Vol 5, #1
Whether The Road Apple?
by Al Martin
This issue begins our 5th year of publishing and that in itself is kind
of a wonder. We've been haranguing Apple, Inc. for its squelching of Apple
II products and shoving the Macintosh down our collective throats. We are
the people who supported Apple, Inc. through our purchases of the II+, IIe,
IIc and IIGS computers. We've put up our hard-earned bucks and hitched our
wagons to a rising star. Then, the rug was snatched our from under us. We
were left with the best computer system ever with no support from the parent
company and witnessed the departure of our software development friends
who had to find a way to survive outside the shrinking Apple II world. Publications
dropped news of the Apple II line, some merged, some shrank in size and
some just disappeared.
This year Apple, Inc. announced GS/OS 6.0 at the July KansasFest and
some 6+ months later, it has yet to hit the market. The 1991 Annual Report
from Apple, Inc. did not mention a single Apple II product, not one. And,
yet John Sculley expressed the continuing "support" for the Apple
II line by the company. What "support"? Dennis McClain-Furmanski,
our Senior Editor, has resigned as Moderator of the Apple II Echo though
he still remains with The Road Apple. And, with all of that, subscriptions
to The Road Apple continue to fall off little by little.
So, the question remains, what is the future of The Road Apple? Where
do we go from here? Continue down the same path to eventual oblivion? Become
a techie newsletter? Quit publishing now? Or, make some changes? The answer
is "no" to the first three suggestions and "yes" to
the last one. We will make some changes beginning with this issue starting
with a serialized version of Apple II history by Steven Weyhrich. The Road
Apple shall continue to be a forum were Apple II owners can submit their
war stories, suggestions, ideas, gripes or whatever may be of interest to
other Apple II owners.
Apple II History
Compiled and written by Steven Weyhrich
(C) Copyright 1991, Zonker Software
Reprinted with permission
(PART 1 -- PRE-APPLE HISTORY)
[v1.0 :: 18 Sep 91]
INTRODUCTION
This project began as a description of how the Apple II evolved into a
IIGS, and some of the standards that emerged along the way. It has grown
into a history of Apple Computer, with an emphasis on the place of the Apple
II in that history. It has been gleaned from a variety of magazine articles
and books that I have collected over the years, supplemented by information
supplied by individuals who were "there" when it happened. I have
tried not to spend much time on information that has been often repeated,
but rather on the less known stories that led to the Apple II as we know
it (and love it) today. Along the way I hope to present some interesting
technical trivia, some thoughts about what the Apple II could have been,
and what the Apple II still can be. The Apple II has been described as the
computer that refuses to die. This story tells a little bit of why that
is true.
If you are a new Apple II owner in 1991 and use any 8-bit Apple II software
at all, you may feel bewildered by the seemingly nonsensical way in which
certain things are laid out. AppleWorks asks which "slot" your
printer is in. If you want to use the 80 column screen in Applesoft BASIC
you must type an odd command, "PR#3". If you want to write PROGRAMS
for Applesoft, you may have some of those ridiculous PEEKs and POKEs to
contend with. The disk layout (which type is supposed to go into which slot)
seems to be in some random order! And then there is the alphabet soup of
disk systems: DOS 3.3, CP/M, Pascal, ProDOS, and GS/OS (if you have a IIGS).
If you use 16-bit software EXCLUSIVELY, you will probably see none of this;
however, even the most diehard GS user of the "latest and greatest"
16-bit programs will eventually need to use an 8-bit program. If you can
tolerate a history lesson and would like to know "the rest of the story,"
I will try to make sense of it all.
I think one of the Apple II's greatest strengths is the attention they
have paid over the years to be backward compatible. That means that a IIGS
"power system" manufactured in 1991, with 8 meg of memory, a hand-held
optical scanner, CD-ROM drive, and 150 meg of hard disk storage can still
run an Integer BASIC program written in 1977, probably without ANY modification!
In the world of microcomputers, where technology continues to advance monthly,
and old programs may or may not run on the new models, that consistency
is amazing to me. Consider the quantum leap in complexity and function between
the original 4K Apple II and the ROM 03 IIGS; the amount of firmware (built-in
programs) in the IIGS is larger than the entire RAM SPACE in a fully expanded
original Apple II!
This strength of the Apple II could also be considered a weakness, because
it presents a major difficulty in making design improvements that keep up
with the advances in computer technology between 1976 and the present, and
yet maintain that compatibility with the past. Other early computer makers
found it easy to design improvements that created a better machine, but
they did so at the expense of their existing user base (Commodore comes
to mind, with the PET, Vic 20, Commodore 64, and lastly the Amiga, all completely
incompatible). However, this attention to detail is just one of the things
that has made the Apple II the long-lived computer that it is.
In examining the development of the Apple II, we will take a look at
some pre-Apple microcomputer history, the Apple I, and the formation of
Apple Computers, Inc., with some side roads into ways in which early users
overcame the limits of their systems. We will follow through with the development
of the Apple IIe, IIc, and IIGS, and lastly make some comments on the current
state of affairs at Apple Inc. regarding the Apple II.
PRE-APPLE HISTORY
Let's begin our adventure in history. I've designed a special interface
card that plugs into slot 7 on an Apple II. It contains an item its inventor
called a "Flux Capacitor" (something about the being able to modify
flux and flow of time). The card derives its power from a self-contained
generator called "Mr. Fusion" (another item I dug out of the wreckage
from a train/auto accident in California a couple of years ago). Connected
to the card via a specially shielded line, Mr. Fusion runs on trash (and
is, therefore, the ultimate computer peripheral, if you recall the old principal
of "garbage in, garbage out"). Let's put a few issues of PC Magazine
into Mr. Fusion, and switch on the Flux Capacitor. (Incidentally, for this
to work, it needs an Apple II equipped with a specially modified Zip chip
running at 88 MHz). Boot the disk and set the time circuits for 1975. Ready?
Set? Go! ** CRACKADOOM ** !!
Did you make it all right? (Just don't touch anything -- you don't want
to disrupt the space-time continuum, you know!) Now, since the first Apple
II wasn't released until 1977, what are we doing back in 1975? Well, to
understand how the Apple II came about, it helps to know the environment
that produced it. In 1975, the microcomputer industry was still very much
in its infancy. There were few "home computers" that you can choose
from, and their capabilities were very much limited. The first microprocessor
chip, the 4-bit 4004, had been released by Intel back in 1971. The first
video game, Pong, was created by Nolan Bushnell of Atari in 1972. Also in
1972, Intel had gone a step further in microprocessor development and released
the 8-bit 8008, and then the 8080 in 1973. The year 1974 saw Scelbi Computer
Consulting sell what some consider to be the first commercially built microcomputer,
the Scelbi 8-H, based on Intel's 8008 chip. However, it had limited distribution
and due to the designer's health problems it didn't go very far. The first
home-built computer, the Mark 8, was released that same year. The Mark 8
used the Intel 8080 chip, but had no power supply, monitor, keyboard, or
case, and only a few hobbyists were ever finished their kits. Overall, the
microchip had yet to make much of an impact on the general public beyond
the introduction of the hand-held calculator.
With the start of 1975 came a significant event in microcomputer history.
If you will consider the early microprocessors of the years 1971 through
1974 as a time of germination and "pregnancy" of ideas and various
hardware designs, January of 1975 saw the "labor and delivery"
of a special package. The birth announcement was splashed on the front cover
of a hacker's magazine, Popular Electronics. The baby's parents, MITS, Inc.,
named it "Altair 8800"; it measured 18-inches deep by 17 inches
wide by 7 inches high, and it weighed in at a massive 256 bytes (that's
one fourth of a "K"). Called the "World's First Minicomputer
Kit to Rival Commercial Models," the Altair 8800 used the Intel 8080
chip, and sold for $395 (or $498 fully assembled). MITS hoped that they
would get about four hundred orders for clones of this baby, trickling in
over the months that the two-part article was printed. This would supply
the money MITS needed to buy the parts to send to people ordering the kits
(one common way those days of "bootstrapping" a small electronics
business). This "trickle" of orders would also give MITS time
to establish a proper assembly line for packaging the kits. However, they
misjudged the burning desire of Popular Electronic's readers to build and
operate their own computer. MITS received four hundred orders in ONE AFTERNOON,
and in three weeks it had taken in $250,000.<1>
The Popular Electronics article was a bit exuberant in the way the Altair
8800 was described. They called it "a full-blown computer that can
hold its own against sophisticated minicomputers now on the market... The
Altair 8800 is not a 'demonstrator' or souped-up calculator... [it] is a
complete system." The article had an insert that lists some possible
applications for the computer, stating that "the Altair 8800 is so
powerful, in fact, that many of these applications can be performed simultaneously."
Among the possible uses listed are an automated control for a ham station,
a digital clock with time zone conversion, an autopilot for planes and boats,
navigation computer, a brain for a robot, a pattern-recognition device,
and a printed matter-to-Braille converter for the blind.<2> Many of
these things will be possible with microcomputers by 1991, but even by then
few people will have the hardware add-ons to make some of these applications
possible. Also, despite the power that micros will have in that year, the
ability to carry out more than one of these applications "simultaneously"
will not be not practical or in some cases even possible. The exaggeration
by the authors of the Popular Electronics article can perhaps be excused
by their excitement in being able to offer a computer that ANYONE can own
and use. All this was promised from a computer that came "complete"
with only 256 bytes of memory (expandible if you can afford it) and no keyboard,
monitor, or storage device.
The IMSAI 8080 (an Altair clone) also came out in 1975 and did fairly
well in the hobbyist market. Another popular early computer, the Sol, would
not be released until the following year. Other computers released in 1975
that enjoyed limited success were the Altair 680 (also from MITS, Inc.,
based on the Motorola 6800 processor), the Jupiter II (Wavemate), M6800
(Southwest Technical Products), and the JOLT (Microcomputer Associates),
all kits.<3> The entire microcomputer market was still very much a
hobbyist market, best suited for those who enjoyed assembling a computer
from a kit. After you assembled your computer, you either had to write your
own programs (from assembly language) or enter a program someone else wrote.
If you could afford the extra memory and the cost of buying a BASIC interpreter,
you might have been able to write some small programs that ran in that language
instead of having to figure out 8080 assembly language. If you were lucky
(or rich) you had 16K of memory, possibly more; if you were REALLY lucky
you owned (or could borrow) a surplus paper tape reader to avoid typing
in manually your friend's checkbook balancing program. Did I say typing?
Many early computer hobbyists didn't even have the interface allowing them
to TYPE from a keyboard or teletype. The "complete" Altair 8800
discussed above could only be programmed by entering data via tiny little
switches on its front panel, as either octal (base 8) bytes or hexadecimal
(base 16) bytes. With no television monitor available either, the results
of the program were read in binary (base 2) from lights on that front panel.
This may sound like the old story that begins with the statement, "I
had to walk five miles to school through snow three feet deep when I was
your age," but it helps to understand how things were at this time
to see what a leap forward the Apple II really was (er, will be. Time travel
complicates grammar!)
NOTES
<1> Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, pp.
187-192.
<2> H. Edward Roberts and William Yates, "Altair 8800 Minicomputer,
Part 1", Popular Electronics, 7(1) (January 1975), pp. 33, 38. The
article is interesting also in some of the terminology that is used. The
Altair is described as having "256 eight-bit words" of RAM. Apparently,
the term "byte" was not in common use yet.
<3> Gene Smarte and Andrew Reinhardt, "15 Years of Bits, Bytes,
and Other Great Moments", BYTE, (September 1990), pp. 370-371.
The Unkindest Cut
(or How Apple Slapped Me in the Face)
by Tony Gonzalez
If you own an Apple II computer, you probably got a letter in the mail
which does nothing but kick you in the rear and slap you in the face. The
letter reads in part...
"Dear Apple Customer:
"As an Apple II Enthusiast, you probably already know that our new
Macintosh LC computer can run Apple IIe programs when an optional Apple
IIe card is added. so you can have access to all of your Apple II software
(lawsuit time, see note below) as well as the (note the "THE"
added) thousands of Macintosh programs..."
And so on. I'd write more, but I'm getting sick to my stomach reading
it. It is signed Bob Puette. My, what a familiar name! Didn't we deal with
him before when he made a statement that Apple had to publicly retract?
Hmmm...Wonder if Sculley even knows if this bozo is doing his lunacy once
again...Anyway, back to the notes.
Note 1: notice how it reads "... all of your Apple II software..."
Runs ALL? Try Soundsmith, then sue the buggers. Also note the rather peremptory
word "THE". Instead of "as well as thousands of Macintosh
programs", it reads "as well as THE thousands of Macintosh programs."
Kind of changes the meaning more peremptorily, is it not? Talk about twisting
the knife!
But I wrote this article not to complain, but to do some action. I urge
ALL of you who have received this letter (and those who didn't) to write
a personal reply to Sculley and Puette. I plan to. Here is the one I plan
to send. Feel free to use it or make your own. You will agree that my letter
expresses the way we all feel about this letter.
Dear Mr. Sculley:
I am writing this letter in reply to the flyer sent out about the 6 reasons
to buy a Macintosh. I am writing to express my anger and indignation that
your company would insult me like this.
The customer database shows that I own an Apple IIGS. Unless there was
a mistake made in the database, I will consider the letter as a rude slap
in the face. I have never received such an arrogant and insulting letter
in my life.
Loyal Apple II enthusiasts have shown their love of their Apple II computer.
This is no secret to you or your company personnel. We have shown our loyalty
to the machine and kept it going through times of trouble. We shall continue
to support the computer we love and live with.
As an Apple II customer, I DO wish to support Apple Computer. I DO want
to continue to purchase peripherals and upgrades for my Apple II computer.
I will NOT support the Macintosh line in any way shape or form.
Many Apple II customers have been waiting for the new GS units to be
announced. We have noted how they were rudely canceled in favor of introducing
a whole slew of Macintosh line machines. Maybe it would be a nice time right
here to note how the Apple II line BUILT Apple Computers, Inc. The company
seems to have forgotten that fact. Supposedly, the customers enticed away
from the Apple II line would turn to the Macintosh. That is not happening
in the numbers expected, because the users are disenchanted with the treatment
by Apple Computers, Inc. of them as a customer. They correctly reason that
Apple will treat them the same way when a new machine is introduced. They
then go IBM, simply because there is no other popular platform to turn to.
The Apple II line is still a viable machine in the marketplace. The GS
is a good top of the line machine. It is capable of keeping up with the
modern computers of differing platforms. Apple has a LARGE customer base
out there who would LOVE to continue to buy with the Apple II line, if only
Apple computers would SUPPORT it. Could the real reason be that Apple is
afraid of competition of their Macintosh line? What should it matter, since
Apple would gain the money on both ends, and win by supporting the Apple
II?
Another point I wish to bring up is the peculiar behavior of Mr. Bob
Puette, a man in a high position of power. As you remember, Mr. Puette has
made statements in the past which have caused Apple Computers embarrassment,
and forced the need for public retractions. Could this possibly be another
scheme of Mr. Puette to discredit the flagship line of Apple Computers?
If he is not supervised, what other incidents can happen which will cause
embarrassment to Apple Computers, Inc.? It is good business sense to deal
with internal company problems. The Apple II community highly suggests dealing
with Mr. Puette on these matters. Left unchecked, Mr. Puette can soon cause
irreparable damage to Apple Computer's reputation and customer loyalty.
Sincerely yours,
Tony Gonzalez
Apple II Enthusiast
And that's it. The letter explains my feelings pretty succinctly. Remember
that the Apple II is still a great computer, and it will survive with YOUR
help and love. Be a part of the movement. Participate. Send letters. Talk
to people. Get involved. Puette and his ilk want to kill the Apple II through
inaction and plain ignorance. This cannot happen due to the fact that we
love the best computer Apple Computers ever came out with.
And for you really FUN people out there, sometimes you get mail from
Mac companies asking you to buy their stuph. My way to deal with them works
if they include an envelope for a reply. I fill it with a nice steel plate
and a VERY nasty letter which tells how I'm VERY angry for them sending
me their swill and to keep that garbage away from me, lest I hit them with
a lawsuit for harassment. Talk about terrorist tactics!
From the Echo(s)
by Al Martin
Date : 16-Nov-91 01:53
From : Brian Tao
To : Barry Austern
Subject : Tower IIGS
Quote from Barry Austern:
"Beautiful idea, Brian. If you do accomplish it, let us--or at least
me--know how it turned out, and where you get the case, etc. One thing I
do dislike about the IIGS is that the CPU case is just 'there' and doesn't
do anything."
Could be a long time in coming if it's up to me. I would like to see
a tower case for the GS, but I don't even know how or where to start. There
might be a problem with slots. Ideally, I would like to mount the motherboard
(minus the power supply) sideways in the case. That means I would need some
sort of supporting brackets opposite the motherboard to support cards plugged
into the slots. Of course, relocating the slots to a horizontal position
would be best, but that would require extensive modifications to the motherboard.
Anyway, this is what it might look like (wish I could use PSE here):
________________
/ |==========\
| | BAY 1 |<-\
|Heavy |-----------| |Drive
|Duty | BAY 2 | |
|Power |-----------| |Bays
|Supply| BAY 3 |<-/
|------------------|
|Inter- === !#|<-\
|nal === !#| |
|Fan === !#| |Mother
| === !#| |
| === !#| |board
| === !#| |
| === !#| |
| === !#|<-/
|__________________|
This is looking from the front of the case. There will be cutouts in
the case so you can still use the motherboard ports. This arrangement makes
what is normally the right side of the mb the top. Since most people will
have their SCSI card in slot 7, this minimizes the cable length running
inside the case. Of course, there will be the usual slot cutouts with twist-off
covers. The "="'s are insulated brackets mounted against the back
of the case to clamp the cards in place. There is usually enough "blank"
circuit board on a card for the bracket to hold on to. This will remove
any stress on the edge connector and slot from gravity pulling the card
down. A high-volume internal fan will be mounted to the left (out of the
way of any cards) against the back. There is still lots of extra space inside
to run cables from things like stereo cards, parallel printers. No more
stressed cables!
The diagram probably isn't very accurate, but I envision the whole thing
fitting into a standard baby tower case. That's about 3/4 the width of a
normal GS and about as tall as a GS + System Saver + monitor stack. A hard
drive, 3.5" floppy and 5.25" floppy can all be mounted inside
the case and the whole thing placed beside or under your desk. There should
probably be a couple of ADB ports on the front of the case as well so you
don't have to stretch your keyboard cable. Since the monitor doesn't sit
on top of the computer anymore, you will probably want to get a good tilt/swivel
stand for it. Now when you want to move the computer, you won't have to
worry about the drives or the cable mess! Now if I can only find someone
to make this a reality...
Date : 18-Dec-91 20:57
From : Ed Stutsman
To : All
Subject : DSP STUFF
This is a SHORT EXCERPT of messages gathered from the GS/DSP mailing
list. If you have Internet access and would like to join the list,send a
message to "terryy@OCF.berkeley.edu".
First off, I'll introduce myself.. Hi there, I'm Pete Snowberg, the developer
of the GS/DSP. I've been working on and with Apple IIs since the days before
Applesoft and the Disk II, back when the upgrade to 32K was something that
only the really extreme people did (Who could EVER use up 32K. These days
I make my living as a Macintosh consultant in San Francisco specializing
in "connectivity solutions" (consult and speak for networking)
and I do engineering on the side. I'm the sole person working on hardware
and will be doing a bit of the software also. Please feel free to ask me
ANYTHING about the card you want. I'll answer anything about it. I'm not
interested in doing a hard sell or even a soft sell for that matter. This
is by far the most powerful board ever produced for a system like the IIGS
and it can easily stand on it's own merit.
The original version of the card was going to be very GS specific, but
the problems encountered with DMA and an accelerator caused me to redesign
the card so that it works in any Apple II series machine (maybe even an
Apple II in emulation mode).
Date : 18-Dec-91 01:56
From : Randy Wild
To : All
Subject : DSP
David Combe said:
"Applepress, the Newsletter of the Apple II people of the Boston
Computer Society, reported today that the DSP (Digital Signal Processor)
Card from New Concepts was due out ...make that completed by the end of
fall 91. I guess that means Dec. 22. Quote "Even though no sane person
who knows the Apple II is willing to predict where it is in its product
cycle, the DSP puts whatever that mark may be many, many years away...'
"The GS/DSP is a fairly small piggyback mounted board that plugs
into the 65c816 socket on the GS motherboard. Among other things, this will
allow virtual memory and a high speed asynchronous Zbus connector (not really
sure what this is) which could allow for A VGA card. The developer's address
is New Concepts, Attn:GS/DSP project, 665 West Jackson Street, Woodstock,
Ill. 60098 (815) 338-4227. Skepticism is the Chastity of the Intellect
Dept: Gotta see this one before I'll believe it. If it hadn't been the folks
from Boston, I wouldn't have bothered you folks."
Date : 23-Dec-91 03:02
From : Michael Stipe
To : ALL
Subject : Various
I saw in a file that the developer of the GS/DSP, Pete Snowberg, is going
to come out with a very small memory card for the GS. He described it as
being 'the same size as a single in-line simm plus the edge card fingers
to plug it in'. He was going to use it as a test to see how well the CAD
software and the board manufacturer did. Price was supposed to be ~$200
for a 4mb DMA card.
The PCT (PC Transporter) was crippled in my view by the inability of
the AE software people to write good i/o drivers. I guess they were too
busy working on Macintosh stuff. To make matters worse, when they did come
out with half- way working comm drivers (more of a bug-fix really) they
tried to charge people for them. No thanks.
Soundsmith 1.0 is now out. Seven Hills should be shipping soon. It is
supposed to have MIDI keyboard input.
Cooking Echo
Date : 30-Dec-91 07:58
From : Leonard Paris
To : Carole Resnick
Subject : Re: genie
Quoting Carole Resnick:
"...remember that the Genie Basis Service $4.95/month is for non-prime
time hours (6:00 pm - 8:00 am EST). In addition, if you use non-basic services,
such as d/l files or joining live conferences the cost is $6.OO/ hour during
basic hours. Still better than the 18.OO/hour during prime time. Also, if
you use a 9600 baud modem to call Genie the charge is $18.OO an hour no
matter what time you call. So if you have a 9600 baud, program it to call
Genie at 2400."
You're right, Carole! Not all things are as cheap as they seem at first.
Especially if you have to call long-distance to connect to Genie.
Prodigy is very cheap, as long as you have a spare computer you can use
to access their service. It has to be completely clean of all your private
data, your budget stuff, or any confidential stuff you might have, because
the Prodigy software allows them to snoop through your files via a data
file named STAGE.DAT. If you don't take those precautions, Prodigy could
be very expensive indeed!
Date : 14-Jan-92 00:53
From : Richard Sarner
To : Ken Jones
I called Apple this afternoon. The rep was polite, terse, and firm. (GS/OS)
System 6 is not ready yet. Late January is the target. I have the number
the user group info and will check to see about how it will be mailed.
