Platforms

 

Apple II E


Made in USA by Apple in 1977-04-17
Units sold: 6000000
6357
games
2
unreleased

Released games per year

73757779818385878991939597990103050709111315171921 6841713425130
This is a video about 6502 assembly. The text and graphics information start at 16:06.

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This is discussing Apple's efforts to flood schools with computers in the United States of America. I have not researched other strategies Apple employed in the rest of North America and the world. I grew up during the computer revolution in California and would welcome incite concerning Apples in schools from people who grew up in other places. This article is very incomplete and I will be improving it over time.

Apple's first effort to put computers in schools was far from official. A school teacher in Oregon wrote to Apple asking for a deal on an Apple I. She explained, quite well, how it would be good for everyone involved. The letter ended up in the hands of Steve Wozniak; while he has always been a philanthropist, even before he had money, he actually recognized the business benefits of putting computers in classrooms. He decided to give this teacher an Apple I, for free. At this point, Apple was 3 guys in a garage and Steve Jobs kinda had the last say when it came to business. Woz was unsuccessful in convincing Jobs to donate or even sell an Apple I to the teacher but he whittled down Jobs into saying yes, if they had an Apple I to spare. Jobs knew that every machine they had made to sell was already promised to a customer and they could not afford to make more any time soon. But, one machine had not been made to sell. The very first Apple I every assembled was enshrined on a shelf in Jobs' 'office'. It mysteriously vanished and the teacher in Oregon got a free Apple I. As more Apple I systems were assembled, a few more went missing.

Later, there was a deal with Minnesota Education Computing Consortium** (MECC). MECC, not yet a "corporation", was basically in charge of school spending concerning computers in every public school (and some private schools) for the state of Minnesota. They could afford to give their software to schools for free. But, they didn't do hardware, nor even buy any at first. In the earlier days, they saw to it that every Minnesota school had timeshare access to mainframes with no arbitrary restrictions (later programs, for example, would require minimum a number students and also various other ways to exclude people). They experimented with buying and operating their own mainframes for a while but eventually they contracted for a supplier of micro computers and Apple won the contract (Radio Shack and others lost) to sell 500 Apple IIs to MECC who would put them in schools. This was extended and any Minnesota school could buy any number of computers (only the first one was free) from MECC at the cost MECC paid for them (much less than retail, Apple probably made a very small profit from this). 5,000 Apple II computers would end up in about 500 schools before 1984 when MECC switched to Atari 8-bit (and got 400s and 800s from the 1970s! No XLs no XEs).

At some point, Steve Jobs learned that the US government had a program whereby a corporation could donate a single computer to a single educational institution (museums and libraries included) and have the manufacture cost (but not retail) deducted from their taxes*. This represented a mere 10% loss per sale for Apple, which was better than any other type of advertising. While Apple immediately participated, Jobs got political and set about supporting additional government efforts to put computers in schools. One bill in particular, HR 5573, got much of his attention but it was in competition with other bills, written by people who'd probably never even seen a computer, that demanded arbitrary specs and performances from the hardware (Some congressmen apparently decided 12-bit, 182kB DECtape, invented 1963, was the future). But, in California, AB 3194 (known as "Kids Can’t Wait Act" because of Apple's campaigning) was successful. It gave tax credits for donating a computer to a educational institution. Up to 25% of "fair market value". So, ostensibly based on retail price. There were ways to brew a 'fair market value' that were very favorable to Apple. First and foremost, Apple hardware has always been overpriced and people bought it anyhow. The fact that masses of people pay the price kind of proves it must be fair market value. When all the papers were filed out and the checks cashed, Apple was left with about a 5% loss per sale. About 1 million dollars was spent to put an Apple II in 9250 classrooms where they would been used for maybe 15 years by hundreds of thousands of students total; shortly later Apple would spend about 1 million dollars on a single 1 minute TV commercial that communicated nothing important about the product to the viewers. Although, about half of California's schools were excluded due to complex limits in the act. The $2364 Apple IIe hardware was sent to schools for free in the "KCW package" that additionally included free software and discounts for other software that Apple partnered with (The Learning Company, Hayden, MECC, Sterling Swift, and others). These perks most definitely contributed to the fair market value.

That was a good start. But here's the pièce de résistance: the tax credit for donating a computer didn't require that the donating corporation be the seller or manufacture, nor even a computer company at all; it didn't limit an educational institution to accepting a donation from more than one corporation. So, Apple sold computers, at less than fair market value, to local incorporated business that stamped it "Donated by [company logo here]", and the local corporation in turn donated the computers, and coupons and free stuff from local partners, to local schools for their own tax credit. The local corporation got the tax credit, not Apple (Apple actually lost about 10%). But all companies got long term ads in classrooms. Very quickly, the smallest of back-country schools went from having a single Apple to having ten or more while schools in larger cities could have over one-hundred.

Apple used AB 3194 to full advantage and maintained its partnerships well after the legislation was no longer in effect. AB 3194 was not the last time Apple used outside interests to put their equipment into schools. Among one of their most successful and long running efforts is, "Apples for the Students". It is still in use to this day. It is a program whereby Apple convinces businesses to buy and donate Apple equipment to schools. Businesses, in turn, convince customers to buy their regular products from them while they pledge to donate based on those sales. Typically purchase receipts and/or UPC symbols removed from packaging are used to verify.



