory
1.125 MB RAM built-in (256 KB in original) (expandable to 8.125 MB)
256 KB ROM built-in (128 KB in original)"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_IIGS

 

[belardo]

While the IIgs was expandable to 8MB (if you add 8MB to 1MB, shouldnt that be 9MB?), I doubt anyone actually ever did.

The IIgs was still an 8/16bit computer - it was a POS compared to the Amiga, Atari ST and of course MACs. Apple basicly add some16bit tech to 8bit hardware and sold it at the rip-off price of $1000, when the Amiga500 went for $700 MSRP.

Even my 25Mhz Amiga3000 (1989 release) came with 5MB of RAM and never needed to add more memory. An 8bit IIgs ran fine with 1-2mb.

 

[belardo]

Oh... the original AppleII are butt-ugly heavy boxes. At least the IIe had upper and lower case keyboard -which made the Apple II a usable computer.

The IIgs, even tho its a POS 8/16bit system - looked rather cool. But really, $1000 for just a box? By the time you added 2 floppy drives and the monitor, you'd be up to $1500~1700.

They sold upgrade kits for the IIe into the IIgs for $500+

 

[darkavenger123]

[citation][nom]lemlo[/nom]Yeah 8 meg of ram, I think that's wrong. 8 meg was big in the mid-early 90's.[/citation]
[citation][nom]thety6on[/nom]Apple. Overpricing products since 1977.[/citation]
Actually, it is possible...it support max 8MB memory...but definitely not MG....nobody sells RAM by milligram!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_IIGS#Memory

 

[lemlo]

Actually, it is possible...it support max 8MB memory...but definitely not MG....nobody sells RAM by milligram!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_IIGS#Memory

Ok I see, though I remember making the jump from 256k to 512k of ram around 86' and the performance boost blew me away. Must be apple had some serious upgrade-able ideas back then.

 

[ta152h]

[citation][nom]bystander[/nom]What is 8MG? At that time, I'm sure it couldn't have been 8MB, as we didn't see 8MB's until the mid 90's.[/citation]

Very not true, but most people couldn't swing 8 MB due to costs in the 1986. The PC/AT could handle 16 MB, and it was out in 1984, so you're history isn't quite right.

The 65816 was segmented like the 286 as well, but a lot less powerful. How they could release a processor in 1984 that didn't have hardware multiply and divide is pretty astounding (consider the 8086 was released in 1978 and did, and 6 years back then meant enormous advances for processors, unlike now).

 

[Red_Sun]

[citation][nom]jtt283[/nom]I have some pretty fond memories of my Apple ][+, from programming it to running games like Wizardry on it. As the IBM PC and its clones took over, Apple lost more and more relevance to me. Turbo Pascal under MS-DOS was the shizznit.[/citation]

Ditto. My Dad drew level maps of the original Castle Wolfenstein. Got me into video games, that man did. Great memories. Even found a site with an old Apple ][ emulator so I can wallow in nostalgia when I get bored.

 

[Guest]

The Apple II came with 48KB of RAM, and could be upgraded to 64KB with an add in card.