Apple II History

When I first got my hands on an Apple II Plus back in 1980, the floppy disk that Woz had made available for his prized invention was old hat (heck, this computer was up to DOS 3.3!) Because of this, I never experienced any of the trials and tribulations of running an Apple II without a disk, as did the earliest owners. A few months ago, I wrote an article here called “Cassette Security“, in which I briefly discussed the ingenuity of early Apple II software vendors in making their products difficult to copy, and so harder to pirate.

Antoine Vignau of Brutal Deluxe has been archiving this under-represented aspect of Apple II history on his web site. He has been cataloging as many early cassette-based Apple II programs as he can find, and posts an audio file of the program, if possible. This is making it possible for the first time in many years to actually access some of the earliest products sold for the Apple II.

My thanks go out to to Call-A.P.P.L.E. for making mention of one of the newest entries on the Brutal Deluxe site in this cassette category. It is a clever program called “Disk-O-Tape”, written by Dann McCreary. In an era when the new disk media was still expensive and cassettes were abundant and cheap, McCreary had written a program that would transfer an image of an entire floppy disk to a cassette tape. If you only had one box of floppy disks to work with, but had more programs than would fit on those disks, the cassette became a type of archive media to allow temporary offloading of that data in a safe place. Restoring a disk from the cassette was just as easy.

A related story that was also reported by Call-A.P.P.L.E. was about Apple Game Server, which has taken the retro-cassette concept to a new level. Here, the site designer has taken a number of old games, compressed them, and added a routine to make them load from the cassette input on an Apple II. To play these games, connect a cable from your playback device of choice (even an iPhone) to the cassette input of your Apple II. Start up the Apple II without a floppy disk in the drive, and press Ctrl-RESET to drop to BASIC. Type “LOAD”, and start playing the selected game audio file into the cassette input. The game will load and automatically start playing.

Advantage: It is really easy to load and play an old game this way. The files are very small (even the largest game could be no bigger than 139K (0.139 meg), and so load quickly.

Disadvantage: I’ve not been successful in getting Virtual II, my favorite Apple II/II+/IIe emulator to work with these files (I may not be converting them properly).

Between these web sites, here are two ways of looking at software from the earliest days of the Apple II, whether cassette only, disks stored on cassettes, or disk images converted to work as cassettes. Enjoy!

I’ve got an exciting new exhibit in the Apple II History Museum! Thanks to the permission of Howie Shen, I have his photos of his recent acquisition of a true piece of history – An Apple II, originally purchased by someone in Palo Alto, CA. In July 1977, this person spent about $2000 for a 24K system, including the brown vinyl zipped carrying case. He apparently then made very light use of his new computer for a while, and then zipped it up in the vinyl case and stored it in the closet until after he passed away. His son contacted Mr. Shen, who was advertising his interest in purchasing an Apple II.

As Mr. Shen examined his new purchase, he found that he had taken possession of a very unique item. This was not just an early serial number Apple II; this is probably one of the earliest surviving examples of how the first few Apple II computers were built and shipped. A member of Applefritter.com, he posted pictures of his acquisition on the forum in October of 2011, and discussed it here:

I am the new owner of a very early 1977 Apple II system, serial number A2S1-0101. The machine is in amazing condition, having been zipped up in its brown vinyl Apple bag in the closet of the original owner for the better part of three decades. Remarkably, the components are all original, never upgraded, including the completely unmoved Revision 0 motherboard, serial number 1.303 with Integer BASIC ROMs. Also, the early case has no vents, and appears hand-painted and rather crudely finished at the edges. Best part is that the system works perfectly!

It really is a time-capsule find inside and out … I bought it from the son of the original owner who said he couldn’t remember it being used all that much, and the overall condition certainly supports that. The inner wall of the case has a stamp indicating “July 6 1977” so that’s either the assembly date for the complete system or just the case … Note the “16K 4K 4K” memory select blocks; this system was ordered with 24K that surely was a whopping configuration that early on.

There are relatively few online images of Apple II systems with early silkscreened logo power supplies and cases without ventilation slots, so maybe these photos reveal details that folks are curious about. (For example, I didn’t realize that the earliest power supplies had simple handwritten serial number stickers.)

In addition to the computer itself, I received a nice selection of documentation including the original direct-from-Apple sales receipt (check out the price in 1977 dollars!), and among the accessories and disks a pair of very early paddles. These were a big surprise, as they look to be the ones shown in the original advertisements, but I always thought they were just mockups that were replaced with the familiar square paddles with big round spinners when the systems actually shipped.