I don't know exactly what Apple did for flooding schools in other states, beyond the federal single computer to a single educational institution. But I spent some of my childhood in Oregon where every single classroom had at least one Apple II in it, every library had 4 to 30 Apple II systems, and there were even multiple Macintosh and IIgs systems at each institution. Each school I went to had 1 to 4 rooms filled with Apple II systems ("computer labs"), in addition to each classroom. There were also IBM compatibles, usually they had their own room ("computer lab"). And occasionally there was a Commodore, TI-99/4a, Atari, but the Apples far outnumbered the other systems by far. In fact, ever school I went to had a bunch of Apple II computers in storage. Oh, a detail of AB 3194 is that it contains language specifically to allow the donating company to promote themselves via the donation. The Federal computer donation tax deduction has no such clause leaving two possibilities: A corporation that discloses their donation could conceivably cause them to lose their tax deduction and the corporation could be actively prevented from disclosing information about their donation. This clause in AB 3194 was to override previous California legislation that specifically prevented disclosure.

Why didn't IBM, Atari, and Commodore take advantage of KCW? Well, they sorta did. As near as I can discover, they each put computers in about 1000 California classrooms. The reason these numbers are so small remains a mystery to me. Well, there are factors. For instance, again, Apple had a huge margin for fair market value. The case could be made that a Commodore 64's fair market value was less than the manufacturing cost. That's not a dig against Commodore, but a complement directed at Jack Tramiel; who made money by marketing to everyone instead of only to people who could 'afford a computer'. Commodore's margins were so low that no one bothered to clone Commodores. Atari's fair market value compared to manufacture cost was not as extreme as Commodore's (there were a few obscure clones), But it was similar. IBM had a high retail price, but also a high manufacturing price. IBM clones tended to have a smaller margin than IBM. But, I don't think the value of the tax credit accounts for the significantly smaller number of non-Apple computers in schools. And the partnering done by Apple could have been done by the other companies. It was; growing up I personally saw IBM computers in schools stamped with the names of local corporations that include "AB 3194" on the stamp.

What about Radio Shack? Well, from a certain point of view, they didn't need the advertising. When KCW was passed, there were more TRS-80 systems in schools than and other computer. All those machines needed to be maintained, and upgraded, and schools had libraries of software that only ran on TRS-80. At this point it was very unlikely that any schools had s-100 or CP/M computers in use but, there had been schools with them and the TRS-80 could read the software from these older systems directly for transferring. Tandy didn't just stop on one model when it was good enough, like Commodore did with the 64; No, they kept improving the TRS-80 with new hardware until 1985 so that schools where still buying TRS-80s until 1991. "Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose."

Not everybody was happy with Apple's efforts. Computerphobia among teachers was still a factor at the time. But more to the point, people who knew about computers had concerns. Apple offered 2 hours of training with each donation (partners were also required to provide training). And computer users among educators worried that this was not enough. To complicate matters, Apple was very insistent on doing thing differently; for them it was a selling point but some educators considered it a problem for a single company to be influencing students 'differently' than other computer users. The fact that the KCW programming materials focused on the Logo language instead of any of the more commonly used computer languages was pointed out. Apple itself extensively used Pascal at the time. As a student, Pascal was explained to me as better than BASIC, almost as easy, and actually used professionally. And it was repeatedly pointed out that Apple's efforts were primarily self-serving. The self-serving nature of KCW was not denied by Apple; in fact, Apple representatives themselves publicly stated that expected to make a profit, eventually, from KCW.

*I cannot find this bit of federal code. This may sound unbelievable, but it is conceivable that Steve Jobs stumbled across it and no other computer companies ever learned of it. It could also be multiple federal codes that interact in unforeseen ways. US federal code is so complex at this point, nobody knows it in full, no body can even say how many federal laws there are. Even the smallest of numbers, the Titles, are disputed. The House of Representatives officially says there are 54 Titles while the US Senate officially states there are 51. And it is not as simple as just reading it, since parts of it amend, repeal, override, are subject to, and otherwise interact with other parts. Anything you read and remember is probably affected by something you haven't read or don't remember or don't realist how it changes something else. It was over 200 years worth of addenda when Jobs looked at it. But it is clear, Jobs knew the title, chapter, section, and sub-section (perhaps multiples) to list in the tax forms and which space to put it in and someone at the IRS didn't object to it.

**In 1983 the state owned non-profit Minnesota Education Computing Consortium became the profit-seeking Minnesota Education Computing Corporation. The State Government of Minnesota retained partial ownership via shares