Government Launches BBS To Aid Whistle blowers
by Dennis McClain-Furmanski
The federal government this recently launched a computer bulletin board
system to serve whistle blowers, those insiders who are willing to report
instances of fraud, waste and abuse they have seen on the job.
The system -- set up by the U.S. House of Representatives' Government
Operations subcommittee on government information, justice and agriculture
-- can be reached with a modem call to (202) 225-5527.
The Associated Press reports messages can be posted on the system either
anonymously or with a name and can be left any day at any hour. Congressional
investigators promise to read messages daily and check out complaints.
"The most important feature of the board," says Rep. Bob Wise
(D-W.Va.), the panel's chairman, "is the ability to receive computer
files and messages in an environment that permits continuing communications,
while fully protecting the identity of those providing information."
AP notes that even the private group that provides lawyers for government
whistle blowers who face retribution -- the Government Accountability Project
-- approves of the BBS.
GAP's Louis Clark commented, "I think it's an excellent idea, because
most of the mechanisms within the executive branch are not working well."
DPA
by Ron Albright
New Association Announced to Promote Electronic Publishing
BIRMINGHAM, AL: The "Disktop Publisher's Association" ("DPA")
is an association for parties of all levels who share interest in the dissemination
of information in electronic ("computer readable") format. Those
eligible for membership include authors, publishers, and consumers of on-disk
publishing.
"Electronic publishing," in its broadest sense, shall mean
the authorship and production for general consumer access of any materials
which are primarily read by computer and viewed on "paperless,"
"digital," and "on-disk" publishing - includes fiction
and nonfiction works that are stored and distributed on disk or available
by modem access on "bulletin board systems" ("BBSs").
Electronic publishing, in this sense, specifically does not include programs
(which are sets of instructions used by a computer to perform other tasks)
unless these programs are designed to facilitate the reading of written
materials. Examples might include hypertext authoring programs or text viewers.
The purpose of the DPA includes:
1. To promote, though improved public awareness, the benefits of electronic
publishing. These benefits include availability - often on a 24 hour a day,
on demand basis - of electronic publications, faster production time, cheaper
cost, easier revision and updating, reduced consumption of natural resources,
and - using appropriate reader software - enhanced presentation and readability.
2. To provide a forum for discussing the unique challenges of successfully
publishing and marketing disk-based publications. Examples might include
matching an author or publisher with the appropriate medium for a proposed
project. Would hypertext be best? Plain ASCII? Multimedia?
3. A matching service will be organized to place authors - who may not
be interested in complexities of marketing and publishing - with publishers
who may be willing to assist in these commercial aspects. "Writers
write and publishers publish" is an axiom that applies to electronic
publishing as well as traditional formats.
4. To share resources for mass marketing electronic publications. Examples
might include sharing of costs of mailing publications to user groups, etc.
DPA will also assist new authors and publishers in getting press releases
circulated and media coverage. Sharing mailing lists with other publishers
is another possibility open to members.
The only requirement for membership shall be an interest in the advancement
of electronic publishing. No fees will be solicited during the start-up
phase.
Interested parties can contact the DPA electronically at: The DPI BBS
- 205-854-1660 or through electronic mail on CompuServe (75166,2473), MCI
Mail (RALBRIGHT), GEnie (R.Albright) or through the mail to
Ron Albright Disktop Publishing
Association
1160 Huffman Road
Birmingham, AL 35215
Voice: 205-853-8269
FAX: 205-853-8478
Editorial
by Dennis McClain-Furmanski
In a recent column by writer Dan Gutman, the question of technology outrunning
peoples' understanding was raised. The specific question posed as a possible
solution, was "Should we freeze the technology?", meaning, should
manufacturers hold off on releasing new, unproven, and incompatible technology
while the last batch still is making its debut. The following is my response.
The fault, dear Brutus, lies not with the manufacturers, but with ourselves.
We buy the latest, greatest, best and fastest, regardless of the actual
benefits. We buy anything that's offered as long as the technology is new
and exciting enough for us to be able to brag about it, even if we don't
know what we're saying. And if we're not the first, we listen with barely
concealed envy at the specs quoted with more bravado than understanding,
and buy the same or better at the first opportunity so we can either one-up
the early bird, or at least join in the crowing over the technologically
dysfunctional who haven't our keen insight and forethought.
There have always been a few companies that catered to the gadgeteer.
The proliferation of companies doing the catering far outstrips the actual
gadgeteers. The only conclusion is obvious; this industry if fueled by conspicuous
consumption.
Freeze the technology? When there are people willing to throw money at
every new release of wares, hard and soft? When an industry that employs
as many people as this one relies on spending habits that border on manic
compulsion?
The solution has always been at hand. It is not to fall prey to the marketing
hype. The same syndrome which drives the techno-addict creates the fear
of over abundance of formats. It is the sense of urgency successfully instilled
in us by marketing which makes the usually more conservative among us to
inch past the line of rational consumerism.
There will always be those who have to have to best first. We should
be grateful to them for trying before we buy. But just because they can't
wait to see if it's worth the money, time and effort, doesn't mean we can't.
There's a good number of orphaned technologies which used to be the forefront.
The cutting edge doesn't advance without pruning.
So, lay on, MacDuff! Let those that absolutely must have everything they
possibly can sooner than everyone else pay off the research and development
investment of the manufacturers. When the smoke clears, and the prices come
down, and three quarters of the obvious necessities of modern computing
are relegated to boxes and embarrassed mumbles, then those with the sense
to make rational purchases can crow back at the early birds who lost their
tails on a pig in a poke.
If a person's problem is that there's so much available that they don't
know what they need, the root problem is that they don't know what they
need. They don't need frozen technology -- they need education on what it
is computers can do, and exactly what kind of power they need to accomplish
the task. Unfortunately, I don't think the American purchasing ego can stand
the strain of reasonable behavior.
Optimize Easily
by Dennis McClain-Furmanski
Part of the speed benefit of a hard drive is lost over time, due to fragmentation.
This happens when there's not enough contiguous room for a particular file
to be stored all in one piece. Subsequent saves, deletions, etc., compound
the problem. Soon, the disk is working overtime to just to get a single
file into memory. To fix this, you can "optimize" the files on
the disk. This de-fragments them and places them each in contiguous blocks.
On a GS, this is no problem. But if you have a large partition, or can't
seem to find a program to optimize it because it's on a IIe or something,
try backup/restore.
You have to do backups, right? So do one. This will work as long as the
backup program saves by file instead of by block. If your restore allows
you to recover a file by name, files by date, etc., then it's backing up
by files. You can usually watch them - if it's counting blocks, it's backing
the disk as a disk. If it's displaying file names, it's backing up by file.
Once you have a complete backup finished, erase the volume and restore
it from the backup. If it's stored by file, it'll be recovered by file,
and it'll come out optimized.
If you have two partitions, this can be made quicker by backing up one,
erasing it, copying the second partition onto it, erasing the second, copying
the files back to the second partition, erasing the first, and restoring
it from backup. (File transfers are a lot faster than backing up, even though
there's more steps). The problem here is, you still haven't made a backup
of the second partition. So do it.
Before you go through all this, it might be a good idea to optimize the
root directory also. Use a utility that can move things around within the
directory, put your boot files in order first, your /SYSTEM directory next
(and it can be internally optimized also, as they all can), your most commonly
used utilities, and your primary applications. This way, when you do the
backup/restore, it will be done in the order you specify.
I've done all these with ProSel on my Vulcan. Even though I have a GS,
none of these required it. If you think it takes too much time, add the
backup time to the normal optimizing, because you'll have done it as a matter
of course. Recovering from backup takes about the same time as optimizing
itself.
There is one danger here. The backup disks might not read back properly.
Of course this could happen with any backup, but you don't want it happening
with your partition temporarily erased. For insurance, preformat and verify
the disks you're going to use for the backup. You should do that whether
it's for this process or only for a normal backup. You can spend some time
and be safe, or you can save some time and take your chances.
=====
Vol 5, #2
Virii
by Dennis McClain-Furmanski
(Publisher's note: This timely article comes on the heels of the of the
passing of the dreaded Michelangelo Virus, an electronic equivalent of the
press puffery and non-effect of comet Whatzitname a few years back. At the
end of this article, I offer a virus that has caused real damage. AM)
The Iranian Virus: Holds data hostage, returns it after 4 or 5 years.
The Commercial TV Virus: Makes computers work only 48 minutes out of
every hour.
Ronald Reagan Virus: Makes computers shut down for two hours in the afternoon.
Neutron Virus: destroys files and leaves programs intact.
Silicon Implant Virus: takes years to leak into surrounding data.
The pesky Biden virus: Seeks out all well-written Word documents. It
uploads them to the senator's computer, renames them, and deletes them from
host system.
The outrageous Shamir virus: Infects Arab and Lebanese systems --- it
"repartitions" the host's hard-drive and takes over.
The insidious Alex Haley virus: targets White Supremacist's computers
and searches for genealogy files. Haley modifies their ancestry records
to indicate close kinship to Sammy Davis Jr.
Politically correct virus: Invades all files, deletes words "man",
"woman", etc. and replaces them with "person" and other
insipid gender neutral verbiage.
Exxon Valdez Virus: Spills data all over every disk it comes near.
Nuclear Energy Virus: Destroys data over multi-year period with statistically
insignificant methods, denies ever loosing even one byte.
NASA Virus: Pollutes outer edges of your system with thousands of random
bits of free-floating data, claims that it can vacuum the data safely at
some future time, given enough billions of dollars.
Detroit Automotive Virus: Breaks down by itself after 5 years or 50,000
uses.
Ozone Depletion Virus: Scientists are unsure if it exists at all.
Dyslexic Virus: Attempts to erase hard disk but erases self instead.
Political Virus: Makes claims that it will improve your system tremendously,
then does nothing for four years.
The Pinto Virus: When your hard disk crashes, your whole computer explodes.
Republican Virus: It only triggers once every four years, but when it
does, it destroys all Democrats.
Old Republican Virus: It did the same thing, but it got caught.
IRS Virus: Every April 15th, it changes all the data in your checking
account program to zeros.
DMV Virus: A variant of the IRS, but if your name starts with A through
C, it triggers in January. If D through F, February.....
USSR Virus: Fragments your hard drive after 85 years of very noisy operation.
Space Station Freedom Virus: It gets bigger and bigger, but it never
goes off.
Star Wars Virus: This is supposed to destroy all other virii, but you
never know for sure if it will work, and you need a MUCH bigger computer
to run it on.
Infant Virus: Your computer turns on in the middle of the night, and
makes a lot of noise until you change its floppies.
Teenage Virus: After 13 years, your computer starts playing rap music,
stays on all night, and does everything except what you want it to.
Middle Age Virus: After 35 years, your computer complains about rap music,
turns itself off early, and tries to make you do all kinds of things you
don't want to.
Old Age Virus: After 65 years, your computer only recalls turning on,
can't hear any music, and doesn't have the energy to do anything.
Sculley Virus: Infects a hugely successful computer company and destroys
the machines that made the company successful in the first place.
On convincing the users of Brand X
by Stephen Kroese
As I was walking down the street the other day, I noticed a man working
on his house. He seemed to be having a lot of trouble. As I came closer,
I saw that he was trying to pound a nail into a board by a window --- with
his forehead. He seemed to be in a great deal of pain. This made me feel
very bad, watching him suffer so much just to fix his window pane. I thought,
"Here is an opportunity to make someone very happy simply by showing
him a better way to do things." Seeing him happy would make me happy
too. So I said, "Excuse me sir, there is a better way to do that."
He stopped pounding his head on the nail and with blood streaming down
his face said, "What?"
I said, "There is a better way to pound that nail. You can use a
hammer."
He said, "What?"
I said "A hammer. It's a heavy piece of metal on a stick. You can
use it to pound the nail. It's faster and it doesn't hurt when you use it."
"A hammer, huh?"
"That's right. If you get one I can show you how to use it and you'll
be amazed how much easier it will make your job."
Somewhat bewildered he said, "I think I have seen hammers, but I
thought they were just toys for kids."
"Well, I suppose kids could play with hammers, but I think what
you saw were brightly colored plastic hammers. They look a bit like real
hammers, but they are much cheaper and don't really do anything," I
explained.
"Oh," he said. Then went on, "But hammers are more expensive
than using my forehead. I don't want to spend the money for a hammer."
Now somewhat frustrated I said, "But in the long run the hammer
would pay for itself because you would spend more time pounding nails and
less time treating head wounds."
"Oh," he said. "But I can't do as much with a hammer as
I can with my forehead," he said with conviction.
Exasperated, I went on. "Well, I'm not quite sure what else you've
been using your forehead for, but hammers are marvelously useful tools.
You can pound nails, pull nails, pry apart boards, in fact every day people
like you seem to be finding new ways to use hammers. And I'm sure a hammer
would do all these things much better than your forehead."
"But why should I start using a hammer? All my friends pound nails
with their foreheads, too. If there were a better way to do it I'm sure
one of them would have told me," he countered.
Now he had caught me off guard. "Perhaps they are all thinking the
same thing," I suggested. "You could be the first one to discover
this new way to do things," I said with enthusiasm.
With a skeptical look in his bloodstained eye he said, "Look, some
of my friends are professional carpenters. You can't tell me they don't
know the best way to pound nails."
"Well, even professionals become set in their ways and resist change."
Then in a frustrated yell I continued, "I mean come on! You can't just
sit there and try to convince me that using your forehead to pound nails
is better than using a hammer!"
Now quite angry he yelled back, "Hey listen buddy, I've been pounding
nails with my forehead for many years now. Sure, it was painful at first
but now it's second nature to me. Besides, all my friends do it this way
and the only people I've ever seen using 'hammers' were little kids. So
take your stupid little children's toys and get the hell off my property."
Stunned, I started to step back. I nearly tripped over a large box of
head bandages. I noticed a very expensive price tag on the box and a blue
company logo on the price tag. I had seen all I needed to see. This man
had somehow been brainwashed, probably by the expensive bandage company,
and was beyond help. Hell, let him bleed, I thought. People like that deserve
to bleed to death. I walked along, happy that I owned not one but three
hammers at home. I used them every day at school and I use them now every
day at work and I love them. A sharp pain hit my stomach as I recalled the
days before I used hammers, but I reconciled myself with the thought that
tonight at the hammer users club meeting I could talk to all my friends
about their hammers. We will make jokes about all the idiots we know that
don't have hammers and discuss wether we should spend all of our money buying
the fancy new hammers that just came out. Then when I get home, like every
night, I will sit up and use one of my hammers until very late when I finally
fall asleep. In the morning I will wake up ready to go out into the world
proclaiming to all non-hammer users how they too could become an expert
hammer user like me.
Apple Press Releases, PR Express, News Break,12/20/91
Contact: Brooke Cohan,Apple Computer, Inc., (408) 974-3019
Apple Computer, Inc. Announces Agreement in Principle to Settle Two Securities
Class Action Lawsuits
Cupertino, California December 20, 1991 Apple Computer, Inc. today announced
that it has reached agreements in principle to settle two securities class
action lawsuits filed against it in 1984 and 1991. Both agreements are subject
to court approval.
The first agreement settles a class action filed on behalf of purchasers
of Apple common stock between November 12, 1982 and September 23, 1983.
Defendants are Apple and certain of its past and present officers and directors.
Plaintiffs alleged that the Company did not make accurate disclosures concerning
the Lisa computer, a proprietary disk drive known as Twiggy, and certain
other matters. In 1989 all claims except those relating to the disk drive
were
decided in the defendants' favor. In May 1991, a jury rendered a verdict
in the plaintiffs' favor on the allegations relating to the disk drive,
but in September the court set the jury verdict aside, entered judgment
in favor of all officer and director defendants, and ordered a new trial
against Apple. A fund of $16 million will be created to settle the lawsuit.
The fund will be used to pay the fees and expenses of plaintiffs' counsel
and claims of qualifying shareholders.
The second agreement settles a class action filed on behalf of purchasers
of Apple's common stock between January 17, 1991 and April 30, 1991. Defendants
are Apple and certain of its officers and directors. Plaintiffs alleged
that the Company did not make accurate disclosures concerning its financial
and business prospects for fiscal year 1991 and for periods within it. A
fund of $3.8 million will be created to settle the lawsuit. The fund will
be used to pay the fees and expenses of plaintiffs' counsel and claims of
qualifying shareholders.
A substantial portion of the amount paid in settlement will be paid by
Apple's insurance company.
Apple continues to deny all material allegations in the complaints, but
agreed to the settlements to avoid the expense and risk of further legal
proceedings, and to put to rest the claims asserted in the actions. Final
settlement of the actions is subject to execution of formal settlement agreements,
approval by the federal district court and certain other conditions. If
the court preliminarily approves the settlements, members of the classes
will be sent written notifications of the terms of the proposed settlements,
and hearings will be held for the court to consider final approval of the
proposed settlements. Apple expects that the court will consider preliminary
approval of the settlements during January or February of 1992.
Apple, the Apple logo and Lisa are registered trademarks of Apple Computer,
Inc.
A tip for The Road Apple subscribers
by Wade Spafford
If you don't already know about her, put this name in your database of
sources:
Beverly Cadieux
Kingwood Micro Software
2018 Oak Dew
San Antonio, TX 78232
(512) 490-6375
She develops and sells a whole barrel enhancements for AppleWorks, but
if you don't already have it, get Ultimate Macros V5.2 for $19.95 first.
You need AppleWorks 3.0 and Ultramacros 3.1 to use it, but if you don't
have that you're probably not reading The Road Apple anyway.
I have no idea how much time she put into developing this disk, but it's
so packed there's only 11K of space left on a 3.5" disk. It's also
available on 5-1/4 disks, so tell her which size disk you need.
I'm not new to AppleWorks or UltraMacros, but she has some ideas on the
disk that will make you sit there and say "How the h---, did she do
that?" You may have to look hard to see it, but it's all there, she
doesn't have anything hidden. It's just that her ideas are so innovative
that you have to think it out. Once you see the concepts, she opens up whole
new ways of doing things that you thought you already knew how to do!
The material on this disk contains a profusion of useful information
in all modules of AppleWorks for everyone from beginners to pros. A little
time with this disk and you'll see why Sculley is so terrified of the Apple
II.
Oh yes, one more 'endorsement'; after you buy Ultimate Macros, her upgrade
policy is all of $2.00 + $3.50 S&H. The Post Office charges more than
Beverly does! You handle that tid-bit any way you choose.
Magic File Cabinet, Review
by Wade Spafford
Some of you may have read articles by Gary Hayman reviewing software
in another publication. Now here is a review on a task file that he has
written and that is available directly from him. It is aptly named Magic
File Cabinet. Its purpose is to expand any data base (new or existing) into
a journal, notebook or File Cabinet that is automatically tied to each record
in your data base. Its limits: The lessor of either AppleWorks 16,000 AWP
lines (about 300 pages) or by the amount of memory in your machine.
If you have ever wished that you could put more information into your
data base than AppleWorks 3.0 allows, then Magic File Cabinet is definitely
for you. You can have unlimited reference material immediately available
to your data base --- within AppleWorks. Reams of written information are
accessible by a simple press of a macro key.
You are no longer limited by 30 categories or 79 character category inputs
in a data base record. You can have free flowing notes, comments, letters,
etc. At your beck and call --- in an instant. Teachers might use Magic File
Cabinet for noting comments and information relative to students in their
roster data bases. They might even use it for depositing information for
tests, lesson plans, and schedules. Business people could use it as a phone
log, client information file, activity journal, inventory notes, order information,
travel compendium, etc. At home you could use it as a catch all note file,
house inventory, appliance history journal, directions journal, mailing
helper, etc. The uses are endless.
Magic File Cabinet works in conjunction with UltraMacros 3.1 --- which
you must have installed. The 3.5 or 5.25 disk includes necessary task files,
directions, tutorial, and many sample files that you can use directly or
that will give you ideas as how to create your own files from your existing
or new data bases.
It is also recommended that you use the latest version of ProDOS 8 (v1.9)
and particularly the latest version of BASIC.SYSTEM (v1.4.1). Your current
version can be checked by launching BASIC.SYSTEM and reading the version
number that appears on the screen. Likewise the ProDOS version number will
appear when it is launched. If you need updates, they can be obtained from
your Apple dealer or they can be found in a local user group library.
You must have AppleWorks v3.0 patched with Patcher v1.61 which is on
the disk. If you are not sure of the Patcher version you have, then go to
the Main Menu of AppleWorks and press a <?> then hold the down arrow
key down till you get to the bottom of the help menu. It should read "AppleWorks
3.0 Bug Fixes (v1.6)"
When you have installed the two task files in your AppleWorks directory
or disk you will find that the commands are quite intuitive the two main
ones being <sa-f> (find reference data) and <sa-g> (Go back
to the data base). Beyond that, there are a half-dozen other very helpful
<ba> commands that you don't even need to remember. Gary has built
in a help screen that you can refer to at any point. There are two commands
that I found of particular interest; a <ba-d> will delete related
information from 2 files simultaneously and allow you the option of skipping
any part of the delete if you want to save either 'half' of it. The other
is the <ba-s> that saves the two related files automatically. He also
uses the standard <ba-l> command to relaunch your default macros when
you need them.
Think of this Task File as using the data base as its Home Base or "Control
Center," and running errands and performing its AWP functions from
there. While you are in either the data base or word processor file all
of the normal AppleWorks functions are available, but Magic File Cabinet
neatly ties the two files together so that you have advantages unknown by
either of the files separately.
The tutorial is so well written that if you know AppleWorks you don't
even need to press the keys to understand it. Other than the additional
menus built into the task file you will be able to visualize the screens
as you read the docs. It is highly recommended that you go through the key
strokes as Gary recommends though, because you will get a better grasp of
things you can do with your own files when you get back to your own 'real
world.' Besides, if you don't go through the tutorial you will miss some
humorous messages that might bring a smile to your day.
As a bonus, you will even find a couple of unusual recipes as you go
through the tutorial. (Gary is also a proficient cook and occasionally hosts
a TV cooking show.) When you're done with the tutorial, you can view some
of the other files that you will find on the disk for more ideas and uses
for Magic File Cabinet.
Be careful when moving info from a different AWP file to your AWP reference
file. Some of the commands can mess up the reference file. He recommends
0 (zeros) as the settings for the reference file, (LM, RM, IN, etc.) And
UJ as the default settings. I mention this because it's his caveat. As usual
when testing, I pushed Magic File Cabinet past what it was supposed to do
and all I found was excellent error trapping to keep us out of trouble.
A small improvement would be to inverse the prompt line to help visually
separate it from the normal text in the WP file. It seems to blend too easily
between the text in the WP file and the normal AppleWorks prompt line at
the bottom of the screen. Since it only serves as a prompt for the two main
commands, it could probably be eliminated. All we really have to remember
is <sa-h> for the help screen. That will tell us everything we could
possibly want to know but were afraid to ask.
One singular irritation (for me) is the 'bell' that insists on beeping
it's irritating beep 3 times to 'inform you' that Magic File Cabinet has
arrived or that you have made a move that it thinks you need to be told
about. The only way you can disable it is to use Companion Plus or some
other program that lets you change the volume and sound of the bell or shut
it off completely for all programs.
