Apple II
Apple II is a series of microcomputers manufactured by Apple Computer, Inc. from 1977 to 1993. The original Apple II model, which gave the series its name, was designed by Steve Wozniak and was first sold on June 10, 1977. Its success led to it being followed by the Apple II Plus, Apple IIe, Apple IIc, and Apple IIc Plus, with the 1983 IIe being the most popular. The name is trademarked with square brackets as Apple ], then, beginning with the IIe, as Apple //.
The Apple II was a major advancement over its predecessor, the [Apple I, in terms of ease of use, features, and expandability. It became one of several recognizable and successful computers throughout the 1980s, although this was mainly limited to the US. It was aggressively marketed through volume discounts and manufacturing arrangements to educational institutions, which made it the first computer in widespread use in American secondary schools, displacing the early leader Commodore PET. The effort to develop educational and business software for the Apple II, including the 1979 release of the popular VisiCalc spreadsheet, made the computer especially popular with business users and families.
The Apple II computers are based on the 6502 8-bit processor and can display text and two resolutions of color graphics. A software-controlled speaker provides one channel of low-fidelity audio. A model with more advanced graphics and sound, and with a 65C816 16-bit processor, the Apple IIGS, was added in 1986. It remained compatible with earlier Apple II models, but the IIGS has more in common with mid-1980s systems like the Atari ST, Amiga, and Acorn Archimedes.
Despite the introduction of the Motorola 68000-based Macintosh in 1984, the Apple II series still reportedly accounted for 85% of the company's hardware sales in the first quarter of fiscal 1985. Apple continued to sell Apple II systems alongside the Macintosh until terminating the IIGS in December 1992 and the IIe in November 1993. The last II-series Apple in production, the IIe card for Macintoshes, was discontinued on October 15, 1993; having been one of the longest running mass-produced home computer series, the total Apple II sales of all of its models during its 16-year production run were about 6 million units with the peak occurring in 1983 when 1 million were sold.
Hardware
Unlike preceding home microcomputers, the Apple II was sold as a finished consumer appliance rather than as a kit. Apple marketed the Apple II as a durable product, including a 1981 ad in which an Apple II survived a fire started when a cat belonging to one early user knocked over a lamp.All the machines in the series, except the IIc, share similar overall design elements. The plastic case was designed to look more like a home appliance than a piece of electronic equipment, and the case can be opened without the use of tools. All models in the Apple II series have a built-in keyboard, with the exception of the IIGS which has a separate keyboard.
Apple IIs have color and high-resolution graphics modes, sound capabilities and a built-in BASIC programming language. The motherboard holds eight expansion slots and an array of random access memory sockets that can hold up to 48 kilobytes. Over the course of the Apple II series' life, an enormous amount of first- and third-party hardware was made available to extend the capabilities of the machine. The IIc was designed as a compact, portable unit, not intended to be disassembled, and cannot use most of the expansion hardware sold for the other machines in the series.
Software
The original Apple II has the operating system in ROM along with a BASIC variant called Integer BASIC. Apple eventually released Applesoft BASIC, a more advanced variant of the language which users can run instead of Integer BASIC. The Apple II series eventually supported over 1,500 software programs.When the Disk II floppy disk drive was released in 1978, a new operating system, Apple DOS, was commissioned from Shepardson Microsystems and developed by Paul Laughton, adding support for the disk drive. The final and most popular version of this software was Apple DOS 3.3.
Apple DOS was superseded by ProDOS, which supported a hierarchical file system and larger storage devices. With an optional third-party Z80-based expansion card, the Apple II could boot into the CP/M operating system and run WordStar, dBase II, and other CP/M software. With the release of MousePaint in 1984 and the Apple IIGS in 1986, the platform took on the look of the Macintosh user interface, including a mouse.
Much commercial Apple II software shipped on self-booting disks and does not use standard DOS disk formats. This discouraged the copying or modifying of the software on the disks, and improved loading speed.
Models
Apple II
The first Apple II computers went on sale on June 10, 1977 with a MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor running at 1.023 MHz, 4 KB of RAM, an audio cassette interface for loading programs and storing data, and the Integer BASIC programming language built into the ROMs. The video controller displayed 40 columns by 24 lines of monochrome, upper-case-only text on the screen, with NTSC composite video output suitable for display on a TV monitor, or on a regular TV set by way of a separate RF modulator. The original retail price of the computer was with 4 KB of RAM and with the maximum 48 KB of RAM. To reflect the computer's color graphics capability, the Apple logo on the casing was represented using rainbow stripes, which remained a part of Apple's corporate logo until early 1998. The earliest Apple IIs were assembled in Silicon Valley, and later in Texas; printed circuit boards were manufactured in Ireland and Singapore.An external -inch floppy disk drive, the Disk II, attached via a controller card that plugged into one of the computer's expansion slots, was used for data storage and retrieval to replace cassettes. The Disk II interface, created by Steve Wozniak, was regarded as an engineering masterpiece for its economy of electronic components.