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Even back in the early days of the Apple ][, Apple tried to insulate their users from standard and useful technical information. They didn't want to say "Modem" so they said "Communications Interface Card". The didn't want to say "Terminal Emulator" so they said "Datamover". No, "Apple IIe Emulator card"; call it, "Apple IIe option board".
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The 1977 Original Apple II was 4K RAM with the possibility of 48K RAM. No change in the firmware (ROM) could occur without soldering. The Apple II plus would not arrive until 1981. But the uniquely designed Slot 0 did include the possibility of more RAM and override of some ROM functions. This was put to use soon after the Apple II's debut to to allow additional variants of BASIC and the Pascal language. These "Language Cards" could use up to 16K and allowed overrides of certain firmware functions. Apple put this to use internally when developing the Apple Lisa using Apple II systems with 16K language cards on 48K Apple II systems. Very quickly, 64K RAM proved to be too constraining. Burrell Smith figured out how to add 16K more RAM to the language card so that Lisa development had 80K Apple II's to work with in 1979. End users could purchase everything for a 64K RAM Apple II for $3,133 ($14,022 in 2021 dollars, but Pascal was included). Apple never sold the upgraded language cards so no 80K for you. But other companies, such as Saturn Systems, came up with the same idea to abuse language cards for memory upgrades to the original II. But these did not last very long. Companies moved on to full accelerator cards that used faster CPUs and components that effectively replaced the Apple II motherboard they were plugged into (though still mostly used the Apple II ROM). There are games that specifically mention "Language Card" in the instruction booklet, so companies did make games for customers using more memory that the Apple II was initially designed for (probably for units sold to schools, not home users).

By default, software does not see the extra 16K in the installed language card. In fact, memory in the card occupies 16K of the Apple's built-in RAM, looks no different to the software, so the total is still 48K. Software designed for the language card (including a few games) can swap the card's memory in and out of the memory map, effectively a 16k bankswitch. This bankswitching does not bother anything and only the software that did it, knows what's happening. Another intended feature of the card is for software to extend the Apple II's memory map and put the 16k into the extension. This 2nd option causes a negative number to be reported when any software tries to discover how much free memory is available. So it is not always an option. But, there's a third option that is a fully unintended feature of the language cards. The extra 16K can be used for any software that does not need AppleSOFT BASIC in the ROM. Simply put tape over pin 32 of the language card and install it. This causes the extra 16K to load into an otherwise inaccessible area of the Apple II's memory map and adds 16K to the system RAM. Unfortunately, this area in memory includes the Apple II's ROM (where BASIC resides in most II+ and later systems). So any games that says "requires AppleSOFT in ROM" will probably not work if it wants more than the standard RAM provided per system. The Oregon Trail is one such game that can be run on an Apple II+ or an original Apple II with only 48K and a language card installed.

The IAI SwyftCard was Jef Raskin's original dream for the Macintosh, only it did not include a GUI. But everything else, such as a preemptive multitasking environment with all the standard computer applications such as file manager, calculator, word processor, finder, spreadsheet, modem software, and AppleSOFT Basic was included. A small card with 3 chips plugged into the Apple IIe provides a IIe user everything on would expect from a Macintosh except in color and using a command-line.
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Made by Steve Jobs & Stephen Wozniak

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. The original Apple II was discontinued at the start of 1981, having been superseded by the Apple II Plus.
Source: Wikipedia

Graphics: Hi-Res 280×192 graphics are essentially 1-bit monochrome. However, a colorburst signal cycled every other bit and a pixel was made of two bits. This purposeful quirk designed by Steve Wozniak allows for a composite monitor to display 4 colors while using only 1 bit per pixel (00=Black, 01=First Color, 10=Second Color, 11=White). Lo-Res 40x48 had pixels made from 4 bits but limited by hardware to repeating the two bits in a single pixel (still limited to 4 colors). Hi-Res was also 4 color limited.

[Apple II Plus]
The Apple II Plus, introduced in June 1979, included the Applesoft BASIC programming language in ROM. Except for improved graphics and disk-booting support in the ROM, and the removal of the 2k 6502 assembler/disassembler to make room for the floating point BASIC, the II+ was otherwise identical to the original II.
Source: Wikipedia

Graphics: 40x40x15 Lo-Res graphics were accessible from Applesoft BASIC with the GR command. The bottom 8 rows show 4 rows of text. 40x48x15 Lo-Res graphics covered the bottom rows of text and was activated with the GR2 command switching between these modes did not erase the graphics or the text. 280×192x6 Hi-Res graphics HGR & HGR2 accessed the 280×192x6 and 280×160x2+text modes. The quirky color burst cycle was unchanged but other hardware in the system was altered to allow for 15 colors in Lo-Res and 6 colors in Hi-Res. The additional colors didn't actually exist but were the result of artifacting. The new quirky meant software was backward and forwards compatible with only color loss on older hardware rather than distorted/resized graphics. There were no functions for bitmapped shapes, such as squares, triangles, rectangles, circles, arcs, and area fill. As Tandy Coco users would say, Apple had two graphics commands, PEEK and POKE. But it wasn't quite that bad, there was HLIN, VLIN, and PLOT (horizontal line, vertical line, and pixel). BASIC commands were added to use the 6502 to draw, erase, scale, and rotate simple vector graphics. By default, these were recorded in memory as 90 angles (45 degrees could be faked) and it took clever programming and lots of resources to produce a vector graphic with non-45 degree and non-straight lines via hardware, even using assembly.

[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 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.
Source: Wikipedia

Graphics: All the craziness of the previous graphics plus 80×48x15 Lo-Res and 560x192x6 Hi-Res modes. Sort of... The BASIC for Double Lo-Res was, 10 PRINT CHR$(4)"PR#3" : PRINT CHR$(0); : POKE 49246,0 : GR2". These modes weren't so much as added, as hardware barriers that prevented easy access to them were removed. This alone was not enough, the system also had to have an 80 column card installed (the "IIe enhanced", which was the standard Apple II used in schools came with a card). Much like the original Apple II, 560x192 was a monochrome mode and the colorburst hardware allowed display of 6 colors. Hardware changes did add the possibility of exploiting the colorburst and artifacting together to produce a 560x192x15 mode.