If you have ever wanted to be able to freely enter notes and information
in any AppleWorks data base that you have worked with. Buy it. If you ever
wanted to connect relevant information that was pertinent to a record in
a data base, but lacked the category or the room, this will solve your problem.
Buy it. He even offers tech support to registered users. He doesn't hide
behind a 900 number, but if you leave name and number on the machine he
will have to return your call 'collect' due to the numbers in the next paragraph.
The cost is "outrageous!" Gary is asking all of $15 + $2 S&H!
And he insists on full payment with order. Please specify either 3.5 or
5.25 Disk size.
Satisfaction is guaranteed. For more information or to order:
Magical Software
c/o Gary Hayman
8255 Canning Terrace
Greenbelt, MD 20770
301) 435-3230
On the shelves, Not!
By Dennis McClain-Furmanski
I seem to be having a problem with my hard drive. It keeps getting full.
This shouldn't happen to a computer that's left out in the cold, should
it?
The software authors don't really seem to notice much what Apple Computers,
Inc. has been doing. Every month they crank out more and better software
than any before. Such as HyperC.
There hasn't been a compiler for the C language available for Apple IIs
for some time. Now there is, and it's worth a look. HyperC is the product
of Andy Warner and Gary Desrocher. Admittedly this is for the more hard
core computerist, but its mere existence is almost phenomenal. In the few
months since I first saw this, they've released a new version that works
on 16 bit machines, a program to create regular stand-alone SYS programs
from the compiled code, and released bug fixes at least once a week. Most
Apple users may never see this package, but very few can claim recent knowledge
of software authors working as hard for any price software package. Price:
$0.00.
Mandelbrot 8 / Mandelbrot GS / Mandelbrot 640.
Another constantly producing author is Lim Thye Chean of Singapore. In
the last month, he has released no less than 5 versions of graphics programs
for creating Mandelbrot pictures --- those multi-colored abstractions based
on chaos theory. First came Mandelbrot GS, a full color 320 mode graphics
program, then a couple of upgrades of it. Next came the redesigned Mandelbrot
GS II. On its heels was Mandelbrot 640, using fewer colors but higher resolution.
Immediately after that was a package of 4 different methods of doing the
same things on 8 bit Apples. And this was just February's output. Not very
useful, but interesting and very pretty.
Price: $0.00.
MODifier.
Something to follow up my recent musical article with is in order. Ian
Schmidt, author of AudioZap, the multi-talented sound utility for the GS
has produced this useful goodie. Some of the fine French programmers we've
seen such good things from finally produced a music program called NoiseTracker.
This is a program very much like SoundSmith, but without some of its limitations
--- such as a maximum of 64K of sampled sounds. NoiseTracker is copied after,
and plays song files from, a similarly named program for the Amiga. These
song files are traditionally called MOD files, for an obscure and uninteresting
reason. Ian's program converts these MOD files into normal SoundSmith files
--- songs and instruments alike. It won't do all of them exactly right,
but I've used it many times with results good enough to make a demo tape
for a radio station from. Price: $0.00.
NoiseTracker.
Of course you needn't convert these things to SoundSmith format if you
have a program that plays them directly. NoiseTracker, by Olivier Goguel
of the Free Tools Association does just this. Very much like SoundSmith
in operation, and much slicker in presentation. An excellent work, though
rumored to be one of, if not the last effort by the French forces in the
Apple Army. Price: $0.00
LHext.
A problem with a lot of the files for NoiseTracker, as they come from
the Amiga people, is the packing method. Their common equivalent to our
ShrinkIt it called LHArc. Originally for MS-DOS machines, this program has
been moved to other machines due to the "portability" of the language
C. The original program by Yoshizaki (Yoshi) Haruyasu has been translated
now to Apple IIGS use. This version, constructed by Ushiroda Atsushi, only
extracts from archived files with the .LZH or .LHA suffix - no packing is
available. Still, this opens up new avenues that Apple users were previously
locked out of. Price $0.00
Sneeze 2.0.
Originally, Window or Windows by Andy Anderson, and used by A2 Central
On Disk, this program was rewritten and expanded by Karl Bunker. Since the
original name seemed to be in use elsewhere, it became Applesoft Text-based
User Interface, A.T.U.I. A dash of onomatopoeia on the acronym, and we get
Sneeze. This program is a disk navigator, program launcher, text and AWP
displayer/printer, graphics displayer and general file utility. In short,
you can't find many more things you'd normally want to do with a disk drive
controlling program. I have it on my Vulcan 100 in the main directory for
when I want to launch it in ProDOS 8 rather than to the GS Finder. Among
Karl's many accomplishments, this rates as one of the best. Price: $0.00
All of these are available on America Online, as well as elsewhere probably.
As always, The Road Apple readers can contact me to make arrangements for
a disk-swap through the mail should they be unable to telecommute to where
these programs are.
To paraphrase Samuel Clemens, the reports of my computer's death seem
to have been greatly exaggerated.
Apple II history
Compiled and written by Steven Weyhrich
(C) Copyright 1991, Zonker Software
(Part 2 -- The Apple I)
[v1.0 :: 18 Sep 91]
Reprinted with permission
The Apple I: Development
At the Homebrew Computer club in Palo Alto, California (in Silicon Valley),
Steve Wozniak, a 26 year old employee of Hewlett-Packard and a long-time
digital electronics hacker, had been wanting to build a computer of his
own for a long time. For years he had designed many on paper, and even written
FORTRAN compilers and BASIC interpreters for these theoretical machines,
but a lack of money kept him from carrying out his desire. He looked at
the Intel 8080 chip (the heart of the Altair), but at $179 decided he couldn't
afford it. A decision to NOT use the 8080 was considered foolhardy by other
members of the club. Consider this description of the microcomputer "world"
as it was in the summer of 1975:
"That summer at the Homebrew Club the Intel 8080 formed the center
of the universe. The Altair was built around the 8080 and its early popularity
spawned a cottage industry of small companies that either made machines
that would run programs written for the Altair or made attachments that
would plug into the computer. The private peculiarities of microprocessors
meant that a program or device designed for one would not work on another.
The junction of these peripheral devices for the Altair was known as the
S-100 bus because it used one hundred signal lines. Disciples of the 8080
formed religious attachments to the 8080 and S-100 even though they readily
admitted that the latter was poorly designed. The people who wrote programs
or built peripherals for 8080 computers thought that later, competing
microprocessors were doomed. The sheer weight of the programs and the choice
of peripherals, so the argument went, would make it more useful to more
users and more profitable for more companies. The 8080, they liked to say,
had critical mass which was sufficient to consign anything else to oblivion."<1>
Another chip, the Motorola 6800, interested Wozniak because it resembled
his favorite minicomputers (such as the Data General Nova) more than the
8080. However, cost was still a problem for him until he and his friend
Allen Baum discovered a chip that was almost identical to the 6800, while
considerably cheaper. MOS Technology sold their 6502 chip for $25, as opposed
to the $175 Motorola 6800. Wozniak decided to change his choice of processor
to the 6502 and began writing a version of BASIC that would run on it. A
friend over at Hewlett-Packard programmed a computer to simulate the function
of the 6502, and Wozniak used it to test some of his early routines. When
his BASIC interpreter was finished, he turned his attention to designing
the computer he could run it on. Except for some small timing differences,
he was able to use the hardware design he had earlier done on paper for
the 6800.<2>
To make the computer easier to use, Wozniak favored a keyboard over the
front panel switches that came on the Altair. He also made it simple to
use a television for a video terminal. (Recall that at this time the most
common mechanism used for input/output was a teletype, which consisted of
a keyboard, typewriter, and if you were lucky, a paper tape reader/puncher).
Functionally, it was a television terminal attached to a computer, all on
one printed circuit board (another enhancement over the Altair). Wozniak
used two 256 x 4 PROM (programmable read-only memory) chips to create a
256 byte program (called a "monitor") that looked at the keyboard
when the computer was turned on. This monitor program could not do much
more than allow entry of hex bytes, examine a range of memory, and run a
program at a specific address.<3> (The Altair needed these "bootstrapping"
instructions to be entered by hand each time the computer was turned on).
Because there were no cheap RAMs available, Woz used shift registers
to send text to the TV screen. Consequently, his video terminal was somewhat
slow, displaying characters at about 60 characters per second, one character
per scan of the TV screen. (This speed would be similar to watching a computer
communicate via a modem at 1200 baud). It was slow by 1991 standards, but
an advancement over the teletypes that could only type 10 characters per
second. The computer had 8K of dynamic RAM. You could load BASIC into 4K
of memory and have 4K left over for your own programs. It had a video connector,
but you had to connect a monitor on your own. You also had to buy the keyboard
separately and wire it into a 16-pin DIP connector. The power supply had
to be connected to two transformers to get 5 volts and 12 volts for the
motherboard. There was no speaker, no graphics, and no color. There was
a single peripheral slot, and when it was first released there was nothing
available to plug into this slot. It was entirely contained on a single
printed circuit board, about six by eight inches in size (most hobby computers
of that time needed at least two boards), used only 30 or 40 chips, and
because it could run BASIC programs it got people's attention.<4>
The Apple I: Marketing
Let's adjust our time circuits for 1976, and jump forward in time. By
now, Steve Wozniak had completed his 6502-based computer and would display
enhancements or modifications at the bi-weekly Homebrew Computer Club meetings.
Steve Jobs was a 21 year old friend of Wozniak's and also a visitor at the
Homebrew club. He had worked with Wozniak in the past (they designed together
the arcade game "Breakout" for Atari) and was very interested
in his computer. During the design process Jobs made suggestions that helped
shape the final product, such as the use of the newer dynamic RAMs instead
of older, more expensive static RAMs. He suggested to Wozniak that they
get some printed circuit boards made for the computer and sell it at the
club for people to assemble themselves. They pooled their financial resources
together to have PC boards made, and on April 1st, 1976 they officially
formed the Apple Computer Company. Jobs had recently worked at an organic
apple orchard, and liked the name because "he thought of the apple
as the perfect fruit--it has a high nutritional content, it comes in a nice
package, it doesn't damage easily--and he wanted Apple to be the perfect
company. Besides, they couldn't come up with a better name."<5>
Jobs approached the owner of a new computer store in the bay area called
"The Byte Shop." This businessman, Paul Terrell, expressed an
interest in the Apple Computer (to be known later as the "Apple I"),
but wanted only fully assembled computers to sell. If they could provide
this, Terrell told them he would order fifty Apples, and pay cash on delivery.
Suddenly, the cost of making (and selling) this computer was considerably
more than they expected. Jobs and Wozniak managed to get the parts on "net
30 days" (30 days credit without interest), and set themselves up in
Job's garage for assembly and testing of the Apple I. After marathon sessions
of stuffing and soldering PC boards, Jobs delivered the computers to the
Byte Shop. Although these "fully assembled" computers lacked a
power supply, keyboard, or monitor, Terrell bought them as promised. In
July of 1976 the Apple I was released and sold for $666.66, which was about
twice the cost of the parts plus a 33% dealer markup.<6> Two hundred
Apple I computers were manufactured, and all except twenty-five of them
sold over a period of ten months.<7>
Although the Apple I was easier to begin using than the Altair (thanks
to its built-in ROM code), it was still a time consuming process to set
it up to do something useful. Steve Wozniak would have to type in about
3K of hexadecimal bytes before BASIC was ready to use. He could do it in
about 20 to 30 minutes, but he almost knew the code by heart. The typical
user was more limited in ability to use BASIC on the Apple I. To broaden
the appeal of the Apple I (and at the insistence of Paul Terrell), Wozniak
designed a cassette interface. It was mounted on a small two-inch-high printed
circuit board and plugged into the single slot on the motherboard. The card
sold for $75 and a cassette tape of Woz's BASIC was included with it. The
advertisement Apple included with the card stated, "Our philosophy
is to provide software for our machines free or at minimal cost."
The interface worked, but worked well only with cassettes running on expensive
tape recorders. To further try to enhance sales, the Byte Shop stores found
a local cabinetmaker that made some koa-wood cases for the Apple computer
(so it would no longer be just a "naked" circuit board).<8>
Interestingly, although most of the action in the micro world was going
on in Silicon Valley, news of the Apple I made its way east. Stan Veit,
owner of the east coast's first computer store, bought an Apple I and took
it to a meeting of the Association of Computer Machinery. Those attending
were quite skeptical that a REAL computer could fit into a small briefcase;
they were sure that the machine was just a portable terminal, attached by
a hidden phone line to a mainframe somewhere!<9>
NOTES
<1> Michael Moritz, The Little Kingdom, p. 123.
<2> Moritz, pp. 124-127.
<3> Williams & Moore, p. A69.
<4> Gregg Williams and Rob Moore, "The Apple Story, Part 1: Early
History", BYTE, December 1984, pp. A68-A69.
<5> Frank Rose, West of Eden: The End of Innocence at Apple Computer,
p. 33.
<6> Moritz, pp. 138-144.
<7> Williams & Moore, pp. A69.
<8> Moritz, pp. 147-149.
<9> Chien, Philip, "Apple's First Decade: A Look Back",
The Apple II Review, Fall/Winter 1986, p. 12.
Hint for multiple-font users of Publish It!
Barry M. Austern
One drawback that we "power users" of Publish It! are all too
familiar with is its limitations of only twenty-four fonts loaded for any
given document. When you load a file previously created and do not have
the appropriate fonts loaded you get the dreaded "font substitution
may be needed..." message. Unfortunately, the program will not tell
you just which fonts were in the document when the document was created.
Trial and error, unloading and loading fonts, and reloading the document
over and over will probably eventually get just the right fonts into the
document, but such slow procedures are hardly what we want our computers
for. Here is a simple way that I have discovered.
Although the new Publish It! 4 will allow one to make non-printed portions
of the document, all versions of the program have another way of doing it.
When in the "size to fit" mode, there is the entire right side
of the screen that, although never printed, is part of the document that
is saved. Open up a text box in that portion of the document and in it place
a list of all the fonts used in that document. However, that portion of
the document only appears in the "size to fit" mode; in the other
three modes, one cannot see it. Therefore, make sure you do use a large
typeface to enter the font table there so that you can see it on the screen.
This requires a 72-point font always loaded, but that is a small sacrifice
compared to the alternative of trial and error.
By the way, although the right side of the document is not printed, it
will show in the <oa-k> page preview mode. Therefore, if one wishes,
he can use a smaller typeface in that right-side box, but I personally find
that awkward compared to using a larger type face at the outset.
From the Echo
by Al Martin
Area APPLE: (Information about the Apple II series of Computers)
From: Wayne Sheffield
Subject: APPLEWORKS (ASCII) FILES
In a message originally to All, David Slowbe said:
I HAVE SEVERAL APPLEWORKS FILES ON THE WORDPROCESSOR THAT I WOULD LIKE
TO MOVE OVER TO MY IBM AT WORK. IS THERE A SIMPLE WAY TO DO THIS? CAN
I MAKE THEM INTO AN ASCII FILE ON MY IIGS AND THEN USE THE SAME DISK IN
AN IBM DRIVE?
Using the (ascii) option does not recognize formatting of the document
ie centering, right justification, etc. If you want it to look "right",
try this. Set up a custom printer going to a ram disk (oh yeah - set up
a ram disk first). Then, print the file to the ram disk printer. You will
be prompted for a filename. Now, when you exit AppleWorks, load up the text
file, set margins to 0 (if necessary), and viola --- text file that looks
right.
I used this method to create a file to transfer to the *** thing at work
for printing out my resumes on their laser printer. Worked fantastically
fabulously!
=====
Vol 5, #3
Apology
by Al Martin
I apologize for the late date of this issue of The Road Apple. I suffered
a personal loss in mid-May and the issue had to be put on the shelf until
the matter was settled. You may have read about the largest marina fire
in Portland's history occurring on May 17th. My 27' Chris-Craft wood boat,
2 dingys and all the personal possessions thereon were totally destroyed.
My boat was one of 18 lost.
Though covered by insurance, coverage is not complete with respect to
personal items and replacement of the lost boat with the insurance money
will be difficult given the inflated prices. It's been a hectic few weeks.
Win some, lose some
by Dennis McClain-Furmanski
America Online, the premier commercial computer network for Apple users
and others, has been repeatedly awarded the title of the Best Network by
various groups. In a few short years, Quantum Computer Services, (recently
changed to America Online, Inc.) has taken a small network started by Apple,
and expanded it into a national electronic treasure.
There are well over 10,000 files available for download, many message
areas covering diverse topics of interest, and frequent and enjoyable conferences
where online members can converse or 'hear' a special guest 'speak'.
Until this past month, when college coursework and internship absorbed
all my available time, I was a host on AOL, for the National Space Society.
I was glad to be part of a team that worked hard to better their service
for the sake of the customers. Below is just a very recent example of their
push to improve.
Expanded Mail Service info file, captured from America Online: About the
expanded mail service
With America Online's expanded mail service, you can send mail to, and
receive mail from, people on other online services. Just a few of the places
where you can transfer mail are: Compuserve, Applelink, AT&T Mail, and
MCI Mail. You can use the expanded mail service as much as you want, at
no additional charge!
The expanded mail system transfers mail using a computer network named
Internet. Internet connects thousands of businesses, universities, and online
services, all over the world. Internet began in 1969 as a Defense Department
computer network. Over the years it has grown to include research institutions
and businesses. Through Internet millions of people, from all over the world,
exchange information on a wide range of subjects.
With America Online's expanded mail service, you can send mail to, and
receive mail from, anyone who has an Internet address.
More specific directions are available from AOL.
But I'm afraid all is not peachy with AOL. For many months, if not years,
Apple users have complained about the state of the software. Although I
found it to be fairly bug free, being a daily user in my duties there I
did run onto a few problems. Usually, I would report these to the Customer
Service section. Almost invariably I would receive a reply which told me
my computer, my system software, my additional software, or my AOL software
was at fault. Not only I, but most Apple users would receive identical messages.
Fortunately, I was on every day, knew all my software intimately, and
could figure out where the problem lie.
After months of helpless help messages, I finally sent a message directly
to Steve Case, AOL president. When the smoke cleared, I was assigned a specific
programmer on the Apple/AOL team to work with to report my problems to.
And there were several. And they got fixed. Most notably, the AOL software
for the IBM crowd had a problem where it would do something to uploads which
would make them unable to be downloaded on an Apple. AOL came out with PCAO
version 1.3 as a result.
But many other complaints and requests from Apple users went unanswered.
Specifically, IIGS users wanted a 16 bit version. Also, all Apple users
wanted some additional features available to other machines, such as automated
downloading.
It finally all came to a head last month; complaints reached a point
to where Steve case was compelled to reply.
Although I've seen his message, I'm not quoting it directly here. The
gist of it came to "We're not going to put any development money into
software used by 5% of our users."
I own a car with an engine that hasn't been built since 1983. The manufacturer
has built many different models since, and even the newer version of the
same model had different engines. But I can still buy the parts I need to
repair it, even though the number of cars built since has pushed my model
way below the 5% mark.
Why can't Apple users, even if they comprise only 5% of the market, get
5% of the satisfaction of having improved services?
It's just not cost effective.
Apple users are quite used to hearing similar arguments. As much as we'd
like to see things like loyalty from hardware, software and service suppliers,
we're not going to. The vast majority of them are only in it for the money.
Loyalty is an old fashioned concept. It is for saps and losers. It is
bad for the bottom line. Maudlin emotionalism leads to rapid replacement
by the board of directors.
Can you imagine a company which operated on loyalty? The company refusing
to turn their backs on customers they've had for years -- the ones that
helped build the company into what it is? Can't you just see the radical
differences inside the company when the workers are told that loyalty is
the motivation factor that will make them a success? Workers working extra
hours just to satisfy customers? Gathering together to share ideas about
how to better serve all the customers? Take it to the illogical extreme:
workers so imbued with a sense of loyalty that they have a company song,
and company get togethers before work to sing it?
Isn't that a ridiculous way for a company to behave?
"Hai!" cry the Japanese businessmen, and they laugh their way
to deposit their dollars in Japanese owned American banks, dollars earned
by selling Japanese products to Americans.
By the way, my car is a Toyota.
So forget the loyalty. It'll never fly, Orville.
Using a IIGS to connect with America OnLine
by Barry M. Austern
There are certain changes that have to be made to the IIGS control panel
in order to use America OnLine. I found out the hard way that it will not
work using the default settings for the IIGS modem port. It simply would
not connect. Period. Luckily, my usual modem program, ProTERM, is tolerant
of these changes, so I never did have to change back. (I have a New Desk
Accessory called "Lithium Grease" that allows you to save various
control panel settings, which would help here. I did save an image of my
settings before changing them just in case ProTERM didn't like the AOL settings.)
There is one setting change, however, that the brochure that comes with
the AOL software tells you not to make. Do not change the baud rate of the
modem port from the default 1200 baud. This is WRONG. Do not believe it.
With my modem port set at 1200 baud I could only connect to AOL at 1200
baud. My 2400 baud modem was useless. This is no real problem for communicating
and reading messages, but it does play havoc with file downloads when you
are paying by the hour.
When I first discovered that I was not at 2400 baud on AOL, based on
the fact that my downloads told me how long they would take at 1200 baud
and the fact that the "HS" (for high speed) light was not on my
Supra modem, I tried several things. I tried different modem drivers supplied
with the software. I double checked my software settings to make sure that
it was set properly. I even switched to another phone number. (Cincinnati
has two numbers to connect with AOL, a "Telenet" number and a
"Tymnet" number.) None of these changes worked. However, once
I disobeyed the rules and switched to a different control panel setting
I did connect at 2400 baud, no matter which phone number I used and no
matter which halfway-reasonable modem driver I used.
I have reported all my results to AOL, and they as of now do not believe
me, but at least in my case (ROM01 IIGS and Supra 2400 modem) I can get
on at 2400.
From the Apple Echo
Submitted by Joe Siegler
Broderbund Releases Educational Games For Apple II 05/28/92
NOVATO, CALIFORNIA, U.S.A., 1992 MAY 28 (NB) -- Broderbund recognizes
that there are a substantial amount of Apple II computers in the hands of
people who have young children. That was the reason given for the recent
unveiling of Apple II versions of Broderbund's "The Treehouse"
and "Where in America's Past is Carmen Sandiego?"
The Treehouse is a follow-on program to the company's award- winning
program - The Playroom. As in the Playroom, the idea behind this game is
to encourage youngsters to explore and learn on their own - through play.
The Treehouse is aimed at six to ten year old children.
The children are introduced to a pair of Opossum playmates (known as
Awesome "Possums" who act as the children's playmates. The Opossums
guide the children through the program and its associated games. The main
area contains a chalkboard for drawing and a calendar that reveals historical
events. There are four major game areas and countless other little things
to do and see. The Apple II version of the Treehouse is available now for
$49.95.
The other program that Broderbund released for the Apple II is "Where
in America's Past is Carmen Sandiego?" This is the fifth program in
the series which has won lots of accolades and even has a TV series modeled
after it.