One of the most unusual characteristics of this early Apple II is the lack of ventilation slots in the sides of the case. As noted during his keynote given at KansasFest 2011, early Apple employee Bob Bishop had also purchased an Apple, with a serial number of 0013, and his Apple II also lacked the ventilation slots. Bishop used his computer quite a bit, and the heat build-up inside the case caused it to soften and sag. Bishop brought the problem to the company’s attention and was given an upgraded case with the ventilation slots. Most likely, most other early Apple II owners with these cases lacking vents also complained about the problem, and were upgraded to the proper type of case. The original owner of Howie Shen’s Apple II presumably did not use it enough to cause the case to sag, and so did not seek out a replacement from the company.

The only manual that shipped with these original Apple II was a collection of typewritten notes; this is the bound booklet that has the “Simplicity is the ultimate Sophistication” advertisement on the top. According to an interview with Chris Espinosa that can be found here, this booklet was created by Apple’s first president Mike Scott, who went through employee’s desk drawers to get anything that he could to create some sort of documentation to include with this computer. Later, these notes were cleaned up and collated into the Red Book, which was apparently sent to early owners to replace that less-professional booklet. (Espinosa was later tasked with creating a better technical reference manual for the Apple II).

You can view more pictures in the Apple II History Museum here.

Even at this late date, nearly 20 years after the end of production of the last Apple IIe, there are still little bits of the story that come to light.

An article was published in the October 13, 2011 edition of The Grand Island Independent, of Grand Island, Nebraska. The article, written by Robert Pore, made mention of a business in the village of Alda, Nebraska. Located just west of Grand Island (and about 150 miles west of Omaha, where I live), with a population 652 (as of the 2000 census), Alda was home to Leon Plastics. The Alda plant was part of the larger Leon Plastics company, based in Detroit, Michigan, and in recent years it was making plastic parts for the auto industry. Though the Alda plant closed just this year, Leon Plastics in the late 1970s was producing parts for some of the computers that were being manufactured at the time, including the Apple II. Through a salesman from the Michigan office who contacted Apple in 1977, Leon Plastics got a contract to make the case for the Apple II and II Plus from 1977 to 1982. These were injection mold cases, using structural foam for the case material. At one point during the Apple II era, the cases were shipped from Alda to Richardson, Texas, where the computers were assembled at one of Apple’s plants.

In speaking with a former employee of the company, I was told that he believed that at the end of their association with Apple, Leon Plastics also produced some of the early cases for the Apple IIe (which was released in 1983). After late 1982, Apple outsourced to Singapore the production of these cases, and so Leon Plastics role in the story of the Apple II came to an end.

We all knew was it coming, but didn’t want to hear it. The news broke yesterday evening, informing the world that Steve Jobs passed away from (presumably) recurrence of his pancreatic cancer. He didn’t get a chance to do much as chairman of the board of Apple, after stepping down from his role as CEO in August of this year.

Jobs has a reputation of being a difficult person to work with, but he was driven to perfection in his work life and the products he promoted. His methods, whether or not they were good, resulted in amazing advances in getting great technology in the hands of the masses.

This is the Apple II History site, not a general Apple, Inc. history site, and so my only focus on Steve Jobs has been the parts he played in the development and maturation of that platform. Most of his love changed over to the Macintosh, because it was a representation of a newer, easier paradigm in computing, much as the Apple II was an advance over the teletype/printer/front-panel-switch methods of hobby computer interfacing the preceded the Apple II. But, as much as Jobs turned his attention away from the computer that got the company its first big success, he did not completely ignore it. Even as the Macintosh project was moving forward, Jobs was involved in the design of the Apple IIc, his vision of the Apple II as an appliance.

At first, I didn’t plan to make a specific post here about Jobs, as so much was being written on the web and in print since word got out about his death. But I did see three items that I wanted to share here. My thanks to Tony Diaz for posting the first two of these in his Twitter feed.

To start with, here is a picture that made the rounds a couple of years ago. I believe it was created originally by Jonathan Mak, who lives in Hong Kong (see his site here). It is a cool pictorial tribute to Jobs and the company he co-founded (and I like it better than one other profile of Jobs superimposed on the Apple logo):

Tony also pointed me to an Applesoft program written by Chris Baird (link gone as of 4/14/13), a program that creates this image on an Apple II hi-res screen:

In my RSS news feed today, I came across a link to this video interview with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, speaking to the Associated Press:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dK_XEGrzHUo

Thanks to Ken Gagne, I would point you to this 1995 interview of Steve Jobs done by Computerworld. It was done in the era of his life when he was still two years off from being asked to rejoin Apple. It gives his insight on NeXT computer, what he thought of Apple, and other insights on the genesis of the computer paradigm that the Macintosh and NeXT computers pushed forward.

Finally, also from Ken, here are thoughts of the editors of Computerworld about Steve Jobs and his legacy:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6BBvLZXa8Q

Thank you Steve, for the many ways that your leadership pushed forward technical matters and made them simple to use in our daily lives.