[Apple IIc]
Apple released the Apple IIc in April 1984, billing it as a portable Apple II, because it could be easily carried, though unlike modern portables it lacked a built-in display and battery. 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 (NTSC or PAL), 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, this being the means by which its compact size was attained. But, hardware equivalent 2 Super Serial Cards, A Mouse Card, A floppy drive controller Card, and an Extended 80 Column Card were already built-in. IIc machines supported the 16-color double hi-resolution graphics mode without complicated hardware hacking and from a software standpoint were identical to the IIe. The lack of expansion slots did not prevent expansions from being available to IIc owners. There are RAM, CPU, CP/M, IBM-PC compatibility, and Mockingboard sound cars available.
Source: Wikipedia

Graphics: 560×192x16 built-in to ROM and Applesoft BASIC. "MouseText" added to the ROM. The IIc came standard with a mouse and the MouseText was a way to build GUIs in text mode.

[Apple IIc plus]
Rumors were that Apple was going to make a IIGS model that came in an Apple IIc style case. Instead, Apple released the Apple IIc plus on September 16, 1988. For many reasons, Apple users were disappointed by it. There were 3 major changes. The CPU was a huge change, the 65C02 could run at 4MHz. This made the IIC+ 3.3 times faster and in real world applications it could out perform the IIGS. The IIc+ is the fastest II every made by Apple. Very few real world applications were made to use it. Apple had licensed the "Zip Chip" expansion and integrated the card into the motherboard of the IIc+. This design was actually faster than a Zip Chip accelerator card. In practice, most games would not run on the IIc+ unless it was put into legacy 1MHz mode. Loading a game on the 'portable' IIc+ was problematic not only because the user had to continually enable the legacy mode, but because the IIc+ used a 3.5" high speed drive instead of the 5.25" standard speed drive. Very few games came on 3.5" disk. Many games could not be transferred to 3.5" or did not run after transfer due to DRM. Many games did not like being loaded from an external 5.25" drive, also related to DRM in many cases. The last of the major changes was miniaturizing the IIc's massive external power brick. But, they put the new power supply inside the case. A IIc could be used across countries with adapters, but the internalized brick meant the IIc+ was only for USA power outlets. No variants for other countries were produced. No changes were made to the ROM beyond what was needed for the new features. Every quirk and bug of the IIc is present in the IIc+.

[ITT 2020]
An authorized clone of the original Apple II by ITT introduced in Europe in June 1979. It managed to improve the idiosyncratic graphics by used 9-bit per pixel and provided and additional 360 by 192 graphics mode. No additional colors were provided but it reduced the problem of spanning color information across multiple pixels. This was not done to make the graphics look better or make them easier for developers, rather, it was a side effect of converting Apple II graphics from NTSC to PAL. Standard Apple II graphics would be displayed with blank lines (called, "railroad tracks") in the picture. It had a version of Applesoft BASIC called Palsoft BASIC that had language additions and changes for PAL displays. BASIC programs ran just fine (with graphics annoyances) but Machine Code usually had to be ported to the ITT 2020. Many users opted to use only the standard graphics modes by swapping the ROM chip for north American Apple II ROMS in favor of Apple II software compatibility. The Apple II, having no software usable hardware timers and IRQs, had differences to the timing of 2020 that meant many standard expansions cards and peripherals would not work on a 2020 without special drivers. The 202 motherboard could be altered to Apple II timing, again, compatibility was chosen over using PAL TV output by many users. The ITT 2020 was distributed by Microsense Computers. Apple later purchased Microsense Computers making the ITT 2020 an "Apple" branded product.

[Bell & Howell Computer]
Another authorized clone. The "apple computer inc." with logo appeared just under the "Bell & Howell" logo on the case. Bell & Howel made a few changes to the Apple II plus. It had many proper connectors on the back so users didn't have to disassemble the case and thread ribbon cables out the vents. Headphones, speaker, volume adjustment, tape in & out, disk, video, audio input, and 3 outlet A/C power strip. The keyboard was replaced. Easy of opening the case was eliminated and the computer would power-off when someone managed to open it. It was intended for a classroom environment.

[Tiger Learning Computer]
Yet another authorized clone. Tiger packaged a IIe in a laptop style case (without the screen). But they made improvements. 40 and 80 column text, 128K RAM, full 16-color HiRes mode added, 65c02 CPU, 9-volt DC powered, PS/2 mouse, serial port, printer port, joystick port, 2 cartridge ports, and GUI shell for ProDOS. The lid, which was a screen all other laptops, was instead used as a case to store up to six cartridges. Most interesting was the fact that this system was intended to be a low-cost variant of an Apple II based system. At $149, it was. It sold from Feb 1996 through April 1997 but was not discontinued due to lack of demand. This project began at a time that Apple, Inc was open to licensing their hardware, firmware, and software to 3rd parties. Well, they were intending that would be done with the Macintosh series (and it was). It was a surprise to Apple when Tiger requested to license Apple II technology. Apple had discontinued the IIc line and the IIgs many years prior. The Apple IIe platinum was months from end-of-life with less than a dozen titles (pretty much just edutainment) being released the same year. Tiger's specialized cartridge based yet Apple II compatible education computer had a market to sell to. But, when Steve Jobs came back to work for Apple, he was looking for reasons to end Apple's licensing to 3rd parties. Jobs was concerned about the Mac. There was very little he could do about preexisting contracts that companies had entered into concerning Macintosh technology. But, there was a fine-print technicality in the contract with Tiger that Jobs used to sabotage Tiger's efforts. The fact that it was Apple II and not Mac was not important. Jobs seems to have been crafting a political message to Mac clone manufacturers that all Apple clones were persona non grata.

