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Still Life in the Apple II Community

Posted by pudge on from the that-wasn't-meant-to-be-a-pun dept.

a2fan writes "A bunch of retro-computing Apple II enthusiasts are decending on Kansas City, MO July 22-27 for the 15th annual KFest. Apple co-founder and Apple I, II designer Steve Wozniak will be there. The Apple II keeps on kicking with Ethernet, TCP/IP, and PCMCIA RAM cards used as hard disks. What is it that keeps such an old platform going?"

16 of 523 comments (clear)

  1. Re:possibly... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    There was also The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy text-based game.

  2. Easy by seangw · · Score: 5, Informative

    It does what people need it to do.

    My IIGS in the 80's ran paint software, card making software, word processor and never needed an update.

    The software infrequently crashed, and hasn't had any changes in the past 20 years (same apple commands work, no learning curve).

    Doesn't that sound nice?

    OR - you can pay (lets be optimistic) $500 for a relatively nice Dell computer nowadays that requires hours of setup time (just entering in personal information), most likely months to get as used to the original software, and the issue of having to update windows on a regular basis.

    I'm not advocating old computers (trust me, when my computer is over a year old, I rebuild it), but there has to be a segment of end users who would think it's the perfect computing environment.

  3. You can still experience the fun by fudgefactor7 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Visit the Asimov.net FTP archive. Emulators, games, practically everything. Fun stuff...

  4. I loved apple II by goombah99 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I used to sell INtel and Z-80 S-100 buss computers when the apple came out. I assumed it was just another comodore/trs-80/amiga toy. then one day i had to take one apart. Boy those machines were way ahead of their time. they just looked like toys cause they were so simple inside.

    notable things compared to the "big iron" s-100 systems

    1) mixing text and graphics on screen, not to mention sprites
    2) memory mapped video (s-100 systems were buss and I/O based)
    3) switching power supplies. Altair, imsai, cromenco, were all tranformer/rectifier/capacitor systems and you could barely lift them. a few of the game-sytems may have had swithcing power supplies, but none of the serious computers did.
    4) pre-decoded memory mapped buss with pre-regulated voltages, made making plug in cards a snap. half the circuits on the lod s-100 bus cards were for decoding the bus handshaking signals (here were no single asic chips designed to do that back then) and another chunk of board area went for regulating the voltages.
    5) soft sectored floppies. every one else was hard sectored leading to incompatible drive, proliferation of formats, and incompatible software for accessing them. the apples could reprogram themselves as drive technology improved rapidly.

    But the really big deal with the apples was something few people appreciate. the first truly robust use of dynamic memory, that allowed all modern computing platforms. most of the big iron systems used static ram which needs something like 18 transistors per bit and consummed orders of magnitude more power and board area. an entire s-100 card, slightly bigger than a modern pci bus card, might hold 8K. yes you hear that right 8K not meg or 8 gig, of static ram chips. and thats why you needed those huge power supplies (and on board regulation).

    if static memeory were still in use, a 1 gig memory card would be about ten times larger than todays dynamic memory and consume about 1 mega watt of power!!!!
    in static memeory current is flowing the whole time. in dynamic memory current only flows when the bit swithces state, the rest of the time it just stores charge. storing charge does not disspate any power.
    thus the future of computing hinged on dynamic memory.

    Now lots of folks tried to build dynamic memory systems but refreshing these things over the s-100 bus was problematic. It was made worse because intel 80-80s used variable numbers of clock cycles to do an instruction so when the memory could be accessed was indeterminant. you might not reach the memory in time. and on board refresh systems were comlicated too. basically it was pretty unreliable stuff. I know, I sold and repaired it.

    but woz pulled two great tricks. first he used the 6502 cpu which on every clock cycle the down beat is always gaurentted to never access memory. thus refreshes could hum along at 1 Mhz gaurenteed. the other clever things was that there was NO refresh circuitry at all! he beat this by letting the video memory be in main memory. the video was accessed on the back side of the clock, and its row-address signal was enogh to refresh all of the memory.