"America's Past" comes complete with a 1,300 page encyclopedia
that covers the important dates and events that the program is concerned
with as well as lots of other material that talks about American history.
As in the other games in the series, the player needs to travel and learn
about the subject area in order to discover clues that lead him or her towards
solving the mysteries. In this program there are 45 possible destinations
and nine different time- periods to choose from. The program is available
now for the Apple II for $49.95.
(Press Contact: Kathleen Burke,
Broderbund Software, 415-382-4567)
From the Apple Echo
APPLIED ENGINEERING
by Tom Geer
It seems that Applied Engineering has been getting a lot of bad publicity
lately. While some of it may be well deserved (their 1-900 support line
comes to mind), surely we are not so blind that we can't remember how good
AE has been to us Apple users in the past. It is my guess that those who
are complaining the loudest have not been computing for very long. Let's
look at some of the wonderful products that AE has brought to us Apple users:
Z-80 Plus and Z-80c CP/M cards
12 bit & 8 bit A/D converters
Digital input/output boards
Line signal conditioner
ViewMaster 80 column card
TimeMaster H.O. clock card
Z-Ram and Z-Ram Ultra
RamWorks memory card and its derivatives.
Apple //c system clock
BSR interface
TransWarp and TransWarp GS
Sonic Blaster audio digitizer/stereo card
PC Transporter
Super Music Synthesizer
Extended 80 column card
3.5" and 5.25" disk drives
RamFactor memory card
GSRam and GSRam Ultra memory cards
DataLink modem
Buffer Pro, Parallel Pro and Serial Pro..
TransDrive for PC Transporter
RamKeeper battery back-up
Audio Animator
Phasor sound card
Enhanced IBM style keyboard
Heavy duty power supply
5.25" disk drive controller
Pocket Rocket RAM card
ColorLink & Digital Prism RGB cards
Ram Express //c memory card
This list is by no means complete - that's all I could think of at the
moment. Now what other company has given us this much expandability and
power for our Apple computers? Bear in mind also that AE developed most
of the above peripherals themselves which translates into big R&D $$$.
This accounts for their slightly higher prices as compared to other companies
who simply cloned AE's proven technology. As for their quality and support
being poor - HOGWASH! AE's product quality has always been unsurpassed
in the industry. I have personally owned many of the above products and
can testify to their quality and durability. How do you think that they
got to be the number 1 producer of Apple peripherals? It wasn't by making
low quality products. They even provided a 5 year warranty on many of their
offerings. While it is true that their customer support has waned as of
late, this was not always the case. In the past their support has gone far
above the call of duty. Lastly, let's not forget that while most other companies
were busy developing products for IBMs, Ataris, Commodores, etc., AE dedicated
themselves totally to the Apple line of computers. With their innovativeness
they could have made a KILLING developing products for these other platforms
but chose not to do so. This type of loyalty should be applauded, not criticized.
Apple II history
Compiled and written by Steven Weyhrich
(C) Copyright 1991, Zonker Software
(PART 3 -- THE APPLE II)
The Apple II: Hardware and firmware
Moving our time machine on to 1977, we can now look at Steve Wozniak's
next generation Apple. Even as the Apple I was completed and was slowly
selling, Wozniak was already working on making enhancements that would make
his computer faster and more functional. He wanted to make it display in
color. He worked to combine the terminal and memory functions of the Apple
I by moving the display into main memory, allowing instant screen changes.
Many of his changes were not added with the end user specifically in mind.
Wozniak stated:
"A lot of features of the Apple II went in because I had designed
Breakout for Atari. I had designed it in hardware. I wanted to write it
in software now. So that was the reason that color was added in first--so
that games could be programmed. I sat down one night and tried to put it
into BASIC. Fortunately I had written the BASIC myself, so I just burned
some new ROMs with line drawing commands, color changing commands, and various
BASIC commands that would plot in color. I got this ball bouncing around,
and I said, 'Well it needs sound,' and I had to add a speaker to the Apple
II. It wasn't planned, it was just accidental... Obviously you need paddles,
so I had to scratch my head and design a simple minimum-chip paddle circuit,
and put on some paddles. So a lot of these features that really made the
Apple II stand out in its day came from a game, and the fun features
that were built in were only to do one pet project, which was to program
a BASIC version of Breakout and show it off at the club."<1>
Wozniak added other features that he felt were important for a computer
that was useful, one that he would want to own. Since the 6502 processor
could address a total of 64K of memory, he designed the computer with the
ability to use either 4K RAM chips, or the newer (and more expensive) 16K
RAM chips. The first Apple II's came standard with 4K of memory, and more
could be added, to a maximum of 12K (if using the 4K chips) or 48K (if using
the 16K chips). Specially wired strapping blocks attached to the motherboard
told the Apple II how much memory was present and where it was. According
to the 1981 edition of the Apple II Reference Manual, the Apple could have
memory in the following sizes: 4K, 8K, 12K, 16K, 20K, 24K, 32K, 36K, or
a full 48K. (These sizes were determined by the different ways that three
RAM chips, either 4K or 16K, could be installed). The strapping blocks were
even designed with the flexibility of allowing blank spots in memory if
there were no RAM chips available to fill those spots.
The first 4K of memory always had to have RAM present, since it was used
by the 6502 processor, the ROM routines, and the text screen display. If,
for example, you only had two other 4K RAM chips to install and you wanted
to display hi-res graphics, you could strap one chip to the lower half of
hi-res memory from $2000-$2FFF, and the other to the upper half of hi-res
memory from $3000-$3FFF.<2> Since 16K RAM chips cost about $500 when
Wozniak designed the Apple II, not many users could afford them. Whereas
the Commodore PET and the Radio Shack TRS-80 could not easily be expanded
beyond the 4K they came with, the Apple II from the beginning was designed
with expansion in mind.<3>
The row of eight expansion slots was another feature about the Apple
II that was a strong selling point. Unlike the TRS-80 or PET, you could
easily expand the Apple II by simply plugging a card into one of these slots.
This degree of expandability made it more expensive to build, however. Steve
Jobs didn't believe that anyone would ever need more than two slots, one
for a printer and one possibly for a modem. Wozniak knew from his experience
with computers at Hewlett-Packard that computer users would always find
SOMETHING to fill those extra slots, and insisted that they keep the number
at eight.<4>
One problem Apple had to deal with was getting FCC approval for the computer.
The RF (radio frequency) modulator that had been designed gave off too much
interference, and it was probable that the FCC would not approve it. (The
RF modulator allowed a user to attach the Apple to a standard television
receiver, instead of requiring the purchase of an expensive computer monitor).
Rather than have the release of the Apple II delayed for re-engineering
of the RF modulator to get that FCC approval, Apple gave the specifications
for the RF modulator to Marty Spergel. He ran a small company (called M&R
Electronics) that specialized in obtaining hard-to-get parts that electronics
and computer hackers wanted for their projects. Their agreement allowed
M&R to make and sell the RF modulators, while Apple could concentrate
on making and selling the Apple II. Dealers would sell an Apple II with
a "Sup'r Mod" (costing about $30) if the buyer wanted to see the
graphics on their color TV. Jobs assured Spergel that the item would sell
well, maybe as many as fifty units a month. (Years later Spergel estimated
that he had sold about four hundred thousand Sup'r Mods).<5>
Other features that Wozniak (and Allen Baum, who helped him with the
project) included in the Apple II ROMs included the terminal software to
do screen text display, expanded Monitor functionality, and cassette input/output
routines. They added the ability to split the screen into different sized
windows. They also wrote a disassembler, which was one of the most important
features of the Apple II from the beginning and a significant part of its
open design. It allowed ANYONE to view the 6502 code that ANY program used,
and matched the philosophy of the Homebrew Club of making all computer knowledge
available to everybody. In the Apple I days, when Apple was supplying software
"free or at minimal charge", Wozniak and Baum published an early
version of their 6502 disassembler in a hacker's magazine. It was designed
to be loaded in memory on the Apple I from $800 to $9D8 and the routine
could be executed from the monitor. This early code was quit similar to
the disassembler that was later included in the Apple II ROM.<6>
Having an expanded Monitor program in ROM and color graphics were not
the only features in the Apple II that attracted people to it. Having Wozniak's
BASIC language in ROM, available immediately when the power was turned on,
made it possible for non-hackers to write programs that used the Apple II's
color graphics.
An interesting bit of trivia about Wozniak's Integer BASIC was that he
never had an assembly language source file for it. He wrote it in machine
language, assembling it by hand on paper:
"I wrote this BASIC processor, and I wrote a little ALGOL simulator
and got it simulated. It looked like it would work, but I had forgotten
to build the machine. I had no assembler, that was another thing. To use
an assembler, they figured that somebody was going to buy this processor
[the 6502] to use for a company, and their company can pay a few thousand
dollars in time-sharing charges to use an assembler that was available in
time-share. I didn't have any money like that, so a friend taught me that
you just sort of look at each instruction, you write your instructions on
the right side of the page, you write the addresses over on the left side,
and you then look up the hex data for each instruction--you could assemble
it yourself. So I would just sit there and assemble it myself. The [Integer]
BASIC, which we shipped with the first Apple II's, was never assembled--ever.
There was one handwritten copy, all handwritten, all hand-assembled. So
we were in an era that we could not afford tools."<7>
Even to this day there is not an official source code listing of Integer
BASIC at Apple. And interestingly, the only error I am aware of in the Integer
interpreter is one involving a single byte. If a line is entered that has
too many parentheses, the "TOO LONG" error message is displayed
instead of the "TOO MANY PARENS" message.<8>
Now a word from our sponsor: Back to the basics...
I want to take a short break in this discussion of the Apple II firmware
to look at some other items that will make further descriptions easier to
understand. If you are a programmer already, you may want to skip this section,
since you probably already know this stuff. First we will examine some definitions
of terms that are commonly known to programmers, but possibly not to you.
Next will be a brief excursion into the realm of hexadecimal, and finally
a look at the memory map of the original Apple II.
First, let's look at definitions of some words that I have been loosely
throwing around:
BIT: The smallest piece of information that a computer can deal with,
it is either a "0" (off, clear) or a "1" (on, set).
BYTE: The most convenient piece of information (for humans) that computers
use. One byte consists of eight bits, and ranges from "00000000"
(0 decimal) to "11111111" (255 decimal).
NIBBLE: (also spelled "nybble"). One half of a byte, consisting
of four bits, ranging from "0000" (0 decimal) to "1111"
(15 decimal).
WORD: Two bytes (or four nibbles, if you prefer), consisting of sixteen
bits, and ranging from "00000000 00000000" (0 decimal) to "11111111
11111111" (65535 decimal). Not used much in microcomputers.
BINARY: A system of counting using only two digits, "0" and
"1" (base 2). Computers speak in binary at their most basic level;
anything else is translated into binary, so the computer can understand
it.
DECIMAL: A system of counting using ten digits, "0" through
"9" (base 10). Most of the Western world uses this system.
HEXADECIMAL: A system of counting using sixteen digits, "0"
through "9" and "A" through "F" (base 16).
Programmers use this system as a convenient way of organizing groups of
binary numbers.
KILOBYTE: Abbreviated "K", "KB", or "Kbytes",
it refers to 1,024 bytes. A 64K computer has 64 x 1024 = 65536 bytes.
MEGABYTE: Abbreviated "M", "MB", or "meg",
it refers to 1,024 Kbytes, or 1,024 x 1,024 = 1,048,576 bytes. A 32 MB hard
disk, the largest size volume that ProDOS can handle, holds 32 x 1,024 =
32,768 Kbytes, or 32 x 1,024 x 1,024 = 33,554,432 bytes.
GIGABYTE: Abbreviated "G", "GB", or "gig",
it refers to 1,024 MB, or 1,048,576 Kbytes, or 10,737,441,824 bytes. The
Apple II Smartport (which will be mentioned later in this history) can handle
disk devices up to 4 gig in size (although the software to handle that type
of size has yet to be written).
RAM: Random Access Memory. Any data stored in this memory disappears
when the computer is turned off.
ROM: Read Only Memory. Data cannot be stored in this type of memory,
but instead it usually contains programs or other information that does
not disappear when the computer is turned off.
HARDWARE: The physical electronic components and mechanical parts that
make up a piece of computer equipment. Examples would be the keyboard, disk
drive, or television monitor (also called CRT, or Cathode Ray Tube).
SOFTWARE: The digital instructions executed by the computer in RAM. They
may act on the hardware that is attached to the computer. Examples would
be a BASIC or Pascal program, an assembly language routine to read a clock,
or a disk operating system. Since software is executed in RAM, it disappears
from memory when the computer is turned off.
FIRMWARE: The same as software, except it is executed from ROM, and does
not disappear when the computer is turned off. Almost any software could
be in ROM, except programs that modify themselves as they run.
Next, let's look at hexadecimal numbers in more detail. Since computers
deal in binary (base 2), the true language of computers is either in terms
of "0" (off) or "1" (on). However, it quickly becomes
cumbersome to refer to large numbers in binary; the base 10 number "458"
is "111001010" in binary. So programmers have decided to group
numbers in such a way as to make it easy to convert part or all of that
number to binary if necessary, but still have numbers (almost) as easy to
deal with as our standard base 10 system.
Now, in the familiar base 10 system there are ten digits, 0 through 9.
When counting, after you pass 9, you add one to the digit to the left of
the 9, change the 9 to a 0, and continue. So, "09" becomes "10",
"19" becomes "20", and so on. However, in the base 16
system there are sixteen digits, 0 through 9, and then A through F (representing
decimal 10 through 15). When counting, then, you go 7, 8, 9, then A (not
10), B, C, D, E, F, 10, 11, 12, and so on. In the Apple world we have traditionally
used a preceding dollar sign to signify a hexadecimal number, so "25"
means twenty-five, but "$25" means thirty-seven (2 x 16, plus
5). To translate a hexadecimal number to decimal, use powers of 16:
$B65F = (11x16^3)+(6x16^2)+(5x16^1)+(15x16^0)
= (11x4096)+(6x256) +(5 x 16)+(15 x 1)
= 45056 + 1536 + 80 + 15
= 46687
The same thing can be done in reverse to convert base 10 to hexadecimal,
starting by dividing the number by 4096, then the remainder by 256, then
16. If the number is greater than 65536, you need a bigger power of 16 (and
you are probably not dealing with an 8-bit Apple II!) Or you can just get
a programmer's calculator like mine that automatically does the conversion
for you...
When dealing with memory addresses on an Apple II, we usually designate
them as four digit hex numbers (such as the $B65F example above). Numbers
less than $1000 often are printed without the leading blank ($400 instead
of $0400), and numbers less than $100 are treated the same way ($32 instead
of $0032).
The Apple II: Memory Map
To understand the memory layout of the Apple II, consider this analogy:
Imagine a cabinet with sixteen shelves, and sixteen separate slots or pigeon
holes on each shelf (similar to those found in old roll-top desks). Each
slot refers to a specific address in memory on the computer, and each slot
can hold a number between 0 and 255. (Since a byte is eight bits wide, the
largest number that can be represented by eight binary bits is 255). The
bottom shelf is row "0", and the leftmost slot in that row is
slot "0". The address of that slot, then, is $00. As we move to
the right, the addresses increase, $01, $02, $03, and so on to $0F at the
end. We then go up to the next row, (row "1"), and the addresses
continue in the same fashion with $10, $11, $12, and so on as before. The
sixteenth row is row "F", the rightmost slot in that row is slot
"F", and the address of that slot is $FF. This cabinet has, then,
256 slots (16 x 16), and represents what is called a "page" in
the Apple memory. The cabinet itself has an address (since computers need
addresses for everything), and this one's address is "00". The
full address of row "5", slot "A" on cabinet "00"
is $005A.
Only the Altair 8800 came with just 256 bytes of memory, so we have to
account for the entire 64K memory space that the 6502 chip in the Apple
II can handle. There is a cabinet sitting on top of cabinet "00",
and it is laid out in the same fashion with its 256 slots in sixteen rows.
This is cabinet "01", and on top of that one is cabinet "02";
this continues on up until we reach cabinet "FF" way up at the
top. Apple programmers refer to these cabinets as "pages" of memory.
There are 256 pages of memory, each with 256 bytes on a page, making a grand
total of 256 x 256 = 65536 bytes of memory (or slots that can hold a number,
if you prefer the analogy).
In discussing the memory map on the Apple II, we can refer to pages of
memory with a hexadecimal two-digit number for shorthand if we wish. The
general layout of the Apple II memory is as follows:
Page $00: used by the 6502 processor for storage of information that
it can access quickly. This is prime real-estate that is seldom available
for general use by programmers without special care.
Page $01: used by the 6502 for internal operations as a "stack."
Page $02: used by the Apple II firmware as an input buffer when using
the keyboard from BASIC, or when a program uses any of the firmware input
routines.
Page $03: general storage area, up to the top three rows (from $3D0 through
$3FF) which are used by the disk operating system and the firmware for pointers
to internal routines.
Pages $04-$07: used for the 40 column text screen.
Pages $08-$BF: available for use by programs, operating systems, and
for hi-res graphics. Within this space, Woz designated pages $20-$3F for
hi-res "page" one, and pages $40-$5F for hi-res "page"
two.
Page $C0: internal I/O and soft-switches
Pages $C1-$C7: ROM assigned to each of the seven peripheral cards
Pages $C8-$CF: switchable ROM available for any of the seven cards
Pages $D0-$D7: empty ROM socket #1
Pages $D8-$DF: empty ROM socket #2
Pages $E0-$F7: Integer BASIC ROM
Pages $F8-$FF: Monitor ROM
The memory space on the Apple II between $C000 and $CFFF was assigned
to handle input and output. From $C000 to $C0FF the space was reserved for
various soft-switches used to control the display, and various built-in
I/O devices, such as the keyboard, paddles, annunciators, and the cassette
port. (A soft-switch is simply a memory location that, when a number is
stored there, changes something in the computer--such as switching on graphics
mode). From $C100 to $CFFF the space was reserved for ROM on the plug-in
peripheral cards for each of the seven slots. Slot 1 was given the space
from $C100 to $C1FF, slot 2 from $C200 to $C2FF, and so on. The $C800 to
$CFFF space was special slot-selectable ROM that was uniquely available
for each of the seven peripheral cards. For example, a program running on
the card in slot 6 to control a device could use the $C800-$CFFF space for
its own purpose. When control passed to the card in slot 3, that card could
use a program of its own that ran in the same $C800-$CFFF space. This was
accomplished by allowing each card to have ROM code that covered pages $C8-$CF,
and making that space "switchable", depending on which card wanted
to use it. Having this space available made writing ROM code simpler, since
it would not have to be capable of running at various memory locations (depending
on in which slot a card was plugged).
The memory from $D000 to $D7FF and $D800 to $DFFF was empty on all early
Apple II computers. On the motherboard were two empty sockets that were
available for the user to plug in their own ROM chips. The $D000-$D7FF space
was most often used by a plug-in ROM chip sold by Apple, known as "Programmer's
Aid #1." It contained various utilities for Integer BASIC programmers,
including machine language routines to do the following:
Renumber BASIC programs
Append one BASIC program to the end of another
Verify a BASIC program that had been saved on tape (to confirm it was
an accurate save)
Verify non-program data that had been saved on tape
Relocate assembly language routines to a different location in memory
(most would only run in one place in memory)
Test the Apple II RAM
Generate musical tones through the built-in speaker
Handle hi-res graphics from BASIC, including code to clear the hi-res
screen, set colors, plot points and lines, draw shapes, and load shapes
from tape.
All the routines on the Programmer's Aid #1 ROM were written by Wozniak
between June 1977 (the RAM test routine) and April 1978 (program renumber
and append), except for the music routine, which was written by Gary Shannon.
The other empty ROM socket (covering memory from $D800 to $DFFF) was
never filled by Apple. Various third-party vendors sold ROMs for that socket
(or for the $D000-$D7FF socket used by the Programmer's Aid #1 ROM), but
none made enough of an inroad to be preserved in the INTBASIC file that
would later be included on the DOS 3.3 System Master disk. In fact, the
$D800-$DFFF space in the INTBASIC file on that disk contains an image of
that same space taken directly from the Applesoft ROM! It is completely
useless to Integer BASIC, of course, but disk files being what they are,
Apple had to fill that space with SOMETHING!
The Integer BASIC interpreter lived in the ROM space between $E000 and
$F7FF. However, BASIC only used the space up to $F424. Between $F425-$F4FB
and $F63D-$F65D could be found a floating-point math package that was not
used by Integer BASIC, but was available for BASIC programmers who were
astute enough to figure out how it worked. (An early Apple user group, the
Apple Puget Sound Program Library Exchange, or A.P.P.L.E., sold a tape and
notes by Steve Wozniak they called "Wozpak", that documented some
of the secrets of the Integer BASIC ROM). Between $F500-$F63C there was
code that was known as the "miniassembler", which was executed
starting at the ominous address $F666. The miniassembler allowed you to
enter short machine language programs using the standard 6502 mnemonics
(the three letter codes that referred to a specific type of operation; for
example, "LDA #" represented the 6502 opcode $A9) instead of entering
the program byte by byte in the monitor. The $F689-$F7FC space contained
Woz's SWEET 16 interpreter. Wozniak wrote SWEET 16 to simulate a 16-bit
processor; it simplified some routines he wrote for the Apple II ROMs, including
the Programmer's Aid #1 renumber, append, and relocate routines. Simply
put, he took a series of hex bytes, defined them as "opcodes"
the way HE wanted them to function, and when executing the code used his
SWEET 16 interpreter to translate the code into legal 6502 operations. It
ran slower than standard 6502 code, but when memory space was at a premium
it was better to have a slow program than to not have enough room for the
program at all.
For those who are keeping count, there are a few unreferenced bytes in
the latter part of the Integer ROM. Those bytes contained filler bytes that
were not used as any program code.<9>,<10>,<11>
The last part of the Apple II memory, from $F800-$FFFF, contained Wozniak's
Monitor program which has already been discussed above.
NOTES
<1> Jack Connick, "...And Then There Was Apple", Call-A.P.P.L.E.,
Oct 1986, p. 24.
<2> -----, "Memory Organization", Apple II Reference
Manual, MANUAL, 1979, 1981, pp. 70-73.
<3> Val J. Golding, "Applesoft From Bottom To Top", CALL-A.P.P.L.E.
IN DEPTH #1, 1981, p. 8.
<4> Michael Moritz, The Little Kingdom, p. 157.
<5> Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, pp.
260-261.
<6> Steve Wozniak and Allen Baum, "A 6502 Disassembler From
Apple", Dr. Dobb's Journal of Computer Calisthenics & Orthodontia,
Sept. 1976, pp. 22-25.
<7> Jack Connick, p. 23.
<8> Christopher Volpe, "Beep: A Tale of (T)error", Call-A.P.P.L.E.,
Mar 1983, p. 114.
<9> Bob Bragner, "Open Discussion", SOFTALK, Nov 1983,
pp. 51-52.
<10> -----, Programmer's Aid #1, 1978.