[Apple IIc Europlus]
Apple did not authorize a clone for their second dive into the European market. The created a highly compatible version of the Apple II plus and used an optional Slot 7 video card to provide PAL output.

[Apple II j-plus]
An Apple II plus with Katakana characters. The software switching between the Roman and Katakana character sets relied on some hardware addresses that included the memory mapped to the game port. Joysticks, Paddles, Koala pads worked fine?, but some rare hardware was incompatible with the j-plus.

[Apple IIe Card]
This was an add-in card for the Macintosh LC series officially**. It is a hardware emulation board that allows Apple II software to run on a Mac with System 6.0.8 to 7.5.5, and uses the Mac hardware. But the card also had a 65c02 CPU, Mega II (IIe-on-a-chip), 256K RAM (128 usable by the Apple II), and an IWM (single chip Apple II floppy controller). Most Mac hardware could be borrowed by the card and show up as Apple II devices. The mouse, keyboard, internal speaker, clock, printer, modem, networking, hard drive, and 3.5" drive of the Mac would all be seen by the Apple II software (and could be swapped around in virtual slots for any odd Apple II software). Many Apple II softwares were highly dependent on running from a real 5.25" floppy disk (usually due to DRM) so an adapter cable could be used with the card to interface with real Apple 5.25" drives, a real Apple II 3.5" UniDrive, or pretty much any device using the floppy disk interface (the Tiger Learning Computer cartridge interface for example) would work with the cable. The adapter cable also had a game port. Half of the card's 256K, as mentioned, was 128K for the Apple II's RAM (for compatibility when the Mac's RAM was not usable). The other 128K was used to 'emulate' Apple IIe firmware (AppleSoft ROM)*. This card had some interesting possibilities such as running Apple II software at 1.9MHz and using 1152K RAM. But, 1.9MHz was of no use when game logic was synced to the video output (pretty much all graphical games). The Video of the card is fully software emulated and just a tad slower than a real Apple II; this creates a bottleneck. Apple avoided using the term 'emulation' due to several failed products that had been described with that word (really, they tried to avoid any technical terms that were accurate and helpful to the computer literate, with all their product). They preferred, "Apple IIe option board". However, "Apple IIe Card" was the name that stuck. A boot disk for the Mac was used to boot the Mac in Apple II mode and native Mac software waited in the background to make configuration changes to the II system. Either Mac software or II software could run, one always had to be suspended so the other could run.
**Unofficially, the card could be used in the Quadra 630, Color Classic, and LC520 as well. It requires a 68k CPU that does a 16-bit data bus and a 16-bit ALU and an operating system to do these, so no PPC Macs, no 68K Macs that are hardware limited to 32-bit, and nothing above Mac OS 7.7.5. The monitor for the LC series had a hidden mode of 560x384 just for backwards compatibility with Apple II and its 560x192 and 280x192 modes (280+280=560 and 192+192=384). LC users were stuck with 512x384 because Steve Jobs insisted that Macs only have square pixels.

MISC INFORMATION:
- There were many unnotable Apple II clones that were simple 1-to-1 copies of hardware(legal) and firmware (illegal). Many had names like Pineapple, Orange and such. Some were just plain counterfeits designed to look and run identical. Nearly all were discontinued by legal actions or threats by Apple but some failed in the market all on their own.
- Индивидуален микро компютър (ITCR - Sofia ИМКО-1;Individualen Micro KOmputer;Individual micro computer;IMKO-1. The 1st Bulgarian PC was an Apple IIplus clone. It oddly did not include Applesoft BASIC (Microsoft would have gladly licensed it to them); which was a major compatibility issue. It was also limited in not being compatible with floppy disks. Notable for being An Apple II compatible PC with Cyrillic text.
AMI II and AMI II from J.E. Computer Co., Ltd. The AMI III was an Apple IIplus clones with lower-case text. It was built into a TRS-80 Model I clone case and used TRS-80 Model I ports. Apple filed a Trade Dress case with the FTC against against J.E. Computer and dozens of other clone makers in 1983.
- Korea (South Korea) produced many Apple II cones including:
Hyosung PC-8000
Sambo TriGem20
Sambo Busicom SE-6003
E-Haeng Cyborg-3
Zungwon HART
Champion-86XT
Sanho ACME 2000
Several Apple II games from reputable companies originated in Korea.
- Agat (Агат) was a Soviet computer with CPU that could simulate the 6502 instruction set. This was used in an "Apple II mode" for partial compatibility. Later models used an actual 6502 which greatly improve compatibility. 12,000 were made mostly for schools. Developers preferred to make native Agat applications but some Apple II software was created for Agat.
- The Tandy Trackstar was an expansion card and boot disk that allowed a Tandy 1000 (A PC clone) to boot as an Apple][ to read and write Apple][ disks and run Apple][ software.
- An expansion card called The Mill allows an Apple][ to run OS-9. There was also an expansion card with a Motorola 68008 CPU.
- Several different expansion cards were made with a z80 CPU including one by Microsoft. These were intended for running CP/M.
- "La FELINE" and "EVE" were expansion cards for Apple II computers that (apparently) added 80-column text and improved high-res graphics to the original IIe and earlier systems. It also allowed a full 16 colors, not just 15.
- The Apple II system bus design was heavily inspired by the S-100 bus. S-100 standards for which type of cards should go into which slot number (memory, disk drive, printer, etc) are generally shared between the two systems. Legitimate $100 adapters to use S-100 cards on Apple II were available in the late 70s.