I am currently at the end of the week-long annual event known as KansasFest (or “KFest” to the old-timers), and have again been enjoying my time here. I especially enjoy the opportunity to learn something new about something old — the Apple II, of course.

One of my iTunes “radio” streaming feeds, in the “Oldies” category, is called “The Rare, The Old, And The Unusual”, and the station plays restored music from the 1940s through the 1970s. It’s worth a listen, and you can indeed hear some songs you may have heard, but probably didn’t.

What does that have to do with the Apple II? It is guaranteed that if you come to KFest you will see something that fits into all of these categories. The rare? An interface card that Apple apparently created, but did not sell commercially. The Apple II Fibernet card had fiberoptic connectors on it, to use for data transmission. There is very little information about the out on the Internet. However, Sean Fahey obtained the card recently. Apparently made in 1982, the card may have been made specifically for the U.S. government, for military use. In a comp.sys.apple2 message just last month, Sean points out that even prototype and pre-production products at Apple had a product prefix assigned, even if it never became a commercial product; this card has no such product code. Sean also says that a former co-worker once told him about Apple II computers that NORAD had used in some of their missile silos, for administrative and training purposes, and that these were connected via optic links back to NORAD. In any case, this item is the most unique Apple II item I’ve come across for quite a while.

The old? An original DOS 3.1 disk in pristine condition. This was the first version released of an operating system for Apple’s new Disk II drive back in 1978.

The unusual? Only the best door decoration that I’ve seen at KFest ever. Martin Haye took his Apple II Plus, wrote a program to accept entry of haiku poems, and display them two at a time on the screen, rotating every 20-30 seconds. After collecting a number of these poems, he took his Apple II Plus and hung it on his door, with a flat-screen TV as a display. This was not only my favorite decoration, it was also the favorite of the other KFest attendees, and he accordingly won the door decoration award for this year. Check it out:

One of the earliest articles that I added to the History was back in 2002, a very brief discussion of Bob Bishop and his program, APPLE-VISION. It concluded by saying that he had written “a lot of programs” and “did many other things” (weasel words, if I’ve ever heard them).

Thanks to his keynote address to KansasFest 2011, I’ve been able to expand on his story and some of his contributions to the Apple II world. Additionally, it makes mention of some of his post-Apple II work and the programming language he created.

I’ve left the page in the Spotlight section of the web site, but you can get to the page about Bob Bishop here.

(Photo courtesy of www.kansasfest.org, used with permission).

Check out Ken Gagne has posted a great list of classic Apple II and IIGS games in his post here on the Apple II Bits blog.

Blake Patterson of the ByteCellar has Apple promotional DVDs that he obtained many years ago. These contained commercials and other videos about Apple products, primarily from the late 1980s and early 1990s. He uploaded these videos to YouTube, and his post here shows a number of them.

One that I like the best was made in 1987, at Apple’s tenth anniversary. It speculated how Apple would be doing at the time of its twentieth anniversary in 1997, under the leadership of CEO John Sculley. Interestingly enough, some of what was predicted (tongue-in-cheek) to be Apple’s dominance in computing was clearly not happening by 1997, but in reality was beginning to happen by 2007 (Apple’s thirtieth anniversary), and is even more correct by now, their thirty-fifth anniversary. And it is fun to see the younger, thinner Woz giving his thoughts about how Apple did during their second decade, as well as the mention of the Apple II V.S.O.P (very smooth old processor) that was predicted to be released in 1997 (a full four years after the actual discontinuation of the Apple II line).

Humorous things also include a Mac that you wore as glasses, and which was fed by a postage-stamp-sized floppy disk.

Take a trip over to Patterson’s ByteCellar, and enjoy a view of the past, and of their predicted future.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg4ADB4iGaw

Nuff said.

I often found it frustrating in my high school English classes when it was necessary to critique a piece of fiction that we were assigned as a class to read. What was the symbolism expressed by this character? What philosophy is being championed in this chapter? I, as a reader of the story, just wanted to read the story, follow the plot, and see what happened to the various people as the book progressed to its end. I suppose that is very simplistic, but that was how I viewed things.

I am sure that some authors out there really wanted to write a story that symbolized the struggle of the working class, or illustrated some other philosophy. But some authors just wanted to tell a story. J.R.R. Tolkien wrote in the preface to a new reprint of The Lord Of The Rings in the early 1970s that his story was definitely not symbolic of the struggle of the west against the east in Europe during or after World War II; it was just a fantasy story.

In this post on the Revert To Saved blog, we have an interview with Rob Janoff about the origins of the famous logo used by Apple Computer. I myself have been sent emails over the years asking about the symbolism of the bitten apple logo, and was asked, “Wasn’t this the real story??”

Reading this story makes me happy that the source from which I originally got the Apple logo origin had gotten the info from Rob Janoff correctly.