Apple I Replica Creation

Ken Hansen writes "It was with great anticipation that I pre-ordered Apple I Replica Creation by Tom Owad -- I'd always been interested in 'classic' hardware, and the Apple I came just before I got interested in computers (the late '70s -- timeshare terminals, TRS-80s, and my first computer, the SYM-1). I'd seen the story on Wired about Vince Briel's Replica 1 project, and wanted to try it out. When the book arrived, I quickly scanned it, and it looked pretty good: sections on the history of the Apple I, instructions on how to build the Replica I from Vince Briel, programming the Replica I in both BASIC and 6502 assembler, and some details on how the actual Apple I and Replica I hardware works. Then I started reading the book ..." Read on for the rest of Hansen's review. Apple I Replica Creation: Back to the Garage author Tom Owad, John Greco pages 416 publisher Syngress Press rating 4 reviewer Ken Hansen ISBN 193183640X summary A confused book that is thin on details.

I read the Foreword and was put off -- it had no discussion about what to expect in the book, nothing about Tom Owad, or even Vince Briel; it seemed to be a letter from Steve Wozniak discussing the Apple I and its place in history.

Moving on into the book, in the first chapter I read about several people that own (or have owned) genuine Apple I -- and while this was interesting, and helped to get me in the mindset of mid-seventies computing, I felt this too had little to do with the stated purpose of the book -- building an Apple I replica. Personally, I would have put this chapter in the back of the book, most likely as an Appendix, since the reader must have some knowledge of the Apple I before they picked up the book, and these stories do little to describe the hardware we are going to build.

The next two chapters -- "Tools and Materials" and "Digital Logic" -- provide thin overviews on building electronics projects in general, and an overview of Digital Logic. I contend that if you've never picked up a soldering iron, you shouldn't make your first effort a computer, no matter how "simple" this one is (and it is pretty straightforward, just a handful of chips with no tricky analog "adjustments" to make), and if you want to learn about Digital Logic, you'd be well served to focus on the material as covered in Charles Petzold's classic tome Code.

Next we have a chapter on building the Replica I -- there are no real insights provided, no hints or tips that relate to the reader that the author even built his own Replica I. In fact, the author includes a quote from someone who built his own Replica I, but by the end of the included story, this person hasn't gotten it working yet. Since this story was (apparently) written well in advance of the book being published, why not include an update indicating that Vince was able to get his Apple I replica up and running? (By all accounts, Vince is very helpful to those that buy his kits.)

There are almost 4 pages dedicated to the McCAD program included with the book on CD-ROM, but unless you are familiar with CAD/circuit design software, you will finish the four pages with precious little understanding of how to actually use the software, or how to turn the circuits you designed into actual printed circuit boards.

Moving on, we have a chapter on programming the Replica I in BASIC -- this chapter provides only the barest minimum information on the BASIC included with the Replica I. This BASIC is Integer only, and was written by Steve Wozniak personally. While BASIC once was a very common language (it used to be included in ROM on almost all consumer and business personal computers, before Disk Drives became commonplace), it merits a better overview than the author provides. The original Apple I BASIC Manual (available from Vince Briel's website) does a better job describing the language. The author includes an extensive dissection of a larger BASIC program (a simple text-based role-playing game), but gets lost in describing how the program works. I was left with the feeling that the larger BASIC program was included to pad the section on BASIC programming.

Then we move on to programming the Replica I in Assembler -- here the author cuts so many corners (he even reduces the now-obligatory "Hello, World" program to a much shorter text message "H W" to save space) that the reader is left with only a hint of what can be done with the Replica I in assembler. Again, material appears to be added to the book to pad out the chapter, including one of three separate ASCII Character charts, all the Op Codes of the 6502 CPU listed in several different ways (both in this chapter and in the Appendices), and the thinnest of details in the "detailed" views of each Op Code (Op Codes are the instructions used to build a program in assembler).

Next we come to a chapter entitled "Understanding the Apple I" -- what this chapter is doing in the back of the book is beyond me, since understanding the Apple I is, you know, the whole point of this book, right? The information provided is fairly technical, but does little to provide the reader with the information needed to actually design/build anything based on the Apple I design. Note that while this book is about building an Apple I replica, it is not a "clone" -- where the original had 8K of RAM, this unit has 32K of RAM, provided by one chip instead of the original 16 chips on the Apple I. This unit is functionally identical to the Apple I, but the circuit design is greatly simplified over Woz's original design (based on about 30 years of progress in the computer industry). As a concession to the realities of the current computer market, the Replica I also uses an "AT" power supply, and can use a PS/2 keyboard in place of the ASCII keyboards popular in the mid-seventies. These changes make the Replica I a more convenient project to attempt, while retaining the original programming environment of the Apple I.