<11> Dick Sedgewick, "Sweet 16 - Introduction", Merlin
User's Manual, 1982, pp. 103-109.
=====
Vol 5, #4
Scoop!
New computer announced
by Dennis McClain-Furmanski
It's a rare month that goes by that we don't hear of new hardware being
announced. It IS a rare month that we see it ship. We've heard about more
than one digital signal processing card, and seen none. We heard about an
improved 65816 chip, and except for a few test pieces, seen none. Well,
for the latter, thanks to Nintendo, we've seen a 14+ MHz version come from
Sanyo. (ZIP has tentatively announced a new accelerator based on it - at
$549 - but we've yet to see that one too).
But every once in a while we hear about a project and group of people
that sets us spinning. Bill (Burger Bill) Heinman, and his Avatar project,
a new GS clone and more, is just one such example.
Can the hackers retake the high ground and produce another winner from
that spiritual Mecca of Machine Making, the garage? Will the computer industry
and Macintosh Computers Inc. allow such a thing to succeed?
We'll have to wait and see. But I don't think we'll have to wait long.
I fully expect to see this machine. It will be announced officially at K-Fest.
If anyone can pull this off, Burger Bill can.
To borrow a phrase from the country's greatest research and development
agency, NASA, the dream is still alive. Let's hear Bill describe his project:
Avatar... Is a project which entails building a NEW computer. It interests
the Apple II world since the machine can run Apple IIgs software.
But it's like saying the Apple IIgs runs IIe software...
I for one do not wish to travel down the path that Apple Inc. trod in
its later years. From its beginnings in 1977 through 1982-3 were a happy
time when people at Apple were just hackers and hobbyists having a good
time and making money at the same time. But when the MBA's took over and
the company existed for profits sake and forgot the human factor. That is
the mistake that mustn't be repeated.
This brings up an interesting debate... What could have people done at
Apple that could have changed the way they acted and got the upper management
so distanced from the people out in the field? True, that even today the
products that come from Apple are solid and very useful but they seem to
be more designed more for how much money can be made from a sale than what
neat ideas can be put in it...
The abandonment of a product line as popular as the Apple II is an event
that must never happen again...
Resolution planned... 640X480 X 256 colors but can be programmed to just
about ANY resolution desired only VRam is your limit.
Speed Planned... 10Mhz 65816 and 265. Note that this is misleading due
to the machines design make a speed benchmark kind of difficult to give
a single number...
Audio planned... Ensoniq w/ 512K ram but this may change due to availability
of the Ensoniq 5530 chip...
CPU's planned, 65c816, 65c265, TMS34010.
Keyboard (IBM AT 101 Key keyboard), Mouse (IBM Serial), JoyStick Port
(Uses IBM Joystick), Floppy port (IBM 5 1/4 and 3.5), Hard Disk (IBM IDE
AT type drive and SCSI).
Power Supply (IBM mini power supply), Case (Several to choose from. Choice
to be made when definite marketing plans have been made).
Future models include one that replaces the IIgs motherboard, and one
that plugs into an IBM style case. When marketing is defined then all models
and configurations will be decided on.
In the long discussions which followed on many of the electronic networks,
the discussion turned inevitably to Apple, and who and why they grew to
become the way they are today. Among the most eloquent people who've had
an inside view of the growth at Apple is Jim Merritt. You might recall a
few other bits and pieces I've tossed out that he originated. I once again
draw on his words, from a couple of different messages, to shed some clearer
light. Besides his views on Apple itself, he offers some well thought out
advice for the possible future of Avatar.
I am one of those who remember the wonderful communal atmosphere of the
Homebrew Computer Club, and similar user group gatherings of the late 70s
and early 80s. Everybody shared so much information and know-how so freely,
that many influential companies were founded on the sheer over spill of
the techno-talk.
But if I were to do anything differently today, it would be to insist
on a fair piece of the ownership pie, at least for any enterprise to which
I contributed hard cash in those days. While it is true that having done
so back then would probably have made me nearly as wealthy as Woz is today,
my concern for ownership rights comes more from the fact that those who
do not have ownership rights, including nearly all owners and users of personal
computers today, are pretty much disenfranchised, when it comes to influencing
companies such as Apple to develop or maintain established product lines
(e.g., the Apple II).
We talk today of a grand experiment and a romantic undertaking; I'm
as much attracted by such things as anyone, probably more than most. But
I look ahead to the time when this thing might be more successful than we
or anyone else had ever dreamed. As much as possible at that critical time,
I would like control of the fate of the enterprise to remain with those
who loved it in the beginning. The only way to do this in our capitalist
society is to get a piece of the rock early on and keep it.
So, I'll gladly purchase stock in this new enterprise, if it is offered.
But I probably won't contribute hard cash otherwise. Advice and knowhow,
yes. I like to see neat things grow. But I also don't like to see them die
prematurely, so for me, at least, it is stock or nothing.
To address Bill's question about how Apple got where it is today, let
me offer an opinion that taking the company public was part of the problem:
1) On the open market, Apple shares became worth a great deal of money,
and many old timers with large blocs naturally succumbed to the temptation
to sell and become wealthy;
2) Eventually, as Apple was perceived as being more stable, institutional
investors (mutual funds, etc.) bought up more and more of the stock. These
firms care only for share price growth and dividends, and as a class have
no feel for or affinity with the personal computer industry employee or
customer. As more stock fell into the hands of the institutional investors,
Apple became more and more susceptible to the pressures from "Wall
Street Analysts," whose recommendations drove the stock price up or
down depending on what Apple did or did not do with its product line, marketing/distribution
strategies, etc. This, in my humble opinion, led to a lot of short-term
thinking and unfortunate decisions, including major flirtations with the
defense and federal-systems marketplace, something that was anathema to
most of the "original Apple" employees and customers that I ever
met.
3) Flirtations with defense and federal customers, in concert with "Insider
Trading" laws, which prevent those "in the know" within a
company from using their knowledge to unfair advantage when trading that
company's stock, helped contribute to a greater (some would say nearly paranoid)
concern with information confidentiality. The more-or-less free flow of
info within the company, which characterized Apple of old, was eventually
replaced by policies based on "security levels" and "need
to know." Many of those policies have been softened since, but today,
as one example, Apple buildings have card-access mechanisms that admit some
Apple-badged personnel, while routinely excluding all others. (From time
to time in the past, at least as early in the Lisa project, Apple restricted
employee access to buildings where "ultra-sensitive" work was
going on, but it is only in recent years that the default has been to deny
employee access to any arbitrary building, unless clear need for access
was shown. The old theory was that, in general, a badged Apple employee
could freely move between Apple facilities unescorted. This marks a sea
change in management's treatment of and respect for employees.)
I could go on with chapter and verse about this, but suffice it to say
that it is probably not necessary to offer stock to the public, and for
all the above reasons and more, I advise that the Alliance remain a "privately
held" corporation as long as possible. I believe that it is possible
to issue stock to members without going through an IPO, although I will
of course defer to more accurate information or opinions from those who
are more familiar with corporation law than I.
The Beagle Buddy Bungle
by Al Martin
A couple of months ago I got a copy of a form letter from Joe Gleason,
President of Quality Computers, addressed to all the Beagle Buddies. As
you may or may not know, Beagle has opted out of the Apple II line in favor
of the Mac and MS-DOS products as a matter of survival. According to the
letter, "...Quality Computers has contracted with Beagle Bros to handle
Beagle Bros' entire Apple II product line, including the TimeOut series."
On the surface, this may appear to be a good deal in order to keep the TimeOut
enhancements for AppleWorks alive. However, further reading of Mr. Gleason's
letter reveals a less than charitable motive.
In earnest terms, Mr. Gleason does some literary hand-wringing over the
plight of Beagle's independent contractor software writers and the subject
of updates for the various programs. According to Joe, they "...believe
that have not been compensated properly for the work they've done in upgrading
the software." I trust that Joe did not think that such information
was news to anyone. I have yet to meet anyone who believes that he has been
"properly compensated" for work performed. Everyone, including
Mr. Gleason as shall soon see, wants to get more bucks for the bang.
And, how has this "sad" state of affairs come to pass? According
to Dear Old Joe, "Updates, for Beagle Bros authors, mean lots of work
and little reward. The amount of income the authors receive is a percentage
of the amount of money Beagle Bros makes from the update --- which isn't
much, since most Beagle Bros customers get their updates for free through
the Beagle Buddy program." What Mr. Gleason fails to mention is the
fact that most of the "updates" were, in fact, fixing bugs and
revamping programs to meet the demands of newer versions of AppleWorks.
By making the updates free to original purchasers, Beagle was able to justify
the relatively high price charged for the TimeOut enhancements. And since
I am not aware of any software writers in bondage or working under the shadow
of a loaded gun, I can only assume that there was some degree of satisfaction
present.
Joe goes on to explain that Quality Computers will begin a major ad campaign
to spread the word about the benefits of Beagle's products because "...far
too many users (of AppleWorks) have no idea of what the TimeOut series offers.
We plan to change that situation." I wonder where Old Joe was during
the years when Beagle was a major advertiser in the Apple II publications
and a heavy hitter during the AppleFests.
Now comes the other shoe.
"We need your assistance. As a Beagle Buddy, you've been able to
distribute free updates to your clients in user groups. We certainly don't
want to strain our relationship with the Beagle Buddies; at the same time,
we can't afford to give away updates if we want to keep the updates and
new products coming."
Now isn't this interesting? First Joe is full of concern about the poor
under-paid software writers and then "...we can't afford to give away
updates..." Just who is Joe looking after, anyway? He has taken over
a product line and wants to squeeze it for all it's worth and then some
and I doubt that the software authors will realize a fatter wallet as the
result. I also recall that while Beagle ran its own Buddy program there
were no complaints I heard from the movers and shakers of the company.
Back to Joe.
"Obviously we don't want to abolish the Beagle Buddy program entirely.
Just as obviously, we can't afford to let the program continue as it is
if we plan to keep expanding the Beagle Bros line."
Yeah, no free updates, but plenty of bucks spent on this sort of promotional
stuff. I'd just as soon have the free updates and not this sort of junk
mail.
"Our other option is to redesign the Beagle Buddy program and give
it a new purpose. Our idea is to turn Beagle Buddies into sales representatives
and actually pay you a commission for each sale you make --- including updates.
Your clients would simply mention your name when calling us --- our new
computer system will track your commission automatically, just as if you
were here in our office taking an order."
Well, whoop-tee-do. I have a chance to become a shill for Quality Computers.
Wow! Such a deal! The last time I heard such a pitch is when a friend tried
to sell me on Amway. And, may I be so bold as to ask, just what will my
commission be? Anything less than 40% just isn't worth my time and I'm fairly
certain that Old Joe ain't gonna spring for those kind of bucks. And how
am I sure that my "clients" will "mention my name" when
ordering? What is this, another "Trust Me" operation? Thanks,
but no thanks.
To continue...
"Of course, we'll also keep you updated with the latest versions
of Beagle Bros products and literature for demonstration and review purposes,
and we're looking into publishing a regular bulletin on Beagle Bros, TimeOut,
and AppleWorks to allow you to keep your clients informed of new releases
and updates."
For free or is there a cost for the promotional materials as well? More
Amway stuff.
Finally,
"...I know that sometimes sudden change can seem overwhelming, so
I ask that you approach our plans with an open mind."
I think that Joe is confusing an "open mind" with a hole in
the head which is what I would have to have to participate in this little
scheme.
Over the past several years I have developed a warm personal friendship
with a man for whom I hold in the highest respect. He is a hard-core Apple
II user and is perhaps one of the most knowledgeable in the practical uses
of the Apple II computers. Coincidentally, he is an active Beagle Buddy
as well. His reaction to Joe's letter was pure rage...livid rage. This article
is dedicated to him.
Apple II history
Part 4
Compiled and written by Steven Weyrich(c)
The Apple II: Other design features
Since Steve Wozniak was the designer of the Apple I and II, exactly what
contribution did Steve Jobs make to the effort? Unlike Wozniak, who would
not think much of extra wires hanging out of a computer that worked properly,
Jobs had an eye for the appearance of the final product. He wanted the Apple
II to be a product that people outside the Homebrew Computer Club would
want to own:
"Jobs thought the cigar boxes [housing the home-made computers]
that sat on the...desk tops during Homebrew meetings were as elegant as
fly traps. The angular, blue and black sheet-metal case that housed Processor
Technology's Sol struck him as clumsy and industrial... A plastic case was
generally considered a needless expense compared to the cheaper and more
pliable sheet metal. Hobbyists, so the arguments went, didn't care as much
for appearance as they did for substance. Jobs wanted to model the case
for the Apple after those Hewlett-Packard used for its calculators. He admired
their sleek, fresh lines, their hardy finish, and the way they looked at
home on a table or desk."<1>
The final case design made the Apple II look quite different from most
of their competition. The other computers looked like they had been assembled
at home (and many of them were). The Apple had no visible screws or bolts
(the ten screws attached at the bottom). It had the appearance of some variation
of a typewriter, but still looked futuristic enough to be a computer. The
friendliness of the design even extended to the lid, which popped off easily
to allow access to the expansion slots, almost inviting the user to look
inside (unlike most electronic devices that held the warning "CAUTION!
NO USER SERVICEABLE PARTS INSIDE").<2>
Other aesthetics to which Jobs paid attention were the color of the keyboard,
vents for heat dissipation (avoiding the need for a noisy fan), and a shape
and color that would blend in with other items in a home or on a desk. He
also hired an engineer who was good with analog circuitry (not Wozniak's
area of interest) to design a reliable, lightweight power supply that would
stay cool. The engineer, Rod Holt, was working at Atari at the time, but
was convinced to help Jobs and Wozniak. He developed a new approach (for
microcomputers) by taking household current and switching it on and off
rapidly, producing a steady current that was safe for the expensive memory
chips. The final design of this switching power supply was smaller than
a quart carton of milk and was quite reliable. Holt also helped design the
television interface for the Apple II.<3>
The new company was racing to have the Apple II ready for the First West
Coast Computer Fair in April of 1977. Some last minute bugs had to be eliminated;
because of a static electricity problem affecting a sensitive chip, the
keyboards went dead every twenty minutes. Chris Espinosa and Randy Wigginton,
two high school students who were early employees of Apple, had written
programs to demonstrate the computer's color and sound. They were hurriedly
working to duplicate these programs on cassette. People at Apple were working
to fix blemishes in the computer cases that had returned from the plastics
molding company. The name for this new computer was also finalized as "Apple
II", following the example of Digital Equipment Company, who had given
each newer version of its PDP series a higher number (PDP-1, PDP-6, etc.).
They stylized the "II" in the product name by using right and
left brackets, and displaying it on the case as "][". The final
product bore the mark of each person at Apple:
"The computer the appeared at the West Coast Computer Faire was
not one person's machine. It was the product of collaboration and blended
contributions in digital logic design, analog engineering, and aesthetic
appeal. The color, the slots, the way in which the memory could be expanded
from 4K to 48K bytes, the control of the keyboard and hookup to the cassette
recorder, and the BASIC that was stored in the ROM chip--in effect the motherboard--was
Wozniak's contribution. Holt had contributed the extremely significant power
supply, and Jerry Mannock the case. The engineering advances were officially
recognized when, some months later, Wozniak was awarded U.S. Patent #4,136,359
for a microcomputer for use with video display, and Holt was given Patent
#4,130,862 for direct current power supply. But behind them all Jobs was
poking, prodding, and pushing and it was he, with his seemingly inexhaustible
supply of energy, who became the chief arbiter and rejector... [Finally,]
the combination of [Mike] Markkula [Apple's first president], Jobs, and
the McKenna Agency turned Apple's public bow [at the West Coast Computer
Faire] into a coup."<4>
The Apple II: Product introduction
As they prepared for the display at the First West Coast Faire, it was
decided to create a new corporate logo. The original one, used in sales
of the Apple I, was a picture of Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree,
with a phrase from Wordsworth: "Newton...'A Mind Forever Voyaging Through
Strange Seas of Thought...Alone.'" Jobs had been concerned that the
logo had part of the slow sales of the Apple I, and the Regis McKenna Agency
was hired to help in the design of a new one.
"Rob Janov, a young art director, was assigned to the Apple account
and set about designing a corporate logo. Armed with the idea that the computers
would be sold to consumers and that their machine was one of the few to
offer color, Janov set about drawing still lifes from a bowl of apples...
He gouged a rounded chunk from one side of the Apple, seeing this as a playful
comment on the world of bits and bytes but also as a novel design. To Janov
the missing portion 'prevented the apple from looking like a cherry tomato.'
He ran six colorful stripes across the Apple, starting with a jaunty sprig
of green, and the mixture had a slightly psychedelic tint. The overall result
was enticing and warm...
"[Steve] Jobs was meticulous about the style and appearance of the
logo ... When Janov suggested that the six colors be separated by thin strips
to make the reproduction easier, Jobs refused."<5>
For the Faire, Markkula had ordered a smoky, backlit, illuminated plexiglas
sign with the new logo. Although Apple had a smaller booth than other companies
displaying their products at the Faire, and some of the other microcomputer
makers (Processor Technology, IMSAI, and Cromemco) had been in business
longer, Apple's booth looked far more professional, thanks to Markkula's
sign. Some of the other participants, companies larger than Apple, had done
no more than use card tables with signs written in black markers.
Because they had been one of the first to commit themselves to displaying
at the Faire, Apple's booth was near the entrance and was visible to everybody
entering the convention center. They demonstrated a kaleidoscopic video
graphics program (possibly an early version of "BRIAN'S THEME")
on a huge Advent display monitor, catching everybody's attention. But, after
the Faire its organizer Jim Warren (Homebrew club member and editor of DR.
DOBB'S JOURNAL) didn't think that Apple was a strong exhibitor. Byte magazine,
in their report of the show, failed to even mention Apple. Despite these
early opinions by influential people, over the next few months Apple received
about three hundred orders for the Apple II, over a hundred more than the
total number of Apple I's sold.<6>
The Apple II: Cost
Prebuilt systems were also sold by Commodore (the 6502-based PET, for
$595), and Radio Shack (the Z80-based TRS-80, for $600). This was quite
a bit less than the Apple II's premium price of $1,298 for a 4K computer,
a pair of game paddles, and an audio cassette with demo programs. This price
did not include a cassette recorder or monitor (which both the PET and TRS-80
did include). The hardware limitations and lack of expandability of those
machines, however, offset some of the price difference. Also, one other
hardware introduction for the Apple II that happened in mid-1978 set it
well ahead of its immediate competitors; we'll get to that shortly.
The Apple II: Experiences of early users
The original manual for the Apple II was sparse. It consisted of thirty
photocopied pages, including some handwritten notes from Woz. The cover
stated, "simplicity is the ultimate sophistication: introducing Apple
][, the personal computer." In early 1978 these original photocopied
manuals were replaced with the new "Apple II Technical Reference Manual"
(also known as the "Red Book"), and copies were mailed to previous
customers. Steve Jobs realized that people often viewed the quality of a
product by the quality of its documentation, and so he took pains to get
manuals that were easy to read and had a professional appearance.<7>
Setting up an early Apple II was fairly simple. The lid popped off easily,
and one of the first things you would attach was the Sup'r Mod (RF modulator).
This was plugged onto two pins sticking up from the back rear of the motherboard,
near the video output jack (assuming that you did not also buy a REAL computer
monitor). The game paddles were two small black boxes, with a knob on the
top attached to a potentiometer (similar to volume controls on a radio)
and a tiny black button on the side. These boxes were attached via a narrow
cable to a plug that looked (and was) fragile; this plug also went into
a small socket in the motherboard. Lastly, you attached your data storage
device (the cassette recorder) to the input and output jacks in the back
of the computer.
After turning on the Apple II, the first thing to greet you was a screen
full of random alphabetic characters and symbols, and possibly some colored
blocks (lo-res graphics mode might be turned on). Here you had to press
the RESET key in the upper right hand side of the keyboard, which, after
releasing the key, would cause a "beep!" and an asterisk to appear
in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen. (If the lo-res graphics mode
had been on, it would now be off). Next to the asterisk (which was a prompt
to show that you were in the Monitor) was a flashing box, the cursor. To
get into BASIC, you had to press the "Ctrl" key and the "B"
key simultaneously. Now you would see a different prompt, one that looked
like a ">".
At this point, you could either begin entering a BASIC program, or try
to load one from cassette. To load from cassette was not always easy; it
took time to get the right volume and tone settings on the tape player in
order to avoid getting the "ERR" or "8 SYNTAX ERR" message.
(And if you didn't have much memory, you might get a "*** MEM FULL
ERR" message!) When you got it properly loaded, you could type RUN
and see what happened. Beyond that, it was more or less up to you to actually
find something to DO with your new toy.<8>
The Apple II: Early hardware add-ons
Aside from the M&R "Sup'r Mod" that allowed early Apple
II users to run their computer on their color TV's, some other enterprising
hackers designed their own versions of modulators. One used by an early
member of an Apple user group in Washington State (Apple Pugetsound Program
Library Exchange, or A.P.P.L.E.) was somewhat better shielded than the "Sup'r
Mod". It had its own power supply and plugged into the video output
jack on the back of the Apple. The "Sup'r Mod" was by far the
biggest seller, however.<9>
At first, there were no interface cards for the any of Woz's eight slots.
With the limited funds that computer purchasers had then (and now) there
was not much they could afford after shelling out anywhere from $1200 to
$1800 just to get their own Apple II. But they were innovative, and like
many other hardware hackers of the day managed to make do with old or surplus
parts. Some people, for instance, had gotten their hands on used teletype
printers, such as the ASR-33 (called "battleships" because they
were so rugged and heavy). Since there weren't any printer interface cards
to plug into the slots to allow the computer to communicate with the teletype,
they used a trick they learned from Woz himself. The Apple II had four single-bit
output pins on the game controller socket that could be used for various
purposes. A schematic floated through the various user groups that showed
how to connect the teletype to an annunciator pin; along with it was a machine
language program that re-directed output from the screen to that one-bit
port, and on to the printer.<10>
<1> Michael Moritz, The Little Kingdom , p. 186.
<2> Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, pp.
263-264.
<3> Moritz, p. 189.
<4> Moritz, pp. 190-191.
<5> Moritz, p. 188.
<6> Moritz, pp. 192-193.
<7> Philip Chien, "The First Ten Years: A Look Back",
The Apple II Review, Fall/Winter 1986, p. 12.
<8> -----, Apple II Basic Programming Manual, 1978, 1979, 1980,
1981, pp. 1-19.
<9> -----, "A.P.P.L.E. Co-op Celebrates A Decade of Service",
CALL-A.P.P.L.E., Feb 1988, pp. 12-27.
<10> Val J. Golding, "Applesoft From Bottom To Top",
CALL-A.P.P.L.E. IN DEPTH #1, 1981, p. 8.
Editorial
FBI attempts to squelch new technology
By Al Martin
Last week the local paper carried a story about the FBI wants to do what
it can to hold back fiber optic telephone transmission lines currently under
development by the phone companies. The reasoning is that since a single
fiber optic can carry many messages at the same time in digital form, it
would very difficult, if not impossible, to tap an individual conversation
for surveillance purposes.