    I fell in love with apple when I figure this out. so elegant. so few chips in side the damn machine. such tiny litte car slots. so cute.

    of course even back then the MHZ myth was strong. the 6502 ran a 1Mhz while the 8080b ran at upt to 2. (Z80 went to 4) but instructions on an 8080 took 3 to 11 clock cycles with most about 4 or 5. and because the clock was so fast, much of the mmeory was too slow (typically about 500Ns response time was possible) to respond and had to inject wait states. this made it even slower. the 6502 ran a 1Mhz but most instructions took 1 clock cycle. some took up to 3. the slower rate was matched to the 500ns memory speed, (not to mention the second fetch on the back side for the video) so there were no waits. and the kicker was that on those three-clock cycle instructions the 6502 would pipe-line the next memeory fet

    --
    Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
    1. Re:I loved apple II by Winter · · Score: 4, Informative
      Some small nitpicking

      systems used static ram which needs something like 18 transistors per bit and consummed orders of magnitude more power and board area

      A normal SRAM bit takes 6 tansistors (FET's), while DRAM takes 2 (one of which is used as a capacitor and stores the bit)

      if static memeory were still in use, a 1 gig memory card would be about ten times larger than todays dynamic memory and consume about 1 mega watt of power!!!!
      in static memeory current is flowing the whole time. in dynamic memory current only flows when the bit swithces state, the rest of the time it just stores charge. storing charge does not disspate any power.
      thus the future of computing hinged on dynamic memory.

      Current doesn't flow all the time in SRAM... (At least not in CMOS based SRAM, might in TTL based)
      Each bit consists of 6 transistors aranged as a flip-flop. This does not consume _ANY_ power (except for leakage current, which is very low) except when it is changing state.
      DRAM on the other hand has to be continually refreshed, and thus consume quite a bit more power.

      Only reason that DRAM is user more is because it takes a third of the space of SRAM. Anything that needs ultra-fast RAM uses SRAM (Some videocards and all L1 & L2 CPU caches uses SRAM)
      --
      main(i){putchar(177663314>>6*(i-1)&63|!!(i<5)<<6)&&main(++i);}
    2. Re:I loved apple II by ediron2 · · Score: 2, Informative
      Goombah99, I think you're suffering some selective memory, mergin' memories of Apples and Macs and perhaps Vic-20's (sprites) and who knows what else. Perhaps these were some IIgs features (the one apple II I never used), but by then there were PC's, Amigas, etc.
      • assumed it was just another comodore/trs-80/amiga toy: Amiga was '85-86, Apple was '77-87. And the words Another Amiga and Toy should never be used in a sentence together, man... that's just wrong.
      • mixing text and graphics on screen, not to mention sprites: No sprites, (unless they came in on IIgs) and the mixed mode was 4 lines of text at screen bottom. Certainly not mixed. In fact, for ages I hammered thru Bob Bishop's code trying to find out how he'd mixed them. Turns out he hadn't.
      • memory-mapped video: HORRENDOUS. It was an elegant hack for saving hardware costs, but the memory map wasn't linear. If you write to every byte in the screen range, you get line 0, then 64, then 128, then 192, then 8, 72, 136, then ... then 24 lines later it would start over and give you 1, 65, 129, etc... just like a TV raster. I can still write indexed-indirect addressing code in my head because of some nifty offset-map code I used religiously to do hires code. But calling apple's use of memory for video elegant seems to me to be miles from reality. (In researching this, I see mention of a IIgs toggle to turn on linear memory addressing).
      • Soft-sectored floppies: Another cost-saving trick. Again, funky as all hell. And considering the ways that it allowed copy-protection schemes (like half-tracks, nibble-counting, spiralling, quarter-tracks, etc), I rate this one much worse than the evils of the screen memory controller. This one is a gift that keeps giving, too, since it has led to the real risk that I can't copy some commercial Apple II software, and I fear it will fade away because the freakin' copy-protection is so obsessively hardware-specific that it resists my efforts at making archival copies. No, I don't count memory-captures as the same thing (the copy-protection code is as fascinating as anything else on the disk).
      • Your bit about reprogramming for drive technology has me baffled. 13-sectors to 16 sectors? Sure. Wierd formats used for Pascal and a few other things? OK. While not actually changes to the DOS, I'll even buy a beer for any of the Beagle Bro's. But from 1978 to 1984, I don't recall a noteworthy improvement in drives or their storage capacity beyond the 13-to-16 improvement that was worth as much as us taking a hole punch to one edge of a disk to let us save stuff on both sides.
      • Giving apple credit for the 6502 is odd, since it was in Commodore's hardware.
      That said, I miss knowing this much about a computer. I respect the above tricks (and would NEVER call them kludgy). They allowed improvements that were otherwise cost prohibitive on that price-level of hardware. I just went back and (in a few minutes) rebuilt the memory offset table on a spreadsheet to (hopefully) get my #'s right. I remember the HUGE sense of power that mastering the above idiosynchracies gave me. But there was enough to love about this that I don't have to delude myself into forgetting the hellish side effects of coding on a machine that pushed the envelope like the Apple II did.
  5. Apple // community is strong by w_arthurton · · Score: 4, Informative