Now we enter into the Appendices -- we have another ASCII Character Chart as Appendix 1 (there are three total, if memory serves me correctly), then three appendices which simply list all the Op Codes of the 6502 processor three different ways. Again, these appear to be added simply as filler material to add heft to the book -- the author adds nothing to these sections, and they repeat information covered elsewhere in the book.

Next we have an Appendix on "Hacking Macintosh": this is the clearest case of padding a book I've ever seen -- the author describes how to take a Macintosh SE and replace the case with "Lego-type" blocks -- a trivial hack, unrelated to the Apple I in any way, and a potentially dangerous activity, because you are exposing high voltage electronics by removing the manufacturer's original case with its shielding and protection. Then we have a slightly more technical hack in the "UFO Mouse" hack -- adding an LED to the original iMac UFO mouse. Then we have our final Mac Hack -- wrapping the interior case of a Mac Cube system with decorative wrapping paper and placing the now "beautiful" system back in the clear plastic case. This is a hack? How does this relate to the Apple I?

The final appendix is titled "Electrical Engineering Basics" -- and while it does a reasonable job of describing what various components do (like resistors, capacitors, diodes and transistors), there is no reference to take the reader to a place where they can learn to build things of any sophistication (like, say, a computer, perhaps?). I was left asking the question, if this material is needed by the target reader, why are they attempting to build a Replica I computer? If the target reader doesn't need it, why is it included? We also are treated to our second set of instructions on how to solder -- again, why was this included in the book?

In the end, I have no idea who the target audience market is for this book, and I felt the book had no central theme -- it seemed to be a bunch of material culled (I can only assume) from the author's Apple Fritter web site. This book was too "light" to be of any real use to an experienced electronics person looking to design an "Apple I-inspired" system, and there is precious little material for the electronics novice who wants to build Vince Briel's Replica I kit that isn't provided by Vince either on his site or in the included assembly instructions and original Apple I documentation.

I noted numerous errors in the book, and attempted to forward them to the publisher for inclusion in the next printing of the book, but after finishing the book, I suspect there will be no need for a reprinting. I say attempted, because my email to the publisher bounced, but I was able to send my notes to the technical reviewer of the book, and I have sent my notes to Vince as well, for his reference.

I found this book to be confused (no clear narrative/theme/idea), cluttered (why three ASCII charts? Why Mac Hacks?), and to contain many typos/errors. In the final analysis, unless you simply have to have this book because it is about the Apple I, I'd say save yourself the cost of the book, and simply order a pre-assembled Replica I from Vince Briel -- the money you save by not buying the book ($39.95 Suggested retail price) will almost exactly cover the price difference between the unassembled Replica I and the the assembled version (currently $40 US).

You can purchase Apple I Replica Creation: Back to the Garage from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Comments

So basically you recommend the book then?

[selectspec]

All kidding aside, this is exactly how I remember the manuals and literature of the day. The author clearly captured the "you figure it out" style of documentation from that era. Documentation has really advanced in the past 30 years.

Cool

[Usquebaugh]

The replica I is a neat idea.

I'm currently building a variety of SBC with Z80 and 6502 chips. What I'd really like is a transputer or at least plans to build something similar with Z80 chips. Did I mention I have over 100 of the things.

But what about the ASCII tables?

[LarryWake]

From TFR:

material appears to be added to the book to pad out the chapter, including one of three separate ASCII Character charts

and

Now we enter into the Appendices -- we have another ASCII Character Chart as Appendix 1 (there are three total, if memory serves me correctly)

and

I found this book to be confused (no clear narrative/theme/idea), cluttered (why three ASCII charts?

So was this intended as an homage? :-)

This reminds me of Stan Kelly-Bootle's book parody (OK, it was a magazine column) called something like "Getting the Most Out of Your Cray" -- Appendix A was of course an ASCII table, but I thought the best tip was that you should be sure to save all the packing material in case you have to send it back for service.

(For what will surely be the most obscure bit of '80s computer industry insider humor you'll find on Slashdot today, the "book's" useful example program, instead of printing "Hello, world!" read "Goodbye, Steve!")

Those were the days....

[G4from128k]

This may sound like the lamentations of an old coot, and perhaps it is.

Back in those early days, computers were so much simpler that any decent hobbyist could understand everything. Simple processors, simple instruction sets, simple memory maps, and simple OSes meant it was all comprehensible. When all your code (and data) can fit in 4k, 16k, or even (if you were rich enough), 64k, you could understand it all. Little beasts like a Kim-1or TRS-80 or Commodore PET were amazing little machines. And with full-size components , macroscopic traces, and sub-MHz electronics, anyone with a soldering iron could hack on some new functionality.