Somehow I can't find any sympathy in my heart for the super snoopers
with the difficulty they face in eavesdropping on new types of telephone
transmission. There have been so many developments in other electronic types
of data gathering that most certainly the whiz-kids in the Hoover Building
can find other ways to gather evidence without denying us the benefits of
fiber optics.
The FBI, along with a few other choice federal agencies, operates with
almost super government powers granted to it by Congress and woe betide
anyone who is pitted against them. To cave into this demand would bring
us closer to a police state and I for one am opposed to the Bureau's attempts
to ease its snoopervision of our lives at the cost of technological innovation.
Updated Dictionary of Microcomputer Terms
by Dennis McClain-Furmanski
Beginner: A person who believes more than one-sixteenth of a computer salesperson's
spiel.
Advanced User: A person who has managed to remove a computer from its packing
materials.
Power User: A person who has mastered the brightness and contrast controls
on any computer's monitor.
Sales Associate: A former cheese-monger who has recently traded mascarpone
for MS-DOS.
Sales Manager: Last week's new sales associate.
Consultant: A former sales manager who has mastered at least one-tenth of
the dBase III Plus manual.
Systems Integrator: A former consultant who understands the term AUTOEXEC.BAT.
Warranty: Disclaimer.
Service: Cursory examination, followed by utterance of the phrase "It
can't be our" and either of the words "hardware" or "software".
Support: The mailing of advertising literature to customers who have returned
a registration card.
Alpha Test Version: Too buggy to be released to the paying public.
Beta Test Version: Still to buggy to be released.
Release Version: Alternate pronunciation of "Beta Test Version".
Enhanced: Less awful in some ways than the previous model, and less likely
to work as expected; e.g., "Enhanced Graphics Adapter", "Enhanced
Keyboard", "Enhanced Extended Memory Specification".
Convertible: Transformable from a second-rate computer into a first-rate
doorstop or paperweight. (Lexicological note: replaces the term "junior.")
Upgraded: Didn't work the first time.
Upgraded and Improved: Didn't work the second time either.
Fast (6 MHz): Nowhere near fast enough.
Superfast (8 MHz): Not fast enough.
Blindingly Fast (10 MHz): Almost fast enough.
Astoundingly Fast (12 MHz): Fast enough to work only intermittently.
Memory Resident: Ready at the press of a key to disable any currently running
program.
Multitasking: A clever method of simultaneously slowing down the multitude
of computer programs that insist on running too fast.
Encryption: A powerful algorithm encoding technique employed in the creation
of computer documentation.
Desktop Publishing: A system of software and hardware enabling users to
create documents with a cornucopia of typefaces and graphics and the intellectual
content of a Formica slab; often used in conjunction with encryption.
FCC-Certified: Guaranteed not to interfere with radio or television reception
until you add the cable required to make it work.
American: Italian or Taiwanese, as in "American Telephone and Telegraph".
American Made: Assembled in the United States from parts made abroad.
Windows: A slow-moving relation of the rodent family rarely seen near computers
but commonly found in specially marked packages of display adapter cards,
turbo cards, and Grape-Nuts cereal.
TopView: The official position of IBM brass that an abysmally slow character-based
multitasking program is the product of the future.
Shareware: Software usually distinguished by its awkward user interfaces,
skimpy manuals, lack of official user support, and particularly it free
distribution and upgrading via simple disk copying; e.g., PC-DOS.
DOS Shell: An educational tool forcing computer users to learn new methods
of doing what they already can.
UNIX: Sterile experts who attempt to palm off bloated, utterly arcane, and
confusing operating systems on rational human beings.
EMS: Emergency Medical Service; often summoned in cases of apoplexy induced
by attempts to understand extended, expanded, and enhanced memory specifications.
Videotex: A moribund electronic service offering people the privilege of
paying to read the weather on their TV screens instead of having Williard
Scott read it to them for free while they brush their teeth.
Artificial Intelligence: The amazing, humanlike ability of a computer program
to understand that the letter Y means "yes" and the letter N means
"no".
Electronic Mail: A communications system with built in delays and errors
designed to emulate those of the United States Postal Service.
C-py Pr-t-ct--n: An obscenity unfit to print and fast disappearing from
common parlance.
Turbo Card: A device that increases an older model computer's speed almost
enough to compensate for the time wasted in getting it to work.
Laser Printer: A xerographic copying machine with additional malfunctioning
parts.
Workstation: A computer or terminal slavishly linked to a mainframe that
does not offer game programs. Also any PC costing over $10,000
RISC: The gamble that a computer directly compatible with nothing else on
the planet may actually have decent software written for it someday.
AUTOEXEC.BAT: A sturdy aluminum or wood shaft used to coax AT hard disks
into performing properly.
Plotter: A terroristic hypodermic device used to inject boring graphic representations
of boring data into boring meetings.
Clone: One of the many advanced technology computers IBM is beginning to
wish it had built.
CD-ROM: An optical device with storage sufficient to hold the billions of
predictions claiming that it will revolutionize the information industry.
IBM Product Centers: Historical landmarks forever memorializing the concept
of "list price only".
IBM: Somewhat like an IBM product; in current parlance, invariably followed
by the word "compatible".
=====
Vol 5, #5
Scoop on 6.0.1
by Al Martin from an unnamed source
Did someone say 6.0.1? That's right, there will be a System 6.0.1 released
with the Ethernet card that adds some functionality and fixes a whole bunch
of bugs. Two of the biggest new features? An MS-DOS FST (it'll be read-only
at this time, but who cares? You'll have the only computer in the world
that can mount Apple Pascal, DOS 3.3, Macintosh HFS, MS-DOS, ProDOS and
High Sierra disks all at the same time!) and Keyboard Navigation in Finder
(meaning you can use the arrow keys to change the selected icon).
Top Secret Stuff... There are Apple IIGS ROM 04s around! Apparently,
they made about a dozen beta versions of a ROM 04 machine. Complete with
2 megs of RAM, internal hard drive, and System 6.0 on the ROM (which is
why they could call it a ROM upgrade), it is in the hands of a very select
few at Apple, etc.
Beagle Bungle Revisited
by Al Martin
In the last issue of The Road Apple I took Quality Computer's version
of the old Beagle Buddy program to task. My main concern was what I perceived
as the greed factor.
Long-time Beagle program writing whiz Randy Brandt was kind enough to
send me a letter stating his position in the matter. I have long respected
Randy as a man of honor and of considerable talent, so his words carry much
weight with me.
To quote Randy:
"I'm writing in response to your 'Beagle Buddy Bungle' article.
I know that it was an opinion piece, but I feel an obligation to point out
some of the facts in the case. I don't think you were fair to Joe Gleason,
perhaps because you weren't aware of enough facts in the situation.
"I don't know of any MS-DOS project at Beagle, but they are indeed
focusing on BeagleWorks for the Mac. This resulted in working out a deal
with Quality (Computers). It would be absurd to expect Joe to take over
the obligation without the opportunity to make a profit or at least break
even. I totally support his right to 'squeeze it for all it's worth.' It
would be irrational to do it as a charity work.
"You derided Joe for saying programmers haven't been properly compensated.
Well, since Beagle paid us absolutely zero for updates, would anyone disagree
with that? You were not aware of 'writers in bondage or working under the
shadow of a loaded gun' because you haven't seen the contracts. If we refused
to do the updates, Beagle had the right to hire someone else and then bill
us for the work. I spent months making UltraMacros much better when we were
doing the AppleWorks 3.0 conversions, but my only reimbursement was from
new sales. In retrospect, Beagle would have been much healthier if they
would have charged more for updates and paid the programmers a royalty on
them. That's one mistake you don't make twice as a programmer! Why put in
extra time when there's no reward?
"Joe called me before releasing his plan, and was worried (that)
people might take it wrong. Personally, I believe he wants to keep TimeOut
customers happy and wants to make a profit on the product line. He's shown
his commitment by spending a bunch of money to get TimeOut Grammar to market.
When was the last time Beagle made any effort to add to the product line?
I have no idea who your livid raging friend is, but I think he's missing
the point. Without Joe Gleason the TimeOut line would be totally dead, which
apparently some people would prefer to seeing a change. All I know is that
I have a wife and three small kids to support, and with Joe in charge, I
got over $900 TimeOut royalties this July. Last year with good gold Beagle
in charge, my July payment was exactly zero, followed by a whopping $150
in August. I'll take the Gleason approach, and I'm sure you can see why."
There is no question that I understand his position from his perspective
and I respect him for saying so. The Quality Computer plan may perhaps be
the "only game in town" with respect to the Beagle products, but
I still stand behind my original article. I believe you should have both
sides of the issue.
Editorial
Future
by Dennis McClain-Furmanski
Every once in a while on the network, we get involved in some pretty
powerful discussions. Particularly when someone comes out and asks for people
to state their opinions about something. In this instance, someone asked
about using computers in schools - in particular for music education, but
also in general. And as often happens in the response, they get more than
they asked for.
I've been involved in music, including computer music, for some time.
One of the main things that first attracted me to the Apple II in my first
exposure was the Alpha Syntauri system that it was running. I'd seen such
classic early electronic music works as Dick Hyman's MOOG album, where he
used a room sized RCA hybrid tubes-and-transistors monster to recreate some
of the work done by Moog, the pioneer whom the premier synthesizer is named
for. This Syntauri was more than that huge pile of hardware (run by an IBM
mainframe, as I recall) and more, all on one table top. I'd already done
multitrack recording, and realized the benefit of being able to multitrack,
including multitrack editing, before ever approaching a studio.
I was also impressed by all the things that people were making the Apple
do that were apparently beyond its original intention. A program called
Apple II Jukebox played music with two voices, even though it had but one
oscillator. Preprogrammed complex waves was how. (GS programmers take note
--- you don't have to be stuck with 15 voices max).
What I do with my machine now is primarily writing and telecommunications.
Music isn't a major occupation with me while I'm pursuing a degree in psychology.
(At 37, it takes a LOT more time to learn the same amount --- neuron ossification,
perhaps). However, I do enjoy the capabilities in several of the music programs
I can run. I am exceedingly impressed by the music for SoundSmith, because,
except for some of the digitized sounds used to create some of the instruments,
this music is entirely untouched by human hands. Completely programmed.
There's no doubt many people out there now who could be considered true
musicians who have operated no instrument beyond a computer keyboard.
A traditional musician might shudder at that. But traditional anythings
become quaint anachronisms. What did the harpsichord players say about the
piano?
A stodgy old text processing, bland, unaccesorized clone has no place
in a music program, except in its role as something to write with. A system
with the capabilities like the GS, or even the Atari or Amiga, can expand
not only the horizons of those who'd learn to use such common technical
things as MIDI, but to teach them that music is the output of the mind instead
of the hunks of brass and wood they hold in their mouths.
Somewhere along the line, people lost some of the early vision of the
first computer pioneers. Computers became "only tools". Only my
foot. They're being used as mechanical utilities for doing the same exact
things that were done without them, and often not to greater benefit or
less cost. The original idea was that these are MIND tools, something to
take the mind farther than before. Not something to make typing a term paper
cost 10 times as much. Something to open new horizons.
These same people who aren't able to see beyond a local bottom line might
well read this and with the same myopia, declare it to be idealistic ranting.
So for them, I insert the fact that the early claims of computers revolutionizing
communications has borne out, and this message is proof of it. Within days
of the original message, 12,000 computer systems, owned by individuals,
carried this message literally and truly around the globe to thousands of
people, with less energy than driving to the post office. And the reply
I send goes back the same way, for less cost than a stamp. What we do here
just goofing around is something so foreign to most minds that they can't
even see how the future crawled right into their living rooms and went to
sit by their chair like an old family pet. This spare-time hobby that we
take for granted was the answer to a problem that NASA couldn't fathom when
they wanted to get all the schools involved in the S.E.E.D.S. project to
communicate with each other. They were completely awed that the technology,
which was 5 years old at the time, not only existed, but cost so little
to operate, that kids themselves often did it with their allowances.
Future shock has set in with both those of us who use this stuff, as
we become jaded to our immense capabilities, and those who don't use it,
as they become accustomed to enormous leaps of technology that they accept,
but don't understand. This is the source of their inability to see. And
there's only one cure for that malady: Involvement. Should they wish not
to become involved themselves, that's fine. But to withhold from young people
the capability to grow beyond their own meager understanding requires and
investment in the future based only on faith.
I've seen too many changes in the world that were predicted by those
early visionaries and pooh-poohed by the pragmatic, only to become commonplace
to the point of discounting as significant by those same pragmatists. I've
seen changes in the nature of society itself, but which is the cause and
which is the effect may be too deep a relationship to fathom. My own return
to study, in social psychology this time, is to gain a better understanding
of the nature of these changes because there's going to be an entire world
full of people too bewildered by the future, the NEAR future, to be able
to cope with it. The way some people, those who are augmenting themselves
with computers, think is changing so much so fast that without a cognitive
map for the uninformed, there could well develop a Karl Marx-like division
of society, into a ruling class of those who control the post-industrial
world of commodity information, and a working class of technically illiterate
and hopelessly impoverished minds. And this, independent of traditional
social class or economic status.
Whether or not any particular people see fit to participate is irrelevant.
Enough people already are that this movement is inevitable. Indeed, it's
in the process of occurring. All that remains then is the decision on whether
to withhold the ability to participate effectively in the future or not.
You'd think that, even if people don't care to, they'd want their children
to. Or maybe not. Heck, these things cost a couple of thousand bucks. They
can't go throwing that kind of money on their kids' futures.
I grew up in Gary, Indiana, where the pragmatic assumed that their kids
ought to learn a trade or at least get a good paying, hard working job at
the steel mills. Then the future happened. So many out of work for so long
that unemployment never got above 40%, because they don't count those who've
exhausted their benefits as unemployed anymore. So many homeowners without
jobs that the banks don't even bother to foreclose mortgages; they'd rather
have somebody staying in the property they own, rather than let it stand
empty. The Rust Belt.
Now look at Pittsburgh. They saw it coming, and moved into the new world
with a vengeance. They are now a major center of economic and scientific
advancement.
It's happening all over. People can believe it or not, but it won't change
the outcome. Except whether it's them and their kids who suffer.
Preaching? Damn straight. The alternative is a greedy "more for
me" attitude. But then someone is going to have to foot the bill for
the new lower class. I'd just as soon my kids didn't have to support too
many other peoples' kids because their parents couldn't see clear to give
their kids more than they could comprehend.
Crash and burn
by Al Martin
The day after I put volume 5, issue #4 of The Road Apple to bed, the
motherboard in my IIGS decided it was time to fry itself into oblivion.
At least it happened after I was done. Panic time. What to do?
I called a couple of "techie" friends, including Senior Editor
Dennis McClain-Furmanski. After doing several tests, I determined that the
motherboard was indeed gone to the Big Electronic C.P.U. in the sky. Now
what?
The next call was to the largest local Apple dealer in the Portland area.
I was informed, in no uncertain terms, that anything for the GS was no longer
available from Apple dealers, especially the one I was talking to. Uh, huh.
Gee, that's tough. Wanna buy a Mac?
After a few choice Anglo-Saxon four-letter words, I waded into the yellow
pages for used computer stores. Within a few calls I found one who had a
brand new IIGS motherboard for $250.00 exchange. I was on the road in a
matter of minutes. OK, so it's version 01, but that's what I had in the
first place and what's a quarter meg difference when I got a couple already
on the OctaRam card?
At the shop, the guys helped me install the motherboard and I was on
my way back home, post haste.
I hooked up the C.P.U., installed my cards and booted it up. Everything
looked OK until I ran the self-test for the GS. I got the "System bad
0B030000" error code. A few calls produced no answers. I pulled the
cards and determined that my ZIP card was the problem. Oh Lord, first the
motherboard and now this.
The next day I called ZIP Technologies and very nice fellow listened
to my story and told me that "You got a '0B' error code, right?"
"Yup," I replied. He said that the GS self-test does not work
with the ZIP installed and running a full speed. The self-test only works
at regular speed so everything was all right in the first place.
Now my GS is back running as well as ever and I am quite please to get
away with only a $250.00 expense.
So here's a tip of The Road Apple hat to the Computer Outlet of Hillsboro,
OR, and ZIP Technologies for a fast and free answer to my problem.
By the way, the Computer Outlet bought out an entire Apple II dealer
and has enough parts to build several Apple II computers and their prices
are right. To contact them, write to Computer Outlet, 1024 SE Walnut, Hillsboro,
OR 97123 or call them at (503) 640-2816 or fax at (503) 640-2751. Ask for
Rick, Scott or Frank. Please mention my name if you do talk to them. They
deserve the support of Apple II users.
All Green can Give you the Blues and Make you See Red
by Dennis McClain-Furmanski
This article gives a complete description of a problem which is becoming
increasingly common with AppleColor RGB monitors. This is the current monitor
which comes with the IIGS, not the AppleColor 100, which has been discontinued.
Techie warning! This is a technical problem, and calls for experience
with electronics. While you might not be able to handle the work yourself,
it's highly likely you can find someone experienced enough with a soldering
pencil to save you a great deal of money. The instructions will be clear
enough to anyone with board level repair experience. If you've experienced
this problem, give them this article to work from. They shouldn't need anything
else except one small part and soldering equipment. And a safety tip: you
MUST do this with the monitor unplugged. Preferably after having it sit
for a day or two to drain off the enormous charge in the CRT. It can bite,
even after days of not being used.
I had just rebooted when out of the blue, everything went green. Not
just shades of green, but an all encompassing, pervasive green. No image,
no brightness control, nothing. Just an eye piercing solid green screen.
Being an unabashed techie with some experience in things video, I opened
my RGB monitor to see what I could see. It was just some huge amount of
stuff. I was out of my league and I knew it. But what to do? A motherboard
swap for an Apple RGB is costly.
Luckily, if I can stretch the intent of the term, I was not the only
one in this situation, and someone who'd experienced this same problem was
much better at these things than I. Donald Beaty, AFA DonB on America Online,
is a retired physics professor. He had had the same symptoms and had been
able to discern the cause. Virtually all of the information I'm about to
impart is his doing. It is due to his experience and hard work that I'm
able to type this without blinding myself with a composite monitor, and
can afford my weekly pizza. Thank you, Don.
An RGB monitor is only somewhat like a TV or other composite monitor.
The RGB handles the red, green and blue signals separately. Not mixing them
gives the monitor the ability to produce a sharper picture. Each of these
signals must be amplified so that they can be used to produce the picture.
One of the two boards in an RGB monitor hangs on the back of the CRT or
picture tube. It contains the circuitry to drive the CRT. Among the components
are three transistors, labeled Q6G2, Q6R2, and Q6B2. Q is for transistor,
the 6 is for which component in the circuit, and the R, G or B is for the
color it handles. These transistors are relatively large rectangular black
slabs, about 1/4 inch by 1/2 inch. They have three legs going through the
board, and are mounted against steel braces on the board which serve as
heat radiators.
Just above these transistors are small blue blobs on two legs, each with
a black and a red dot on them, and numbered identically to the transistors
except the first letter on the board next to them is an L. These are called
inductors or chokes. They're for keeping the sharpness in that color. The
problem stems from the one marked L6G2, above the transistor Q6G2. It seems
these are failing fairly consistently. Since they're going bad, but the
others in the circuit are not, it is likely that the problem is mechanical,
possibly resulting from a misaligned manufacturing machine in the factory.
They have probably been jammed or twisted in the process of building the
monitor, making them weaker and liable to breakdown.
To repair your monitor, first unplug it completely. I recommend doing
so days before you attempt the repair, unless you know how to drain off
the residual voltage from the CRT anode. If you don't know how, I'm not
going to tell you, because it's dangerous. Just let it sit for a few days.
Take the back off the monitor by removing the four screws, two on top
and two on the bottom, from the rear. Carefully slide the back off. You
can feed the power cord in though the hole in the back. Make sure you don't
pull too hard or too quickly, as the power switch is connected to the side
of the back portion, and the wires to it are still connected. Once the back
is off far enough, move it to the side so you can see the back of the board
hanging on the back of the CRT. From above, you can see the parts described
above, and from the back you can see the numbers on the board corresponding
to the parts. The part L6G2 is marked with a small line between the two
solder connections and the numbers right next to them. If you're having
trouble locating this, from the rear of the board, it's at approximately
10 o'clock from the center of the board, about half way to the edge.
There's always the slight chance your problem has a different cause.
To test this, it's necessary to power up the monitor. This is NOT for the
inexperienced. With the choke defective, the screen is solid green, even
with no input. If you short across the legs of the choke, the screen should
go to black. If it's still green, you have a different problem and I can't
help you. A second way to test it is with a voltmeter. If there's about
100 volts of potential across the legs of the choke with the monitor on,
the choke is open, and this repair is for you.
To remove the part, heat the solder pads at either end of the line between
them. You can use solder wick or a solder sucker, or just heat the pad and
pull the part out from the other side with needlenose pliers. Some people
like to clip the part off of the legs, and pull them out later. I never
do, because I've been known to try to remove the wrong part.
Once you get the part out, you'll need a replacement. You can go to most
any electronics supply store (maybe even Radio Shack, but no promises) and
get a replacement choke. The original is a "20 micro-Henry choke".
You can try asking for that. This is a non-standard value, but it's worth
a shot. If they don't have one, the nearest standard value is 22 micro-Henry.
I've used this, and it works fine. Don't be concerned if the replacement
is not shaped or sized like the original. As long as the specs are right,
it'll work.
Now, simply solder the part in the place of the old one and reassemble
the monitor. Be certain you haven't dragged solder between the pads, and
that you've trimmed excess leads from the part from the back of the board.
If all has gone well, you've just saved yourself what Don states was quoted
to another sufferer of The Green Disease as a $315.00 repair bill.
Apple II History
Part 5, The Disk II
Compiled and written by Steven Weyhrich
(C) Copyright 1991, Zonker Software
The Disk II
Let's put some more trash into Mr. Fusion to fuel the next leg of our
trip. How about one of those KIM-1 computers over there in the corner of
the Computer Faire auditorium? We might have to break it up a bit to make
it fit... Okay, now we'll just make a small jump, to December of 1977. By
this time the Apple II had been generally available for about six months.
Most customers used their television as an inexpensive color monitor, and
used a cassette recorder to store and retrieve their programs and data.
Apple's major competitors were the TRS-80 and the Commodore PET. The products
made by these two companies, together with Apple, could be considered as
the second generation of microcomputers; they all came fully assembled and
ready to use out of the box, with a keyboard and cassette interface. The
TRS-80 and the PET even came with a monitors and cassette recorders. The
strength of the Apple was expandability and graphics, while the strength
of the others was cost (both the TRS-80 and the PET sold for around $600,
half the price of the Apple II).