    As if this isn't enough publicity.
    The apple 2 community is going pretty strong.
    We have a news site a2central.com
    We have a community at syndicomm.com
    We have a quarterly magazine juiced.gs
    We have a compact flash reader, ethernet boards, and hard drive controllers are still being manufacuted.
    There is still software being released and old products for sale (see a2central.com).

    --
    wayner@pobox.com -- Wayne A Arthurton -- www.pobox.com/~wayner
  6. Re:Apple II loads faster than todays machines by unorthod0x · · Score: 2, Informative

    Anyone know the status of the GS/Unix software? Haven't heard about it in years but the last thing I found said it went open source, problem is getting the thing networked, anyone with an Appletalk/Ethernet adapter for cheap?

    GNO/ME 2.0 Information

    Marinetti 2.0.1 TCP/IP stack for the AppleIIgs

    GS/TCP TCP/IP using SLIP or macIP

  7. Re:It's Apple ][, //e, or //c ... by gregbaker · · Score: 2, Informative

    I think it was an Apple IIgs (actually, the GS was set in smallcaps). The //e might have been retroactively renamed IIe.

  8. Re:Ha! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    "I'd say spite. I'll never forgive Apple for completely dumping their entire Apple II user base with nary a thought to their loyalty."

    They only continued to provide hardware support into the mid 90s, and software and manuals for
    several more years.

    Apple didn't announce that they were discontinuing the //GS until November, 1992.

    Pretty long run for a computer architecture.

    "Hence I never bought another Apple product again."

    Sagging (nearly nonexistent) sales of the Apple// products were what caused Apple to quit development.

    In October of 1992, Apple sold a total of 7 //e's and 7 //gs's nationwide. That's 14 new Apple //'s sold nationwide. You cannot justify keeping a product line open on numbers like that. (A large part of the low sales of new machines then was the huge number of working used machines on the market.)

    "I'd make it to this meeting if I could, just to stick it to Jobs."

    Kind of pointless, Ace; Jobs had been gone from Apple for years before they dropped the Apple// line. Or did you miss the memo?

  9. Completely open - that's why by dinog · · Score: 5, Informative
    The Apple ][+ I had was as completely open as a computer system could be. The system came with a manual that included the 6502 instruction set and a complete listing of the rom. Many of the components were socketed. There were several general purpose slots. The system came with built in BASIC and an assembler. The docs included a complete schematic of the entire system.

    There, the system was completely documented, fairly complete, and seemed designed to be messed with. While the initial configurations were limited to 48k, the slots allowed as much memory to be added as you could power. Granted, it only had a 16 bit address bus to the memory, but bank switching wasn't nearly the huge overhead it is on a XEON PAE setup since the whole system ran on one clock. The slots, the video, the processor, the memory all ran at the same speed, no "wait states" or other bull crap.

    Because both the software and hardware were completely open, many peripherals quickly became available. No one seemed to have exactly the same setup, yet rarely were there any hardware conflicts and the such that are so common today.

    The software, in addition to being open, was very high quality. Though limited, the DOS worked great. Very fast compared to many other computers of similar vintage. The built in assembler may not have been that great, but it was ALWAYS there. If you did hit an error, the most important tools were built into the ROM. The assembler, the dissasembler, and BASIC were always there when you needed them. Tape access was always there as well. I used a giant reel-to-reel until I could afford a floppy drive (US $600 *cough*).