Sorry for the nostalgia.

Re:Those were the days....

[morcheeba]

Ditto. I loved my Apple II and loved figuring out how everything in it worked. I disassembled the floppy disk ROM ($C600-$C6FF, only 256 bytes!), the boot sector (again, only 256 bytes), the second stage boot loader (DOS 3.3 and Applesoft. One of my favorite magazine series disassembled a different part of DOS each month and explained why and how things were done the way they were.

The Apple II even came with schematics. I poured over them, and in highschool, I even built my own 6502-based computer. It looked a lot like the computer linked in one of the first posts (except I made my own PCB instead of wirewrapping it :-)). Even in 1989, "modern" technology made it much easier to to than in 1977. Instead of dynamic ram, I used easier-to-interface static ram which, 10 years earlier, would have been cost-prohibitive. I think my system had something like 16K EEPROM, 16K SRAM, a voice synthesizer, and some I/O ports (which I used to connect an old serial keyboard with). Changing the software meant burning a new EPROM -- I always had two in the eraser so I'd be ready to try something new out.

When I moved to the PC, it was painful to know that there was no source code for the BIOS, and each video card had its own unique ROM that isolated you from the hardware.

</nostalgia>

3 Reviews of book at Amazon; 4 1/3 stars out of 5

[Beebos]

n/t

Re:Reviewer review

[Smallpond]

This was not always true. Anyone remember the pineapple?

It was an Apple clone that copied the ROMs. Apple sued and won. That case established the precedent that binary ROM code was covered by copyright.

Its also an early example (1984) of misusing an apostrophe to pluralize an acronym: "ROM's"

typical how-to publishers meddling with content

[ILL Clinton]

I'll bet that the author originally intended to do a more technical book aimed at a tech-savvy demographic, but the publishers tried to turn it into a book even grandma would buy. I had a conversation with Paul Marino about this very problem when he was writing his book, 3D Game-Based Filmmaking: The Art of Machinima. His original intention was to create a detailed reference guide on how to make a machinima movie, and instead the publisher forced him to dumb it down to appeal to the largest demographic possible.

It went from a book for film-makers and 3D animators on how to use a new medium, to a book for everyone on how to use a game to make a movie with "no special skills required."

ILL Clinton Maker of Machinima Movies

Re:typical how-to publishers meddling with content

[WilliamsA]

I am the publisher of this book. FWIW The published book matches the author's pitch/description almost perfectly:

The book I'm interested in writing would show the reader how to build an Apple I replica from scratch and then teach him how to write programs for it. Computers like the Apple I are incredibly simple machines, consisting of merely a processor section and video section. Handling video can be done by a single microcontroller. The processor section is very simple and easy to understand, consisting off merely nine chips. When the reader is finished, he'll have a complete understanding of the Apple I's operation. The availability of Vince Briel's Replica I will be pointed out, for the readers who prefer to purchase a pre-built system, but still wish to fully understand its operations. The next section will cover software that can be written for the Apple I. Computers today have become so complex that they're all but impossible to understand on the lowest level. I think a book like this has immense potential to reignite interest in computers as a hardware hobby, whereas most today focus on software. While this book focuses on the Apple I, the skills the reader learns here could easily be applied to the creation of any simple microcomputer.

I think the book delivers on this promise extremely well.

And, We don't try to "dumb-down" books to appeal to the masses. In fact, if you talk to anyone who has written for Syngress (or proposed a book to us) you'll find we normally try to do the exact opposite, and appeal to very targeted audiences. We are far more likely to NOT publish a book because the audience is too broad (and thus difficult to reach) as opposed to too to targeted.

GP board PC

[Anonymous Coward]

I just want an add on that lets me take a $20-$40 grapics card and make it into a general purpose computer without a motherboard.

Graphics card provides:
1. CPU
2. Ram memory
3. video out

Stub motherboard replacement provides:
1. Mouse port
2. Keyboard port
3. Boot rom
4. Power supply interface
5. AGP port to power graphcis card as well as transfer boot rom contents to graphics card CPU

Why not VHDL on an FPGA?

[m33p]

Cool concept, but if it's not going to be a direct copy of the original PCB, doing the clone in VHDL on an FPGA would so the same thing, and be a fair bit easier. I'm curious just what are the chips on the original Apple I that are no longer available...