- Franklin Computer Corporation created various Apple II clones. While they generally matched Apple model-for-model, they would include additional features. The Franklin Ace 1200, for example, was a II plus clone with a Z80 CPU added so that it could run CP/M. Franklin had a unique approach to cloning that relied on Apple's unique approach to protecting it's code. To protect its ROM code, Apple did not allow it to be recorded in written form, even internally. This was opposite of other companies that would print documentation of their ROMs, even source code, and even sell or give it to the public (so it was protected by copyright law). When Apple sued Franklin, Franklin argued that the ROM could not be copyrighted because it wasn't written. They initially won the right to continue selling Apple II clones while the case was deliberated but eventually, they lost. Despite, making 1-to-1 copies of Apple II motherboards and chips (usually), it seemed the Franklin Ace series only managed %50 software compatibility. They did not include AppleSOFT BASIC in their ROMs.

- VTech made the Laser 128 series of Apple II clones. They used proper reverse engineering and licensed AppleSOFT BASIC from Microsoft. Their efforts successfully insulating them from legal actions by Apple. Their series was 88% to %95 software compatible. That might not sound so good, but any given Apple II model by Apple was only 90% software compatible with another model (ie: Apple IIc failed to run 10% of IIe software). At roughly half the cost, one could afford to buy two different Laser 128s and together they would be more compatible than any single Apple II. VTech also included both software and hardware features that were not available with the Apple II series, such as a Centronics printer port and two additional graphics modes that were not idiosyncratic. Also, certain models could be run at higher clock speeds up to 4 times faster. Unlike Apple's own //c+ that could run 4 times faster with specially designed software ot a subset of software not designed for it, The Laser 128EX2 could do it with hardly any compatibility issues and even slightly faster than a IIc+. Such models included addition RAM and VRAM to act as a buffer for synchronizing. VTech had an advantage over Franklin not just in being legally defendable but also in that the Laser 128 sold in respectable numbers (legal issues may have contributed to the sales disparity). This meant that most software manufactures would test and alter their software to be sure it also worked on Laser 128 models.

- Basis Microcomputer made the BASIS 108. Basis Microcomputer distributed German versions of the Apple II series in Germany (with very minor hardware adjustment). When Apple ended their arrangement with them, they created the BASIS 108. The BASIS 108 itself was cloned and spawned "The Medfly", the Cal-400, the Lingo, and the Precision Echo Phase II. Basis Microcomputer was upset with the poor quality of The Medfly, which they felt reflected badly on them, and worked with the company to improve the product.

*As the largest firmware ever made for a Apple II was only 32K (not counting IIgs), I'm not sure what the extra 96K could be for. Some older Apple II machines could bankswitch RAM in a way to extend the system ROM. This allowed both an extended version of BASIC to reside in 'ROM' *and* the machine code monitor could simultaneously exist in 'ROM'. But that was back when the II series used an 8K ROM. This extra memory might hold multiple versions of ROMs or might be a required buffer to compensate for the Mac being able to tell time while Apple II simple ran at full speed all times, slowing and speeding as the 6502 used variable numbers of clock cycles per instruction and there was no system clock to compare to.

Other Graphics Modes and quirks
It is important to note that many of the complicated quirks discussed throughout this article have been described in a vastly simplified way. Also, it written assuming that BASIC or another high level language is being used as the primary way to interact with the hardware. From an pure assembly language perspective, Apple II graphics are far more complex. For instance, each screen mode, text or graphics, are divided into somewhat arbitrary way and have areas that cannot appear on screen, as far as how they reside in memory. Further complication arises in systems with the 80-column card. There is a link to a video on this page that further delves into some of these details and will make your brain hurt; and this video doesn't even get into the difficulties of working with colored 'sprites' nor 80-column card graphics.
If a programmer doesn't want to use complex placement of graphics to achieve 15 colors on the hi-res screen without distortion, they may opt to treat the screen as 140×192. In fact, there exists assembly language graphics tools to create a 140×192 mode so that any high level language may address a 140×192 mode (in assembley, 140×192 is the default mode). A 140×96 can also be achieved in this way. This can also be achieved on an instruction-by-instruction basis using POKE statements (or the equivalent on non-BASIC languages) without a preset of assembly routines to call. All graphics modes allow 4 lines of text to be toggled on or off at the bottom of the screen. This uses 8 rows for the lo-res graphics modes and 48 rows for the hi-res mode. As mentioned above, color modes are either 8 or 16 but some colors repeat. A few hardware hacks and commercially released expansion cards will correct the repeating colors and allow for a full 8 or 16.
'Standard' modes:
Text 40x24 15[16] color
Text 80x24 15[16] color
Lo-Res+Text 40×40 15[16] color
Double Lo-res+Text 80x40 15[16] colors
Hi-Res+Text 280×160 6[8] color
Double Hi-res+Text 560x160 6[8] colors
Lo-Res 40×48 15[16] color
Double Lo-res 80x48 15[16] colors
Hi-Res 280×192 6[8] color
Double Hi-res 560x192 6[8] colors
Monochrome Hi-res 560x192 binary color