Rather than having a dedicated sound-synthesis chip, the Apple II had a toggle circuit that could only emit a click through a built-in speaker; all other sounds were generated entirely by software that clicked the speaker at just the right times.
The Apple II's multiple expansion slots permitted a wide variety of third-party devices, including Apple II peripheral cards such as serial controllers, display controllers, memory boards, hard disks, networking components, and real-time clocks. There were plug-in expansion cards – such as the Z-80 SoftCard – that permitted the Apple to use the Z80 processor and run a multitude of programs developed under the CP/M operating system, including the dBase II database and the WordStar word processor. There was also a third-party 6809 card that would allow OS-9 Level One to be run. Third-party sound cards greatly improved audio capabilities, allowing simple music synthesis and text-to-speech functions. Eventually, Apple II accelerator cards were created to double or quadruple the computer's speed.
Rod Holt designed the Apple II's power supply. He employed a switched-mode power supply design, which was far smaller and generated less unwanted heat than the linear power supply some other home computers used.
The original Apple II was discontinued at the start of 1981; it was superseded by the Apple II+.
Apple II Plus
The Apple II Plus, introduced in June 1979, included the Applesoft BASIC programming language in ROM. This Microsoft-authored dialect of BASIC, which was previously available as an upgrade, supported floating-point arithmetic, and became the standard BASIC dialect on the Apple II series.Except for improved graphics and disk-booting support in the ROM, and the removal of the 2k 6502 assembler to make room for the floating point BASIC, the II+ was otherwise identical to the original II in terms of electronic functionality. There were small differences in the physical appearance and keyboard. RAM prices fell during 1980–81 and all II+ machines came from the factory with a full 48 KB of memory already installed.
Apple II Europlus and J-Plus
After the success of the first Apple II in the United States, Apple expanded its market to include Europe, the Middle East, Australia and the Far East in 1979, with the Apple II Europlus and the Apple II J-Plus. In these models, Apple made the necessary hardware, software and firmware changes in order to comply to standards outside of the US.Apple IIe
The Apple II Plus was followed in 1983 by the Apple IIe, a cost-reduced yet more powerful machine that used newer chips to reduce the component count and add new features, such as the display of upper and lowercase letters and a standard 64 KB of RAM.The IIe RAM was configured as if it were a 48 KB Apple II Plus with a language card. The machine had no slot 0, but instead had an auxiliary slot that could accept a 1 KB memory card to enable the 80-column display. This card contained only RAM; the hardware and firmware for the 80-column display was built into the Apple IIe. An "extended 80-column card" with more memory increased the machine's RAM to 128 KB.
The Apple IIe was the most popular machine in the Apple II series. It has the distinction of being the longest-lived Apple computer of all time—it was manufactured and sold with only minor changes for nearly 11 years. The IIe was the last Apple II model to be sold, and was discontinued in November 1993.
During its lifespan two variations were introduced: the Apple IIe Enhanced and the Apple IIe Platinum.
Some of the features of the IIe were carried over from the less successful Apple III, among them the ProDOS operating system.
Apple IIc
The Apple IIc was released in April 1984, billed as a portable Apple II because it could be easily carried due to its size and carrying handle, which could be flipped down to prop the machine up into a typing position. Unlike modern portables, it lacked a built-in display and battery. It was the first of three Apple II models to be made in the Snow White design language, and the only one that used its unique creamy off-white color.The Apple IIc was the first Apple II to use the 65C02 low-power variant of the 6502 processor, and featured a built-in 5.25-inch floppy drive and 128 KB RAM, with a built-in disk controller that could control external drives, composite video, serial interfaces for modem and printer, and a port usable by either a joystick or mouse. Unlike previous Apple II models, the IIc had no internal expansion slots at all.
Two different monochrome LC displays were sold for use with the IIc's video expansion port, although both were short-lived due to high cost and poor legibility. The IIc had an external power supply that converted AC power to 15 V DC, though the IIc itself will accept between 12 V and 17 V DC, allowing third parties to offer battery packs and automobile power adapters that connected in place of the supplied AC adapter.