By late 1977, Apple had introduced a some enhancements to the II, including
their first version of a floating point BASIC (called "Applesoft")
on cassette, and a printer interface card to plug into one of the slots
on the motherboard. But the Apple II still needed something to make it more
attractive to buyers, to stand out above the TRS-80 and the PET. One area
that needed improvement was its program and data storage and retrieval system
on cassette; it was a continued source of frustration for many users. The
cassette system used on the TRS-80 was more sophisticated than that of the
Apple II, allowing named files and easier storage of files and data on the
same tape. On the Apple II it took VERY careful adjustment of the volume
and tone controls on the cassette recorder to get programs or data to successfully
load. The Apple cassette system also needed careful attention to the location
on the tape where a program was stored, and was no more accurate than the
number on the recorder's mechanical tape counter (if it had one).
Apple president Mike Markkula was one Apple II user that was dissatisfied
with cassette tape storage. He had a favorite checkbook program, but it
took two minutes to read in the program from the tape, and another two minutes
to read in the check files.<1> Consequently, at the executive board
meeting held in December 1977 he made a list of company goals. At the top
of the list was "floppy disk". Although Wozniak didn't know much
about how floppy disks worked, he had once looked through a manual from
Shugart (a Silicon Valley disk drive manufacturer):
"As an experiment Woz had (earlier) conceived a circuit that would
do much of what the Shugart manual said was needed to control a disk drive.
Woz didn't know how computers actually controlled drives, but his method
had seemed to him particularly simple and clever. When Markkula challenged
him to put a disk drive on the Apple, he recalled that circuit and began
considering its feasibility. He looked at the way other computer companies--including
IBM--controlled drives. He also began to examine disk drives--particularly
North Star's. After reading the North Star manual, Woz knew that his circuit
would do what theirs did and more. He knew he really had a clever design."<2>
Other issues that Wozniak had to deal with involved a way to properly
time the reading and writing of information to the disk. IBM used a complex
hardware-based circuit to achieve this synchronization. Wozniak, after studying
how IBM's drive worked, realized that if the data was written to the disk
in a different fashion, all that circuitry was unneeded. Many floppy disks
sold at that time were "hard sectored", meaning that they had
a hole punched in the disk near the center ring. This hole was used by the
disk drive hardware to identify what section of the disk was passing under
the read/write head at any particular time. Wozniak's technique would allow
the drive to do self-synchronization ("soft sectoring"), not have
to deal with that little timing hole, and save on hardware.
Wozniak asked Randy Wigginton for help in writing some software to control
the disk drive. During their week of Christmas vacation in 1977 they worked
day and night creating a rudimentary disk operating system, working hard
to get the drive ready to demonstrate at the Consumer Electronics Show in
the first week of 1978. Their system was to allow entry of single letter
commands to read files from fixed locations on the disk. However, even this
simple system was not working when Wozniak and Wigginton left for the show.
When they got to Las Vegas they helped to set up the booth, and then
returned to working on the disk drive. They stayed up all night, and by
six in the morning they had a functioning demonstration disk. Randy suggested
making a copy of the disk, so they would have a backup if something went
wrong. They copied the disk, track by track. When they were done, they found
that they had copied the blank disk on top of their working demo! By 7:30
am they had recovered the lost information and went on to display the new
disk drive at the show.<3>,<4>
Following the Consumer Electronics Show, Wozniak set out to complete
the design of the Disk II. For two weeks, he worked late each night to make
a satisfactory design. When he was finished, he found that if he moved a
connector he could cut down on feedthroughs, making the board more reliable.
To make that move, however, he had to start over in his design. This time
it only took twenty hours. He then saw another feedthrough that could be
eliminated, and again started over on his design. "The final design
was generally recognized by computer engineers as brilliant and was by engineering
aesthetics beautiful. Woz later said, 'It's something you can ONLY do if
you're the engineer and the PC board layout person yourself. That was an
artistic layout. The board has virtually no feedthroughs.'"<5>
THE DISK II: COST
The Disk II was finally available in July 1978 with the first full version
of DOS, 3.1. It had an introductory price of $495 (including the controller
card) if you ordered them before Apple had them in stock; otherwise, the
price would be $595. Even at that price, however, it was the least expensive
floppy disk drive ever sold by a computer company. Early production at Apple
was handled by only two people, and they produced about thirty drives a
day.<6>,<7>
Apple bought the drives to sell with Woz's disk controller from Shugart,
right there in Silicon Valley. To cut costs, however, they decided to go
to Alps Electric Company of Japan and ask them to design a less expensive
clone. According to Frank Rose, in his book West Of Eden:
"The resulting product, the Disk II, was almost obscenely profitable:
For about $140 in parts ($80 after the shift to Alps, not counting labor
costs), Apple could package a disk drive and a disk controller in a single
box that sold at retail for upwards of $495. Better yet was the impact the
Disk II had on computer sales, for it suddenly transformed the Apple II
from a gadget only hard-core hobbyists would want to something all sorts
of people could use. Few outsiders realized it, but in strategic terms,
Woz's invention of the disk controller was as important to the company as
his invention of the computer itself."<8>
Notes
<1> Gregg Williams and Rob Moore, "The Apple Story, Part 2:
More History And The Apple III", BYTE, Jan 1985, pp. 167-168.
<2> Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine, "Fire In The Valley,
Part Two (Book Excerpt)", A+ magazine, Jan 1985, p. 45.
<3> Williams and Moore, "Part II", p. 168.
<4> Freiberger and Swaine, (Part Two), p. 45.
<5> Freiberger and Swaine, (Part Two), p. 46.
<6> -----, "A.P.P.L.E. Co-op Celebrates A Decade of Service",
CALL-A.P.P.L.E., Feb 1988, pp. 12-27.
<7> -----, "Apple and Apple II History", THE APPLE II
GUIDE, Fall 1990, pp. 9-16.
<8> Frank Rose, West of Eden: The End of Innocence at Apple Computer,
1989, pp. 62.
Modem Fee
by Dennis McClain-Furmanski
A recent comment by an FCC commissioner that the communications agency
again may examine the possibility of imposing "modem fees" for
information service companies has some calling the online community to arms.
On an online statement this week, CompuServe urged its members to join
a fight against such an FCC action, noting, "Observers have said the
fees could drive up telephone line costs to information services companies
by as much as 300 percent, some or all of which online service members would
likely bear."
CompuServe, which says the ramifications of the FCC's possible action
is explained in a free online area (GO FCC), is asking members to send a
letter to the FCC in opposition to modem fees and to write to certain U.S.
senators to encourage legislation that would require the FCC to allow information
services companies "to use new and more efficient technologies without
being subjected to higher telephone line access charges."
The online message also asks that a copy be sent to Rep. Edward Markey
of Massachusetts, who is chairman of the House Telecommunications Subcommittee.
"In 1987, a similar letter writing campaign by online services users
helped prevent increased access charges from being implemented," CompuServe
said in its online message.
The free FCC area on the system includes names and addresses of FCC commissioners
and U.S. senators. "Or," adds the statement, "CompuServe
will soon make available an FCCgram you can send electronically for 29 cents
to the FCC and Senators. (Composing online is free.) A sample message is
provided. CompuServe is subsidizing this low 29-cent rate."
The comment that sparked the concern was made by FCC Commissioner Andrew
C. Barrett in a recent keynote speech to the Interactive Services Association
convention.
Covering the event, Communications Daily reported that the idea of charging
enhanced services for network access isn't dead, and that "I think
it will come back again. It ought to come back again," Barrett said.
As reported, the FCC has twice dealt with the "modem fee" issue,
backing off in '87 after an outpouring of protests. "Most recently
(it) dealt with (the) issue in more subtle terms in (the) Open Network Architecture
pricing by ruling that (enhanced service providers) would have to pay more
for local access with advanced ONA services," CD notes.
The newsletter reports Barrett said that the idea of ESP access should
be brought back as part of a comprehensive review of Part 69 access rules
that he has recommended. Barrett added that he couldn't say how he would
vote on the issue, just that the issue should be treated as part of a larger
examination.
From the Publisher
More Sculley Slime
by Al Martin
In a national ad campaign sponsored by the American Association of Advertising
Agencies, our Sweet Old Buddy (or initials to that effect) John Sculley,
is quoted, complete with a photo of his simpering, pathetic, tight-lipped
little smile, saying in print, "Most of our competitors of 1981 no
longer exist. Some of then had great products. What they forgot to have
was great advertising."
Yeah, John, right on! If anyone should know about not advertising a "...great
product..." it most certainly is you. Just look at the non-advertising
campaign Apple, Inc., under your direction, has waged against Apple II computers.
There is absolutely no doubt in the minds of Apple II owners that the demise
of the best computers in the world is the direct result of a planned campaign
to ignore the success of the computers, forgo the support of the owners,
spike research and development and completely pull all advertising.
It has always been the position of The Road Apple that you and Apple,
Inc. have feared the Apple II line, especially the IIGS, because of its
threat to your precious baby, the Macintosh. The fact that you stated "...our
competitors...no longer exist (because) ...they forgot to have great advertising."
can only lead me to conclude that the only way you could destroy the Apple
II line was to pull all the advertising and that was done and the result
is clear.
There is no question that the stage is now set for the slow death of
the Macintosh sometime after 1994 and at least by 1996. I suppose that you
will employ the same tactics you have used so effectively in the case of
the Apple II. I wonder what the message will be then? Perhaps another similar
ad in the year 2000 stating that "Most of our competitors of 1992 no
longer exist..." etc. ad nauseam.
Kula Software
by Michael W. W. Ching
Press Release
Honolulu, HI, February, 1992 --- Kula Software has announced the release
of the 1992 edition of the Kula Index. As in the previous editions, the
Index is an AppleWorks database covering articles and reviews from the major
Apple II publications for the past year. The publications featured in this
edition are A2-Central, AppleWorks Educator, inCider/A+, Nibble and Scarlett.
The Index is priced at $9.00 per edition and is available directly from
Kula Software, 2118 Kula St., Honolulu, HI 96817, 1-800-595-8131. This product
is compatible with all members of the Apple II family and requires 128k
RAM and AppleWorks.
Rushing the Season
from Sean Dorsey on the Funny Echo
'Twas the Night Before Start-up
by Vint Cerf
'Twas the Night Before Start-up and all thru the net,
not a packet was moving; no bit nor octet.
The engineers rattled their cards in despair,
hoping a bad chip would blow with a flare.
The salesmen were nestled all snug in their beds,
while visions of data nets danced in their heads.
And I with my datascope tracings and dumps
prepared for some pretty bad bruises and lumps.
When out in the hall there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my desk to see what was the matter.
There stood at the threshold with PC in tow,
An ARPANET hacker, all ready to go.
I could see from the creases that covered his brow,
he'd conquer the crisis confronting him now.
More rapid than eagles, he checked each alarm
and scrutinized each for its potential harm.
On LAPB, on OSI, X.25!
TCP, SNA, V.35!
His eyes were afire with the strength of his gaze;
no bug could hide long; not for hours or days.
A wink of his eye and a twitch of his head,
soon gave me to know I had little to dread.
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
fixing a net that had gone plumb berserk;
And laying a finger on one suspect line,
he entered a patch and the net came up fine!
The packets flowed neatly and protocols matched;
the hosts interfaced and shift-registers latched.
He tested the system from Gateway to PAD;
not one bit was dropped; no checksum was bad.
At last he was finished and wearily sighed
and turned to explain why the system had died.
I twisted my fingers and counted to ten;
an off-by-one index had done it again...
=====
Vol 5, #6
I Think I Hear The Fat Lady Singing
by Al Martin
Dan Muse has departed as the Editor-in-Chief of inCider/A+ and the magazine
will become all Mac only as of February, '93. In addition consider the following:
From: TIM HARRISON
To: ALL
Subj: BEAGLE BROS IS GONE
Recently captured message from America On Line (AOL) about Beagle Bros...
"Summer has passed and the leaves are turning, a point often considered
the end of one life and the imperceptible beginnings of another in a cycle
that has no real beginning or ending. As it is with nature so it goes with
the endeavors of humans, nations rise and fall, hemlines reveal more or
less, and businesses prosper then fail, nothing is constant except the eternal
Tao.
"Beagle Bros has closed it's business doors. The reasons are varied
and sundry and the "what if's" are probably best left for nit-picking
historians, I do not care to comment on it at this time.
"However the demise of BeagleWorks is only superficial. BeagleWorks
has been acquired by WordPerfect Corporation and will rise anew under a
different name. Rest assured the list of registered users is part of the
deal and you will be supported. Flash as well be handled by Quality Computers
as our Apple II products currently are.
"Most of the employees were hired almost immediately by local computer
firms, some are leaving the area to take jobs out of state. Surprisingly
for being in an economic "recession" there are a lot of software
companies looking for employees. Personally I will take a sabbatical for
a while and search for a future course, maybe it's time for major change
in direction. I have my G.I. Bill to use up and will probably start school
next semester.
"For the meantime I am remaining on here for a few weeks as a caretaker
and to help with the transition. However, the phone lines have been disconnected
and calling Beagle Bros will get you the intercept operator and a recording
to call WordPerfect: WordPerfect Tech Support (801)-228-9901 WordPerfect
BBS (801)-225-4415 You may also start checking the WordPerfect area here
on AOL. The Beagle area will terminate in a week or so.I can't say much
more at this time, it's tough to see this happen especially after putting
ones heart and soul into the software. Farewell my friends, it's been a
blast. Lee Dronick, Beagle Bros."
And so it goes. Little by little, bit by bit, the Apple II world continues
to grow smaller and smaller each day. Few, if any, new products; dealers
who will not or cannot stock machines and software; users who are sell off
equipment; publications disappearing and developers who look for greener
or, in this case, bluer pastures. However, the devoted few hang on and continue
to do some remarkable things with their II and GS machines, happy in the
knowledge that they still have the best damned personal computer yet built.
The Road Apple remains and shall continue as long as I can hold out financially
and as long as articles still come in for publication.
As 1992 winds down, I reflect on the "good old days" of AppleFests
and the great fellowship of the people involved. It was a kick to walk into
a huge exhibition hall and see wall-to-wall Apple II hardware and software.
You could feel the energy as one developer after another unveiled new product
after new product in some pretty impressive booths. AE, Apple, Inc., inCider,
Beagle Bros, and hundreds of others spent tens of thousands of dollars and
sent large delegations all for one purpose: To continue the success of the
Apple II.
After the demos and the marching of miles to see and hear all you could,
there were the hospitality hours where the food and drink were there for
the taking. Jokes were exchanged, information gathered, rumors spread and
the joyful sound of good fellowship was everywhere.
Today those same halls ring with the sounds of others with different
products and all those folks with vibrant expectations will someday join
us as we march slowly away with just our memories.
May you and yours be filled with the joy of the holiday season and may
the blessings of 1993 be yours.
Al Martin, Publisher
Breaking the 10Mhz Barrier
By Andrew Roughan
Source: Apple Users' Group, Sydney Australia
Hot news travels fast these days, and seemingly none travels faster than
the news of "14Mhz" 65C816 chips. The undercurrent at Kansasfest
always brimmed with comments about Tim Meekins running his Transwarp GS
accelerator (TWGS) at 13.75Mhz or Steven Chiang running at 14Mhz. For those
of us without accelerators, running at 2.8Mhz, this is mind bogglingly fast!
The chips in question originated from Sanyo who re-engineered the 65C816
to boost its performance. The Sanyo chips run at higher speeds without needing
higher voltages or cooling systems.
Western Design Center (WDC - the company behind development of the 65xxx
series) purchased a large batch of these chips directly from Sanyo and have
made them available to people wishing to upgrade their TWGS boards. WDC
have always been able to provide limited quantities of 'engineering parts'
which performed better than 7Mhz, but the Sanyo batch has brought the average
performance to greater than 12Mhz.
So with a faster processor available, are manufacturers offering faster
accelerators? Zip Technology offered an upgrade for a short time and now
list a 14Mhz Zip GSX card. Applied Engineering do not offer anything for
TWGS owners, but fortunately it is easy enough to do it yourself.
The procedure for upgrading a Zip GSX board involves cutting traces and
replacing logic array circuitry, as well as purchasing a faster processor
and oscillator. At this stage the process is not well documented and owners
are advised to purchase the upgrade through Zip Technology directly.
Available Documentation
Until now, for most of us at with 7Mhz Transwarps, the quest for speed
has been a little daunting. Getting accurate upgrade information and finding
parts suppliers has been difficult. The article by Andrew Hall, prepared
for Western Design Center and published in September 1991 Applications,
outlines four steps for getting the best possible speed out of the TWGS.
The National AppleWorks Users Group (NAUG) publication 'AppleWorks Forum'
has three articles containing very detailed, accurate and informative information
written by John Link. The issues are March, April and May 1991. These three
issues are considered 'must read' material and are supplied by WDC to any
prospective TWGS upgrader.
When you contact WDC to purchase a 65C816 chip, they will insist on sending
this document (by fax or mail) before processing your order. The aim of
this article is to give additional information not generally available.
The
upgrading steps are still the same, but now the faster parts available make
it easier to get a faster speed which may tempt more Transwarp GS owners
to break the 10Mhz barrier.
Prerequisites
The TWGS needs ROM version 1.5 (or greater) to work at speeds greater
than 7Mhz. The current ROM can be obtained directly from Applied Engineering
for US$20. The NAUG document describes how to replace the ROM.
It is recommended that the TWGS have the 32k Cache upgrade. This will
give you the latest ROM, faster cache memory and complimentary performance
improvements. The 32k Cache upgrade can be purchased locally from Two Series
Software for $99.
The other speed dependent parts on the TWGS are the GAL chips which are
seated together on the right hand side of the card. The minimum versions
that are known to work are TWGS1A1, TWGS2B1, TWGS3E1, TWGS4B1, TWGS5A1,
TWGS6A1, TWGS7A1, TWGS8B1. A fast GAL chip set is available from LRO Computer
Sales for $79 + shipping. Applied Engineering's code for the set is 10MHZPALKIT.
Obtaining the Microprocessor
Replacement 65C816 chips are obtained directly from WDC. The processors
cost US$95. Shipping by airmail is an extra US$5. NAUG members can obtain
65C816 chips for US$71.25. I really shouldn't point out that if a group
got together to purchase 65C816s in one shipment, that it would be worthwhile
for one person to join NAUG - membership is US$31.
Obtaining the Crystal oscillator
The WDC supplied document explains why the oscillator must be four times
the speed that you wish to run your system at. The shmoo plot supplied with
the processor will enable you to identify what speed the processor can run
at. You then must obtain the appropriate oscillator.
Oscillators are available on this side of the Pacific Ocean from Clarke
& Severn Electronics. Different speed oscillators have different prices
ranging up to $12. Contact them for information as to pricing and availability.
Non "off the shelf" speed oscillators can also be ordered at a
cost of $21 each. The TWGS uses a 1/2 TTL oscillator. The oscillators supplied
by Clarke & Severn are standard size TTL oscillators. This means you
will need to modify the oscillator to fit the TWGS. The WDC supplied document
describes one method of doing this. Another is to obtain a 16 pin DIP socket
from Dick Smith Electronics for 40 cents. Cut 8 pins off of one end, and
solder a jumper wire between the 8th pin (cut off) and the 4th pin (not
cut off) on each side. This method has the added advantage of making
oscillator swapping an effortless task whereas the NAUG method involves
modifying the actual oscillator.
As an alternative to Clarke & Severn, you may like to try Digi-Key
in the USA. Digi-Key have the following 1/2 TTL oscillators which fit into
the TWGS with no modifications:
Mhz Part Price (US$)
----- ------ -----
32 SE1101 3.60
33.33 SE1102 3.60
36 SE1103 3.60
40 SE1104 3.60
42 SE1105 3.60
46 SE1106 3.60
48 SE1107 3.60
50 SE1108 3.60
55 SE1109 3.60
60 SE1110 3.75
If you wish to look for other alternatives, make sure that you get TTL
or CMOS oscillators. Sizes are 1/2 or standard. They come in metal and plastic
bodies. The plastic ones work just fine and are possibly cheaper.
Obtaining faster cache memory
The standard TWGS 8k cache memory is 45 nanoseconds (ns). The 32k cache
memory is 35ns. 35ns is supposedly fast enough for 14Mhz so you may not
need faster SRAMs than this. Experimentation is still continuing in this
area. SRAMs used by the TWGS and Zip GS are 32768x8 general purpose SRAMs.
Try and get chips needing the lowest power requirements. Sony make a very
low power 25ns chip, CXK58258B-25LL, and a 15ns chip CXK58258A-15. VLSI
Tech make 25ns, 20ns and 15ns chips: VT62832UHL-25, VT62832UHL-20, VT62832UHL-15.
Other 25ns chips are Mosel, MS62256-25, and Paradigm, PDM41256L-25.
All the chips mentioned are available in 28 pin DIPS, with tri-state
outputs. Some may only be available in .3 inch or .6 inch widebody packages.
My TWGS 32k Cache upgrade takes the .3 inch packages but you should check
yours to make sure you get the correct size, otherwise some messy soldering
could be involved.
Increasing the Power Supply
Increasing the power supply increases the performance of the processor,
oscillator and GAL chip components thereby giving improved system performance.
There are two methods of increasing the power supply to the TWGS. The first
is to increase the voltage level output from the power supply which affects
the whole system. Adjusting the power supply output is not a user servicable
operation. Applied Engineering sells a 5.25 volt supply to NAUG members.
The second is to use the 12 volt supply line on the TWGS edge connector,
see Andrew Hall's article for this procedure.
Running your 65C816 higher than 5.5 volts is asking for trouble. The
buffer chips in the TWGS and the IIgs are TTL and the design tolerances
on those don't guarantee they will survive anything above 5.5 volts. There's
going to be some drop, so feeding the 65C816 5.6 volts would probably work
since the rest of the machine will still see 5.5 volts, but it is not recommended
to go above 5.6 volts under any circumstances.
System testing
You should allow a significant period of running time to make sure that
your system is reliable. Your system may work well when cool but crash unmercilessly
when warm.
Success Stories
Steven Chiang (DreamWorld Software) 14Mhz
Tim Meekins (Procyon) 13.75Mhz
Chris Deschu (Internet user) 13.75Mhz
Chris Nelligan (AUG Vice-president) 12.5Mhz
Cameron Brawn (AUG Apple // sysop) 11.5Mhz
I am currently running my ROM 3 system at 12.5Mhz. I purchased a ROM
1.8S Transwarp GS with the 32k cache upgrade directly from Two Series Software.
The GAL versions are TWGS1A1, TWGS2B1, TWGS3E1, TWGS4B1, TWGS5A1, TWGS6A1,
TWGS7A1, TWGS8B1. I bought a WDC engineering part 65C816 for $180 (including
UPS freight and duty), a 50Mhz oscillator (to run my system at 12.5Mhz)
from Clarke & Severn for $7.50. I have not purchased faster SRAMs or
modified the power supply.
PARTS SUPPLIERS
High speed 65C816 processors are available from:
The Western Design Center Inc. (WDC)
2166 East Brown Road
Mesa, AZ. 85213
(602) 962-4545 (voice)
(602) 835-6442 (fax)
Talk to Deborah Lamoree when you call.