Constructed modes:
+Text 140×160 6[8] color
+Text 140×32 6[8] color
+Text 560×160 15[16] color (Apple IIc achieves this with hardware)
140×192 6[8] color
140×96 6[8] color
560×192 15[16] color (Apple IIc achieves this with hardware)

A few more quirks worth mentioning:
The pallet can be shifted one bit at a time. So that all graphics on screen can have their colors altered in a single frame.
Text mode and low res mode are actually the same mode. If text in printed in the graphics area of the screen while in Lo-Res, the two pixels in that place will change color. The programmer must set the cursor position into this graphics area to do this. Text in the area of at the bottom of the screen will not, by default, scroll into the graphics area.

"Shape Tables" are a kind of abuse of the vector graphics. Since the Apple II's vector graphics operate at 90 angles and have a 1-to-1 pixel relation at default scale, programmers would create vector shaped and draw them onscreen unscaled and unrotated. They could be used as tiles or as if they were a sprite (without the expected sprite benefits, basically a tile that can be placed anywhere). Scaling an rotating of the shapes in the shape tables is very rare. The graphics would be drawn across the pixels of the screen just fine. But would produce virtually unpredictable colors. Unless using monochrome graphics of course.

No Real-Time Clock so Background music is rare for Apple II games that do not make use of expansion cards. The system had a speaker but no way for the CPU to modulate it for frequency nor volume. This left few options for sound. A single tone could be sounded for an extremely short interval to produce a click. Slightly longer for a beep. Longer still for a continuous tone. All at a single frequency. However, by timing continuous clicks, higher and lower tones could be simulated. This produced a single multitone voice that could play recognizable music and even recognizable speech albeit of poor quality. This was a common sound or music option for unexpanded systems. Different option, rarely used on the Apple II, was to use the cassette port I/O to stream digital music or speech. While this used an extremely poor bit rate, it had the advantage of producing tones at any frequency without variation in CPU usage. It sounded almost as good as an old vinyl record worn to the point of being ready for the trash bin. Generally, music and speech happened when the computer was not doing anything else at all; such as waiting for user input on an unanimated screen of text or graphics. Animated graphics, manipulation of text, receiving user input, calculating anything, severely interferes with music (or anything else requiring precise timing). The system was powerful enough to do both at once but had no way to coordinate both at once. The system had no real-time clock by which to keep time. Music needs steady timing to keep the song from speeding or slowing, thereby playing the wrong tones, and this is easy if the CPU is only doing music. But the game logic is asking for CPU operations that take various units of time to complete. To play the next click at the proper time after various CPU operations, the CPU must keep track of how long it took, a calculation that also uses CPU operations of various timing. Despite the difficulty, some programmers managed to interlace animated sequences with music. And some games even play short snippets of voice or music while the game plays with only minor timing issues. Many other computer systems that competed with the Apple II series had a real time clock. So when the CPU was was interrupted while making music with the speaker, it could consult the system clock to see how much time had past and know exactly where to continue to still generate the proper tone. Getting the time elapsed takes CPU operations of course, but this calculation always takes exactly the same amount of time. Various clock options from 3rd party vendors where made for the Apple II series. Some plugged into the ROM socket with the system ROM piggybacked on the clock circuit. Some clocks used chip sockets other than the system ROM. Not an easy option if one's board used a soldered chips or the case left no space for added chips. Another option is a card that includes a clock in one of the expansion slots. There were very few clock-only expansion cards as that would be a bit of a waste of an expansion slot. These cards were generally intended for other purposes and the real-time clock was also included. For instance, a serial interface card + clock, RAM expansion card + clock, accelerator card + clock, Digital I/O + Clock. Clocks that used the standard I/O ports of an Apple II were also created. These generally consisted of a box that plugged into the port, an external power supply, and had a passthough port on them. At least one of these was a modified modem that used modem protocols to send time stamps to the Apple II. Many clock solutions could emulate each other which improved compatibility with software that generally was only designed for a specific clock solution. No clock solution was particularly game oriented. They were business tools meant to be used by calendars, spreadsheets, word processors, databases, files with date and time stamps, backup solutions, and external hardware (such as stage lighting, home security, home automation). Add-on clocks never became popular for Apple II games unless you count the Mockingboard sound card. The Mockingboard sound card with one or more AY-3-8910 or compatible chips and sometimes one or more Votrax SC-01 or compatible chips, additionally included its own real-time clock out of necessity for playing its own music. The clock in the Mockingboard was addressable as a system wide clock. But, since a gamer's main use of a real-time clock was music, and the Mockingboard was for music, manual use of it's clock for other purposes was not considered. Non-game software used one or more of the business oriented clocks.