Resources For The Older Macintosh

[not_hylas( )]

Sites are disappearing fast.

http://www.apple-history.com/frames/body.php?pag e= gallery&model=aI

http://www.nd.edu/~jvanderk/sysone/

http://home.earthlink.net/~gamba2/index.html

http://w3.trib.com/~dwood/oldmac.shtml#soft

http://www.jagshouse.com/cds.html#sw

Replica I processing power

[morcheeba]

The schematic of the Replica I is very interesting. There are three processors on the board -- there is the main 6502, of course, but the keyboard and the video output get their own processors. I thought it would be neat to compare how they stack up...

Main processor:
6502 @ 1MHz. 32K SRAM, 8K ROM.
0.3-0.5 MIPS, 3 registers + 256 zero-page registers

Keyboard processor:
ATMega8515 @ 8MHz, 512 bytes RAM, 8.5K EEPROM
8 MIPS, 32 registers, hardware multiplier. Would be 16 MIPS if a faster crystal was used.

Video processor:
ATMega8 @ 14.318 MHz, 512 bytes RAM, 8.5K EEPROM
14 MIPS, 32 registers, hardware multiplier.

So, basically, the auxillary processors are 20-40 times faster, more powerful, and have the same ROM size as the main processor. But, this is the way iit had to be -- it would have hard to find a modern microcontroller that is significantly slower than the 6502.

Re:Reviewer review

[bhtooefr]

I'll settle this one...

http://apple2clones.com/ has a LONG list of Apple II clones.

As for the Laser 128, that was the only legal clone that came with ROMs. Apple tried to sue, but lost. Basically, the precedent had already been set by Phoenix beating IBM back when they created the clone BIOS.

IIRC, the Pineapple did NOT use pirated ROMs - you had to find your own ROMs from a real Apple II. That said, they got sued, because they called it the Pineapple. They renamed it to Pinecom, and kept selling it.

One of the biggest brands of Apple II clone was Franklin, and they got sued, because (again, IIRC) they used pieces of Apple code in their ROMs and software.

Some Ideas for the Second Edition...

[buckhead_buddy]

There was a book published in 2004 by two classic Mac aficionados called Mac Toys. It seems like the Replica I would have made a better project in the sequel to this book (or a competitor's). The Mac hacks/case mods at the end of the book strengthen this impression in my mind. I liked the Apple ][+ (though I actually owned a clone by Franklin) and I still have tons of Nibble magazines, Beagle Brothers manuals, Beneath Apple DOS, and various programming guides. I've always had a curiousity about the Apple I, but none of the significant "improvements" (e.g. the Apple /// or Apple //gs) really piqued my interest. There are probably very few of my type around to market this book to, my guess is that the nostalgia and Mac projects were aimed at the Mac fan-boys who may have had zero interest in the Apple I without these additions.

I do like the idea to make a functional replica with newer parts. And as much as modern replicas focus on aesthetics, I was actually expecting 3/4 of the book to talk about how to lathe the wooden case and apply a nice varnish stain. Even with these changes and updates, it does appear to have more than I expected. As a hardware hacking project though, I'm a bit disappointed that this book doesn't appear to go into further details with how to make a true clone. I routinely see 1970's era electronics (still apparently working well) made available for the price of hauling the stuff away. I was expecting some deviations, but pointers about what is a deviation, why it was made, and how to do it the right way might have been even better.

I'm a bit disappointed that the author doesn't talk about using one of the Apple I emulation projects (such as Sim6502 or Cocoa Pom I to offer a reference platform to introduce the programming. (Just in case the user gave up with the hardware hacking). Admittedly half the fun in programming old hardware are the tribulations in doing it, but the emulator would give the reader a better introduction to concepts without tossing the reader straight in to the confusing world of the old tools as well. Most programming books teach the user how to user the compiler and debugger separately from teaching the language; it seems like a natural way to do it if it's possible.

I thought this reviewer was excellent and remained fairly objective despite his disappointment. If someone such as Griffin or MacAlly got a kit together, and Wiley or some other publisher overhauled the text, and one of the emulator projects were able to make the software available, then it sounds like this would be an incredible project. As it is, it sounds like it would sate some of my curiousity about the Apple I, but perhaps not in a good way.

Re:What's it worth now?

[tim1724]

ugh. you ran ProDOS 16? Wow, that sucked. It was just ProDOS 8 with a few 16 bit wrappers for a few functions. Oh, and multiple prefixes instead of one. When was useless.

Luckily System 5.0.2 (the first really usable GS/OS .. System 4 was not any good) was out by the time I got my GS (a ROM 3) and it was pretty usable. System 6.0.1 kicked ass if you had a hard disk to boot it from. Very similar to early versions of System 7 on the Mac, except that you could only run one app at a time. (Although there was a third-party hack to fix that.)