You can get upgrade information from WDC FREE. All you have to do is send
a self-address, stamped envelope to. Make sure that the envelope you send
them has stamps on it adding up to $0.52 ( two $0.29 stamps). The information
that they will send you will tell you all you need to know to upgrade your
TWGS to 14 MHZ.
Oscillators are available from:
Clarke & Severn Electronics
PO Box 1
Hornsby NSW 2077
(02) 482-1944 (voice)
(02) 482-1309 (fax)
Digi-Key
701 Brooks Ave S
PO BOX 677
Thief River Falls, MN
56701-0677
(218) 681-6674
US$5 handling charge on orders under US$25.
Fast GAL chip sets are available from:
LRO Computer Sales
(815) 338-8658 (voice)
(815) 338-4332 (fax)
It is recommended to make sure that the item is in stock before offering
payment details.
Transwarp GS ROMs are available from:
Applied Engineering
3210 Beltline
Dallas, Texas 75234
(214) 241-6060 (voice)
(214) 484-1365 (fax)
Transwarp GS 32k cache upgrades are available from:
Two Series Software
PO Box 1
West Hoxton NSW 2171
(02) 606-9343 (voice/fax)
Fast SRAMs are available from:
Sony (714) 220-9100 or VLSI Tech (408) 434-3100
National AppleWorks Users Group
Box 87453
Canton, MI 48187
(313) 454-1115
14Mhz Zip GSX cards are available from:
Zip Technology
5601 West Slauson Ave
Suite 264
Culver City CA 90230
(310) 337-1313 (voice)
*** [ED's Notes: Altering your power supply voltage will void the warranty
of any equipment you might still have covered. It is recommended this not
be done. Also, AE does not support the upgrades as a rule, beyond the cache
upgrade they supply. A few AE employees do however offer assistance
unofficially in the AE support area of America Online. Just don't bother
to call AE tech support about this].
APPLE II HISTORY
Compiled and written by Steven Weyhrich
(C) Copyright 1991, Zonker Software
(PART 6 -- The Apple II Plus)
The Apple II Plus, Hardware: We now go cruising ahead in time about one
year, to June of 1979. Applesoft BASIC had been in heavy demand since the
introduction in late 1978 of an improved version. It was needed by those
wanting to write and use applications that needed the capability of floating-point
math. Because of this, Apple engineers had begun working in 1978 on the
Apple II Plus, a modest enhancement to the Apple II. The main attraction
of this newer Apple would be Applesoft in ROM, available immediately without
having to load it from cassette or disk. Also, having it in ROM would move
it out of the part of memory where RAM Applesoft conflicted with hi-res
graphics (after all, Applesoft had commands specifically written into it
for manipulating those graphics, something that Integer BASIC could only
do via special CALLs to the routines in the Programmer's Aid #1 chip).
With the decision made to upgrade the Apple II, other changes were made
to make it more attractive to new computer buyers. The cost of RAM chips
had dropped considerably, so most new II Plus systems came standard with
a full 48K of RAM. Since the disk operating system consumed about 10K of
memory, having the full complement of available RAM made it easier to use
the Disk II with either version of BASIC. Since users would not need to
add the smaller 4K memory chips, the strapping blocks that had made it possible
to use either 4K or 16K RAM chips on the original Apple II were removed.
Small changes had already been made to the product since it first began
distribution. Most of these changes were made primarily to simplify it and
decrease costs of manufacturing. First of all, the original Apple II motherboard,
designated as "Revision 0", was changed to make it possible to
display two more colors in hi-res graphics. The Revision 0 board had only
four colors (green, violet, black, white), but Wozniak had learned that
by making a simple alteration he could get two more colors (blue and orange)
and two more varieties of black and white. The Revision 1 and later boards
were capable of displaying all eight colors. The means of making this modification
to Revision 0 Apples was described by Wozniak in his reply to an article
by Allen Watson III about hi-res graphics (in the June 1979 issue of Byte
magazine). With that change, people who were not afraid of doing a little
electrical work on their computers had some of the benefits of an updated
Apple II.
Hardware bugs that Apple engineers fixed included one that caused text
characters to be displayed with green and violet fringing, whether in graphics
mode or text mode. The "color killer" circuit they added fixed
things so that non-graphics text would display in black and white only.
Another problem involved RAM configurations of either 20K or 24K (a 16K
RAM chip plus one or two 4K RAM chips). In those systems a hardware bug
caused the 8K of memory from $4000 to $5FFF to be duplicated in the next
8K of memory, from $6000 to $7FFF, whether there was RAM present at those
locations or not. This made a 20K Apple appear to have 24K, and a 24K Apple
appear to have 36K. The Revision 1 motherboard fixed this problem as well.<1>
Revision 1 boards also modified the cassette input circuit to respond
with more accuracy to a weak input signal, making it easier to load data
and programs from cassette. Also, one "feature" of the original
Apple II was that any sound generated by the internal speaker also appeared
as a signal on the cassette output connector; this was fixed in the new
motherboards. Lastly, the RESET cycle was made part of the power-up circuitry,
eliminating the requirement that the RESET key be pressed after turning
on the computer.<2>,<3>
The Apple II Plus, Firmware: More important than the minor hardware changes,
however, were the changes in the ROM code. The new ROM replaced the original
Monitor with one that, among other things, better supported the new Disk
II drive. Since RESET was now automatically activated when the power was
turned on, the new ROM code had the computer automatically do a few things.
It cleared the screen (displaying "APPLE ][" at the top), and
began a scan down the slots, starting at slot 7 down to slot 1. It examined
the first few bytes of code in each card's ROM for a specific sequence that
identified it as a Disk II controller card. If one was found, control was
passed to that card, causing the disk drive to startup and begin loading
the disk operating system into memory. If no disk controller was found,
the ROM code jumped instead to the start of BASIC (instead of leaving the
user in the Monitor, as in the old ROM). This "Autostart ROM",
as it was called, made it possible to have a system that started up a program
on the disk with little action needed by the user.
The RESET code was more intelligent in the Autostart ROM than in the
Old Monitor ROM. There was now a "Cold Start" RESET (which functioned
as described above), and a "Warm Start" RESET. A Warm Start RESET
could occur without re-booting the Disk II (if it was present); in fact,
it ensured that the disk operating system remained "connected"
after RESET was pressed. This feature was implemented by setting three bytes
at the end of page $03 in memory. Two of the bytes were the address of the
place in memory to which the Apple should jump if RESET was pressed. The
third byte was a specially coded byte created from half of the address byte.
When RESET was pressed, this special "power-up" byte was checked
with the address byte. If they didn't properly match, the Monitor assumed
that the power had just been turned on, and it executed a Cold Start RESET.
This feature was extensively used by writers of copy protected software,
so users could not modify or copy the code in memory simply by pressing
the RESET key.
The other major change, mentioned earlier, was the BASIC that was supplied
in ROM. Gone was Steve Wozniak's hand-assembled Integer BASIC, in favor
of the newer Applesoft. Since these ROM versions of BASIC used the same
memory locations, they could not be used simultaneously. With the introduction
of the II Plus, Apple also released the Applesoft Firmware card. This card,
which plugged into slot 0, made it possible for previous Apple II owners
to have some of the benefits of the II Plus without having to buy an entirely
new computer. Even with that card, however, you could not use features of
one BASIC while the other was active, and switching from one BASIC to the
other erased any program that was being used at the time. The two BASICs
could be told apart by the prompt they used; Integer BASIC used the ">"
character, but Applesoft used the "]" character.
Another change made to the Monitor ROM made screen editing easier. The
original Apple II's procedure for editing a line typed in BASIC or in the
Monitor was tedious at best. To change a line of text in BASIC, you had
to list the line, move the cursor up to the start of the line, and then
use the right-arrow key to "copy" text from the screen into the
input buffer. If you wanted to skip part of the line, you had to move the
cursor past the text that you wanted to eliminate WITHOUT using the arrow
keys. If you wanted to INSERT something into the line, you had to move the
cursor off the line (above it or below it), type the additional text, and
then move the cursor back into the line to finish copying the original part
of the line.
The big problem with these cursor moves for editing under the Old Monitor
was that each move required two keypresses. To move the cursor up, you had
to press "ESC" and then "D" EACH TIME you wanted to
move the cursor up. "ESC A" moved right, "ESC B" moved
left, and "ESC C" moved the cursor down. With a long line that
needed much editing, this would get old real fast. Not only was it cumbersome,
but the layout of the keyboard made it difficult to remember the correct
letters used for cursor movement; although "D" (up) was above
"C" (down), it seemed that "D" should stand for "Down".
Also confusing was that "A" was to the left of "B",
but their functions were the opposite of their position!
The new Autostart ROM improved this screen editing process just a bit.
Now, pressing "ESC" turned on a special editing mode. Repeated
presses of "I" (up), "J" (left), "K" (right),
and "M" (down) continued to move the cursor until a key other
than ESC was pressed. On the keyboard these letters were arranged in a sort
of "directional keypad" or diamond, which made remembering the
moves a little easier. The previous ESC editing codes were still supported,
but still with their previous limitations. Unfortunately, however, you still
couldn't tell whether you were in the regular text entry mode or in the
ESC editing mode, and often attempts at changing a line took several tries
to get it right.<4>,<5>
Other features added in the new Autostart ROM included the ability to
pause a listing by pressing Ctrl-S (VERY helpful when trying to scan through
a long program!) As mentioned above, pressing RESET would return control
through the soft-entry vectors on memory page $03. This would allow a user
to exit from a runaway BASIC program by pressing RESET, and still keep program
and variables intact in memory (which could not be guaranteed with the old
Monitor ROM).<5>
John Arkley at Apple wrote the changes to the original Monitor ROM and
created the Autostart ROM in November 1978 (he's the "John A"
mentioned in the source code listing found in the 1981 edition of the Apple
II Reference Manual). After he had done the work and the ROMs had been created,
Apple wanted to publish a new version of the Reference Manual to cover the
Apple II Plus. The older Reference Manual (affectionately known as the "Red
Book") had included an assembly language source code listing of the
Monitor ROM. They wanted to include the source for BOTH versions of the
Monitor, but a problem came up. While developing the Monitor, Apple had
used a local mainframe computer dial-up service known as "Call Computer."
They used a cross-assembler on that computer, assembled the code, and then
used the resulting object code to create the ROM. (A cross-assembler is
an assembler that creates object code for a processor other than the one
the cross-assembler runs on. For example, if you can write 8080 machine
code with an assembler running on a 6502-based computer, you are using a
cross-assembler). Unfortunately, Call Computer had accidentally done a system
backup with the source and destination disks reversed, erasing all the files
containing the source code for the Apple II Monitors. There were no disk
or cassette copies of the source code for the Autostart ROM back at Apple.
Working from the source listing in the Red Book, John recreated the source
file for the original Monitor, and then disassembled his own modifications
for the II Plus and re-created his Autostart ROM source file. Those reconstructed
listings are what appeared in the 1981 edition of the Apple II Reference
Manual.<6>
Not everyone was pleased with the modifications made in the Autostart
ROMs, however. Some of the authors of the magazine CALL-A.P.P.L.E. liked
to refer to the new computer as the "Apple II Minus", since Arkley
had to remove some of their beloved routines from the ROMs to make room
for the new features. Missing from the Apple II Plus ROMs were Integer BASIC,
the miniassembler, and Woz's SWEET 16 interpreter (that entire space now
being used by Applesoft). Missing from the Monitor were the assembly language
STEP and TRACE features, and a set of sixteen-bit multiply and divide routines.<5>
The Apple II Plus, Cost: The new Apple II Plus, at $1,195, sold for over
$100 less than the original Apple II, although it came with more memory
and had Applesoft (previously an added expense item) in ROM.
The Apple II Plus, Bell & Howell: Apple made a deal early on with
Bell & Howell to let them sell the Apple II Plus with a Bell & Howell
name plate on it for use in schools. These Apples were black colored (instead
of the standard beige), and had screws on the back to keep the lids on (apparently
to keep students' hands out). These Apples (sometimes called "Darth
Vader" Apples) also had the "shift-key mod" (see below) applied.
Since Bell & Howell was a major supplier of school equipment, this was
a means for Apple to get a foothold in the school environment.<7>,<8>
Bell & Howell also had electronics correspondence courses, and used
the black Apple II Plus for one of their courses. They offered a one year
warranty, instead of the ninety-day warranty offered by Apple.<9>,<10>,<11>
The Apple II Plus, Early User Experiences: An Apple II veteran on GEnie,
Dennis Ulm, kindly provided me with the following reproduction of his ORIGINAL
Apple II Plus packing list. It gives a little picture of what early non-disk
users had to work with:
Apple II Plus Packing List This package should contain the following
items: cassette tape: Little Brickout and Color Demosoft, cassette tape:
Renumber/Append and Alignment Test Tone, cassette tape: Finance I and Penny
Arcade, cassette tape: Lemonade and Hopalong Cassidy, cassette tape: Brian's
Theme and Phone List, manual: Introductory Programs for the Apple II Plus,
manual: The Applesoft Tutorial, manual: Applesoft II BASIC Programming Reference
Manual, manual: Apple II Reference Manual, publication: Apple Magazine,
1 pair of game controls, cable: to hook up a cassette recorder, cable: power
cord for the Apple II Plus, Apple Warranty Card, Apple II Plus System 16K
or Apple II Plus System 32K or Apple II Plus System 48K
Little Brickout was an abbreviated Applesoft version of Woz's Integer
BASIC Breakout game, the reason he designed the Apple II in the first place.
Brian's Theme was a hi-res graphics program that drew lines on the screen
in various patterns. Hopalong Cassidy was a "guess who" program
that also used the hi-res screen).<12>,<13>
Also included in Dennis' II Plus box was this photocopied instruction
sheet "Tape Loading Instructions: If problems are encountered in LOADing
tape programs, it may be necessary to "queue" (sic) the tape before
LOADing. To queue a tape, use the following procedure: 1. Rewind the tape.
2. Disconnect the cable from the tape recorder (so you can hear what's on
the tape). 3. Start the tape recorder in PLAY mode. 4. When a steady tone
is heard, STOP the tape recorder. 5. Connect the cable to the tape recorder
and adjust the volume and tone controls on the tape recorder to the recommended
levels. 6. Make sure your computer is in BASIC. 7. Type LOAD. 8. START the
tape playing. 9. Press RETURN."
The program should LOAD properly. If an error message occurs, repeat
the procedure, but try readjusting the tone and volume controls on the tape
recorder.
Dennis says that in his experience it took at least five to ten tries
to get anything to load properly from tape!
The Apple II Plus, More Hardware Add-Ons: Lower-case was still not supported
on the new Apple II Plus, though it was a popular user-modification. The
thriving industry for Apple II peripherals made up for this shortcoming,
with various vendors supplying small plug-in circuit boards that fit under
the keyboard, allowing display of lower-case on the screen (and sometimes
direct entry of lower-case from the keyboard).
By 1981, when the Revision 7 motherboard was released for the Apple II
Plus, a different method of character generation was used, which reduced
radio-frequency interference that was generated. For Revision 7 boards,
lower-case characters could be displayed with the addition of only a single
chip. However, unless a user changed the keyboard encoder with a third-party
product, only upper-case characters could be typed.<14> The keyboard
itself underwent some changes, both by users and by Apple. The original
RESET key was in the upper right-hand corner of the keyboard. The problem
with that key was that it had the same feel as the keys around it, making
it possible to accidentally hit RESET and lose the entire program that was
being so carefully entered. One user modification was to pop off the RESET
keycap and put a rubber washer under it, making it necessary to apply more
pressure than usual to do a RESET. Apple fixed this twice, once by replacing
the spring under the keycap with a stiffer one, and finally by making it
necessary to press the CTRL key and the RESET together to make a RESET cycle
happen. The keyboards that had the CTRL-RESET feature made it user selectable
via a small slide switch just inside the case (some people didn't want to
have to press the CTRL key to do a RESET).
Another keyboard limitation was addressed through a modification that
became known as the "shift-key mod". This was such a widely used
trick that Apple ended up supporting it in hardware when they designed the
Apple IIe. Since the II and II Plus keyboards could not directly generate
lower-case characters, early word processing programs had to find some way
to make up for that deficiency. Apple's own Apple Writer program used the
ESC key as a shift and shift-lock key, displaying upper-case characters
in inverse video and lower-case in regular video. Other programs suggested
installing the shift-key mod to allow more natural entry of upper-case,
using the SHIFT key already present on the keyboard. The user had to attach
a wire to the contact under the SHIFT key, and run it to the game port where
the input for push-button 2 was found. (This push-button PB2, $C063 in memory,
was for one of an optional second pair of game paddles that third-party
hardware companies supplied for the Apple II). The program would assume
that all letters being typed were in lower-case, unless the SHIFT key (attached
now to paddle button PB2) was also being pressed; in that case the letter
would be entered as upper-case. Since the PB2 button was not often used
for a second pair of game paddles, it was unlikely that this modification
would be accidentally triggered by pressing one of the game paddle buttons.
This modification did NOT use buttons PB0 or PB1, which were on the first
pair of game paddles. (PB0 and PB1 now correspond to the Open-Apple and
Solid-Apple/Option keys on modern Apple II computers).
NOTES
<1> -----, "Memory Organization", APPLE II REFERENCE MANUAL,
1979, 1981, pp. 70-73.
<2> -----, APPLE II REFERENCE MANUAL, 1979,1981, pp. 25-27, 34-36.
<3> Bruce Field, "A.P.P.L.E. Doctor", CALL-A.P.P.L.E., Jan
1984, pp. 74-75.
<4> -----, "Apple and Apple II History", THE APPLE II GUIDE,
Fall 1990, pp. 9-16.
<5> -----, APPLE II REFERENCE MANUAL, 1979,1981, pp. 25-27, 34-36.
<6> John Arkley, (personal telephone call), Sep 9, 1991.
<7> Joe Regan, GEnie A2 ROUNDTABLE, Category 2, Topic 16, Apr 1991.
<8> Dan Paymar, "Curing A Shiftless Apple", CALL-A.P.P.L.E.,
May 1982, pp. 63-64.
<9> Tom Vanderpool, GEnie A2 ROUNDTABLE, Category 2, Topic 16, Mar
& Aug 1991.
<10> Tom Zuchowski, GEnie A2 ROUNDTABLE, Category 2, Topic 16, Mar
1991.
<11> Steve Hirsch, GEnie A2 ROUNDTABLE, Category 2, Topic 16, Mar
1991.
<12> Dennis Ulm, GEnie A2 ROUNDTABLE, Category 2, Topic 16, Apr 1991.
<13> Wes Felty, GEnie. A2 ROUNDTABLE, Category 2, Topic 16, Apr 1991.
<14> Bruce Field, "A.P.P.L.E. Doctor", CALL-A.P.P.L.E.,
Jan 1984, pp. 74-75.
6.0 Fixes
by Dennis McClain-Furmanski
After the release of System 6.0, it became evident that there were patterns
of several problems. These were due for the most part to hardware incompatibilities,
and a few problems with specifications of the new system software colliding
with previously released programs. The following is a list of problems and
solutions sent out over Internet by Dave Lyons at Apple. This should be
taken as Dave's own effort to compile these problems and solutions, and
not as Apple's concerted effort.
In all fairness, I have to say that the wait for System 6.0 was well
worth it. There are more new features than ever before. As such, I find
it admirable that these few problems have occured, and that the solutions
were well at hand early on. While a frew problems persist, they are rather
rare and usually benign. These are expected to be addressed by System 6.0.1
(or 6.0.2, whatevfer the release ends up being called).
----
David A. Lyons, Apple Computer, Inc.
Apple II System Software Engineer
Internet:dlyons@apple.com
Solutions to common 6.0 problems!
Problems launching or returning from ProDOS 8 applications. Many users
are finding that it's a bad idea to have both ProDOS 8 2.0.1 and their RamFAST
cards *both* remapping extra devices to unused slots and drives. Solution:
Configure the RamFAST to not remap extra devices.
Problems installing to a Vulcan--the Installer asks you to insert your
hard drive. We don't know why this happens, but if you put the optional
Vulcan driver in the system, it works fine. For example, put the driver
on a copy of System.Disk, boot from System.Disk, and launch the Installer
from the Install disk. (Alternatively, you can try making room for the driver
on a copy of Install by removing unneeded scripts from the Scripts folder.)
Easy Update installs the Finder only if it recognizes a file called Start
or Finder. If you've installed ProSel 16, you should rename Start to Start.ProSel
and Old.Start back to Start before installing System 6. (Then you can use
the SetStart control panel to make ProSel 16 your startup application, if
you want.)
Check out the Shortcuts file on SystemTools2 (you can read them with
Teach).
If the mouse cursor wipes out everything it moves over, that application
does not get along with CloseView. Remove CloseView from System.Setup, or
inactivate it using Icon Info. (Leaving CloseView off is not enough; just
having it in the system is enough to cause incompatibilities.) Information
for developers on CloseView compatibility can be found in Apple IIgs Technical
Note #91, The Wonderful World of Universal Access.
EasyAccess, in System.Setup, is incompatible with some applications,
especially on ROM 1. Easy Access pre-processes keyboard input, so the keyboard
is dead if an application locks out interrupts or if the system hangs (even
Command-Control-Reset doesn't work). Easy Access provides sticky keys and
mouse keys (you can read about it in Shortcuts). If it's causing you problems,
Remove EasyAccess from System.Setup, or mark it Inactive using Icon Info.
If you used Easy Update and did not try clicking Customize, you may not
be aware of some System 6 features. Run the Installer again and browse around
--- you'll find Calculator, Find File, the HFS FST, and more.
If you don't like yellow folders in the Finder you can change the byte
at offset +65 in the Finder resource with type $C001 and ID 1. Change the
$E0 to whatever you want (the first digit is the default folder foreground
color, and the low nibble is for the outline color). Only folders that do
*not* already have a color recorded in a Finder.Data file get the default
color.
Finder icons that match by name and have a leading wildcard require uppercase
letters. For example, a name like "*.txt" never matches, but "*.TXT"
works fine (it matches regardless of a file's actual capitalization). (This
was accidental; the 5.0.4 Finder did not care about capitalization in icon
files.)
One of the earlier noted problems was the lack of a driver for the Vulcan
hard drives on the new system software. The AE supplied drivers worked fine,
but of course they were not on the new system disks. Here are a few tips
from AE John B., in the Applied Engineering section of America Online.
"The Vulcan driver and desk accessory work fine under system 6.
The problem with system 6 is that it does not like the Vulcan unless the
Vulcan's drive is installed. The installation disk does not have enough
free space to install
the Vulcan driver, but the System disk does. You should install the Vulcan
drive on the system disk and boot from that and then run the installer.
After the installer finishes you must install the Vulcan driver and desk
accessory.
"If your Vulcan crashes with a system beep while booting, try installing
a completely new system folder. You could either rename your old system
folder before installing, or drag your old system folder into the trash.
You should be sure to install the Vulcan driver also."
After receiving the help offered by these two sources, I had absolutely
no problems installing System 6.0 on my system that weren't covered. My
thanks and applause to both of these fine members of the Apple community.