    The system always seemed to attract high quality weirdos. The Beagle Brothers had some great software (with the best ascii animations I can recall), many languages were available for it including PASCAL, FORTRAN, FORTH, C, and god only knows what else. If you wanted to do something different with a computer, this was the plaform for you.

    Despite being only an 8 bit machine, it ran almost as fast as the early 16 bit machines. Some things it even did faster. When you needed to do 16 bit math, optomized routines were built into the ROM. Also, many of the early 16 bit machines lacked the open architecture and expandability the Apple had.

    I'm sure I'm forgetting things, but the point is it was completely open and very well documented. Sure they enforced their patents against the cloners (Franklin Computers anyone ?), but they didn't prevent the computer's owner (that's you !) from using it how they wanted. It has been down hill from there folks. Now we're happy if just the software is open.

    Dean G.
    Send my regards to Trebor and Werdna !

  10. Re:two data registers by Corydon76 · · Score: 3, Informative
    You are incorrect. There are three data registers on the Apple II. You have the Accumulator, the X-register, and the Y-register. The X and Y registers are usually referred to as index registers, while the Accumulator is better known as a general purpose register.

    There is also the Stack register and the Flags register, but those are both special purpose and cannot be used for just anything (in particular, the Stack register contains a pointer to the return address of the current subroutine in memory page 1, and the Flags register changes everytime a Load, Add, Subtract, Increment, Decrement, Logical And, Logical Or, Logical Xor, or BIT instruction is executed).

  11. Re:I love my ][e by birder · · Score: 2, Informative

    Asimov is the major Apple ][ software repository. It has it all. Including your Repton.

    ftp://ftp.apple.asimov.net/pub/apple_II/

    There are even progs to convert the disk images to real 5.25" floppies.

  12. Re:Does it run Linux?.. by Corydon76 · · Score: 2, Informative
    No, but the Apple IIgs does run GNO/ME, the GNO Multi-Tasking Environment. What does GNO stand for? "GNO's Not ORCA!" ORCA/C was the prevalent C compiler for the Apple II.

    GNO/ME, like Linux, was a Unix work-a-like. As I recall, the system had a limit of 32 concurrent processes, but otherwise emulated a slow Unix machine rather well. We even had dmake for dependency-checking Makefiles.

    And BTW, /. is not only for Linux. Don't be a bigot.

  13. Good reason it's not dead yet by zakezuke · · Score: 4, Informative

    The apple really hit the educational market. I remember a mass of applications schools at back when they were still somewhat new (1985 or so) that I have yet to see replaced. Mostly science applications, like real time how do go dig for oil, or how long it would take you to right a bicycle between the sun and pluto vs a car and light speed. Most of it was really simple stuff, but never the less, has yet to really be replicated under the PC platform.

    Aside from that, to be honest, I was never a big apple fan, damn bizzaro video and using a tape drive controler for disk storage, which while may have been cost saving in 1978, it was just being damn cheep by 1985.

    Plus you have logo, while not exclusivly a apple standard, is something that I feel should still be taught in the schools. Not because it's a good programing language, but teaches children to be logical.

    Actually I was a Texas Instruments fan, it also had a plethra of educational programs, but alas the project went bust.

    --
    There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
  14. Re:What keeps 'em going by mhbtr · · Score: 2, Informative

    If you were trully the nerd you claim to be, you would know it was the Apple //e, and the Apple ][+ there was no "Apple ][e" I still have my Apple //e Enhanced (the enhanced had the 65C02 and the "MouseText" caharacter set to help you run such great progeams as AppleLink PE, later known as AOL. Boy were we pissed when the added the Mac users..., with 2 5.25 drives, a 3.5, a Street Electronics Business Card (Dual Serial/Clock), a mouse, a PCPI CP/M card, a 1 Meg RAM Disk, a 20 MB Sider hard Disk with Prosel as it's menuing system... Don't remember the last time I looked at it, or unpacked it, but I am a pack rat and still have it... I still haven't come across a .sig I like