Zero Page Hogging
The "zero page" is the first 256K of RAM for the 6502 CPU. For a couple of reasons, access to the zero page is significantly faster. In fact, since the 6502 had only one general register and a split register making two non-general registers (X and Y), MOS technology recommended that programmers use the zero page of RAM as additional registers. That's a whopping 256 more general 8-bit registers that, in some cases, are faster then the built-in general register of the 6502, if the RAM chips were fast enough. In the Apple II, the zero page RAM was faster than the 6502's register. But, the Apple II's monitor program took up 50 bytes of the zero page, AppleDOS took 58 bytes, AppleSOFT took 121 bytes, leaving only 27 registers to use. And these were not all located in a sequential block of memory, there were only 5 such blocks spread around the page. Most 6502 operations can't use an absolute memory address an must instead use relative addresses. If data can be stored sequentially then the programmer can use an address one location different from the last (additionally, the 6502 can often save a clock cycle per each operation by counting backwards). If it is non-sequential, instructions with variable use of clock cycles must be used to determine the next place in memory (and there is no bonus for counting backwards). Using more clock cycles makes the game slower, but even worse, it distorts the timing of the game since the number of cycles used will vary. Zero page registers were especially helpful to speed up math instructions that needed to barrow and carry since doing so with non-sequential bytes required the programmer to manually toggle the 6502's math flags. For a fast game, programmers would need to ditch the Apple II's built-in tools. Without those, they then needed to replace them with their own tools to do useful things like load the next level from disk. Oh sure, that may sound fine. But what do you do when the player pops in their 13 sector disk to save their game when the game expects a 16 sector disk? Or the system starts accumulating garbage data and there is no garbage collector because your game is using that area of the zero page? There's a lot of things that a game developer really doesn't need to be bother with, until those things are no longer automatically handled by the system.
Comparisons:
BBC Micro officially reserved the first half of the zero page but actually took bit less. The other half was free and clear.
Acorn Atom (and previous 6502 systems) leaves the first half free and clear and the most expendable tools (BASIC) start at the beginning of the second half with less expendable things increasingly further up the line.
Atari 8-bit officially leaves the second half of the zero page free and clear but some later models load tools for advanced math into the third quarter. Games that have no need of advanced math typically just use the entire second half and destroy the previously loaded data (it will all return with a reboot).
The Commodore 6502 family strictly protects the first 2 bytes of the zero page (it is used for I/O) but this can be hacked with some difficulty by abusing operations of the graphics chips (VIC-Chip). The rest of the zero page is free and clear. As far as I know, Commodore is the only system that gives the entire zero page (except for those two difficulty to use bytes) to the software developer.
Ohio Scientific basically extended the 6502 CPU into the first quarter of the zero page effectively making a very complex version of the 6502 with such exotic operations as a floating point accumulator, multiplication register, additional stacks and pointers, arrays, and much more. Hardware arrays! This is vector processing in one's own home! I get the feeling that this is exactly the kind of thing Team 6502 had intended to be done with their CPU. And OSI still left three quarters of the zero page for software developers to play with.

3.5" Disks
These, officially, arrived very late in the life of the Apple II series, in terms of marketing. No mainline Apple II system came with a 3.5" until the Apple IIc+. Witch was not successful on the market. Yet, 13 different 3.5" disk drives from 7 manufactures were available as external add-ons for most computers in the series. There were 7 standards, 5 in terms of intercompatibility and no single drive supported all of these standards. Apple themselves made drives that supported Apple 400K, Apple 800k, SuperDrive, Universal, and UDC together. The SuperDrive standard required an disk controller expansion card. Some of these drives would also work on an unexpanded Macintosh and an Apple IIgs. Both Apple IIc system present an issue as they are not compatible with most of the drive types (dispute being the last 2 models manufactured). The IIc specifically will only work with Apple's UniDisk drive. The IIc+ quite helpfully supported all of Apple's own standards (having a built-in drive helped tremendously, but Apple's external drives also work). This leads to the odd system requirements of some 3.5" disk games that are claim compatibility with every Apple II, including IIgs and IIc+ (an Mac in rare cases), but are specifically not compatible with the original IIc as the game cannot be read on a UniDisk drive.

Apple II is known for the Ultima series. It began on Apple II with Akalabeth and continued on the platform until Ultima V. It is also known for the "peperony and chease" version of The Oregon Trail (Graphical versions of TOT originate on the Apple II). The Prince of Persia, Wizardry, Karateka, Might and Magic, Wasteland, and John Madden Football series all originated on the Apple II.
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tech info

resolution: 280 x 192 x 16 colors, 560 x 192 x 16 colors, 560 x 192 monochrome, 40 x 48 x 16 text OR graphics, 8
memory: 48/64/128K RAM, 16K ROM
CPU: MOS 65c02 1.02 MHz/4 MHz
sound: 1 channel

All Apple systems

Apple I1976
Apple II E1977
Apple III1980
Macintosh OS Classic1984
Apple IIGS1986
Newton1993
Apple Pippin1995
Mac OS X2001
iOS2007