Apple II Review

by Philip Chien

A revolutionary new computer, created by two young men in a garage, promises to change the microcomputer industry. The "Apple II" was introduced at the West Coast Computer Faire in March 1977. Company founders Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs used to work for H-P, but H-P wasn’t interested in a home computer so the pair started their own company. The original Apple I was just a motherboard with a limited amount of memory and computing power and Apple I owners have been offered trade-ins.

The Apple II is truly revolutionary. It has an 8 bit 1 Mhz. 6502 processor, comparable to the 8080 and 6800 microprocessors. The processor can address 64K of memory - more than anybody will ever need. Of course since 16K of RAM retails for $300 few will be able to completely populate the motherboard. The Apple II uses direct addressing and not a single byte is wasted. The bottom portion of memory is dedicated to the RAM used by the microprocessor, the display, and housekeeping functions. The top 2K of memory is a built-in ROM with the "Monitor" program, the bottom level program which controls the computer. An additional 6K of ROM is the built-in Integer BASIC interpreter and there are two additional sockets for additional ROM for potential expansion. One thing we especially liked about the design is eight expansion slots. Currently the only card available is an empty circuit design card for those who want to build their own circuits. There are rumors that future expansion cards will include parallel and serial ports, and a disk drive controller. Each of the cards has memory spaces allocated for a built-in program on ROM. In theory the computer comes with as little as 4K of static RAM but we highly recommend getting a minimum of 16K of dynamic memory. You can put up to three rows of 4K or 16K chips for anywhere from 4K to 48K of memory. It’s doubtful anybody will ever need to use that much RAM though!

To minimize cost the Apple II does not include any display or storage device. Instead you use what you already have - a television set and cassette tape recorder. The Apple II generates a pseudo NTSC video signal (in Color!) which can be hooked up to a monitor. It can also be connected to a television set with a third party R-F modulator. The computer has audio in and out jacks and the cables to connect to a cassette recorder to store programs and data. Two game controllers come with the computer. The joystick port is well documented and third party companies are manufacturing joysticks and other I/O devices. Because of video bandwidth limitations the display is limited to 40 characters across and 24 lines. Two graphics modes are available - 40 x 48 blocks in 16 colors and 280 x 192 pixels in four colors. Regrettably the text display is upper case only, as is the keyboard, but that’s to be expected on a machine designed for hobbyists. If Apple ever wants to sell this computer to business users they will have to add an option for an 80 column upper-lower case display and a true upper-lowercase keyboard.

Applesoft I (a/k/a Microsoft BASIC) manual

Besides the built-in Integer BASIC the computer comes with Microsoft BASIC on cassette. Microsoft is a software company in Albuquerque New Mexico, which publishes a variety of standardized BASIC programs for various microprocessors. Applesoft I is just the standard 6502 version of Microsoft BASIC with commands added for the Apple II graphics and it’s fairly buggy. Applesoft II is supposed to be released in 1978. It will be a licensed version of Microsoft BASIC written specifically for the Apple II. Rumor has it if the Microsoft version is popular it may be built into future Apple IIs. Other software which comes with the computer includes graphics demos and the popular Breakout and Pong games.

What we especially liked about the computer is its open design and documentation. The original units came with a 20 page mimeoed manual with the entire source code for the Monitor program and schematics. A much more detailed reference book will be released at the beginning of 1978. This is a company which is encouraging third party hardware and software developers!

One of the most common questions is will it run CP/M programs and the answer is unfortunately no. CP/M is very specific to the 8080 / Z-80 microprocessors and the Apple II has a 6502. It may be possible in the future for somebody to design a Z-80 co-processor on a card which would fit into one of the Apple II’s expansion slots if there’s enough of a demand for folks who want to use CP/M on the Apple.

There are some excellent programs available. Personal Software has ported their popular Microchess program to the Apple II and it’s a pleasure to play the program with hires graphics. Instead of just a text display on previous versions of Microchess on other computers you can see real chess symbols on your display! There’s a rumor that Personal Software is coming out with a program named "Visicalc" which is a spreadsheet for business use.

Currently you cannot connect the Apple II to another computer. But DC Hayes is planning on coming out with a "Micromodem II" which will plug into one of the Apple’s expansion slots and a phone line (no need to deal with unreliable acoustic phone handset couplers!) It will operate at 300 baud (30 characters per second). In theory phone lines can handle 1200 baud but it’s doubtful they will ever be able to handle faster data transmissions because of their limited bandwidth.

The Apple II’s flexibility gives it some amazing capabilities. While the audio input is designed for storing programs on cassettes it has been used for several other applications. If you plug the audio output from a small amplifier into that port speech recognition software is available. Another application is to hook it up to the headphone jack from a stereo and run Bob Bishop’s Music Kaleidoscope program for interactive color patterns on the screen which change in time with the music. Still another sound port application is to hook it up to a fax machine and the Apple can display those images in hires graphics. The joystick port has four outputs and three inputs which can be used to control relays and other devices.

Many people think Apple Computer has no chance of succeeding. It’s just two kids operation out of a garage in Cupertino California and it’s competing with Commodore (with their PET computer) and Radio Shack (with the TRS-80) along with the industry standards - IMSAI, Cromemco, Southwest Technical Products, and Altair. But we think Apple will survive and it will still be known when the rest of these companies are out of business or not building their own computers anymore.

The best thing about the Apple II has to be its price. It certainly isn’t inexpensive, but Apple has recently offered a rebate to its customers. The retail price of $1,698 for a unit with 16K of memory has recently been reduced to $1,298.

- end -

2008 suffix - of course this "review" was written tongue-in-cheek in 2008. The "facts" are all true, including that Microsoft was originally located in Albuquerque. Each of the "rumors" eventually happened. It’s interested to recall how powerful I thought my Apple II was when I first purchased it in 1978, and how much the world has changed in the last three decades.

Links

Apple II history.
Visicalc.
Apple II emulators.
A decent webpage dedicated to the Apple II.
Another decent webpage dedicated to the Apple II.
An 1977 article by Steve Wozniak explaining his design philosophy.

About the author

Philip Chien has been using computers since the DEC PDP-8 in the early 1970s and has owned an original Apple II computer (serial number 1041) since 1978. The photos with this article are from his personal collection.

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