Apple IIe: 40 Years Later - Savvy Sage

[@jesusestrada2784]

THANKS....!!! RECALLED MY OLD TIIMES WHEN I WAS TEACHING.........!!! WHAT A WONDERFUL COMPUTER IN THOSE DAYS.....!!! MADE GREAT DAYS FOR ALL TEACHERS.....!!!

[@TechDeals]

I received my Apple IIe for Christmas in 1984, changed my life... having a home computer like that was not common at the time and it led my down my current path.

[@april7_]

I received my Commodore 64 for Christmas in 1984 and it made a starting point to my whole professional IT career, now I am already early retired!

[@Nookdashiddole]

Being a shill for apple?

[@kirk1968]

A friend of mine's dad came home one day in 1978 with an original Apple ][. Blew my 10-year-old mind and changed my life trajectory as I'm sure it did with many others. Thanks for the flashback and history!

[@SavvySage]

No problem! Glad you enjoyed it :)

[@creed5248]

I thought my friend had to be rich to have one of these in their home growing up . Back then some folks were lucky to have two tv's ... a nice 25 inch Color tv in the living room and a 13 in Black and White in another room . LoL !!

[@kirk1968]

@@creed5248 Right?? Especially if they had a Sony Trinitron, those TVs had bright and sharp displays and cost more. Apple definitely cost more than the Atari or Commodore computers. It seems like we had the same experience growing up!

[@oceanheadted]

Yes, the colour was so amazing , still remember the day I had a go on one…

[@ModernClassic]

I know you corrected it but I admit I laughed at "pr hashtag 3". Just to be clear for anyone else, I owned an Apple II back in the day and I learned to program on one at school before that.. we all pronounced this in speech as "p r number 3" (or "p r number 7" or whatever slot you were calling). It wasn't "hash" or "number sign" or anything else, just "number". Also the "command" keys that still exist on Apple computers were just called by what they originally looked like, open-apple and closed-apple. Anyway, nice video!

[@richardbeckenbaugh1805]

Forty years later, some CNC machines still are being controlled by Apple IIe computers. It is not economically feasible to update the control software and hardware so they will be simply scrapped when the IIes can no longer be made to function. I still service these machines, along with S-100, Tandy, CP-M, HZ-89 and many others in the Pacific Northwest. Many old aircraft parts are still made on these machines. I turned 60 this year and when I’m gone there will be few left who can service these machines. I started servicing these machines when they were new, especially the S-100 machines. Those went into shops when I was a teenager and just getting started in high school. What a long strange trip its been.

[@silence8806]

I bet a lot of retro fans would be interested to see a video of these apple//e controlled CNC machines.

[@cyul]

The power indicator is not a green LED, it’s a small “grain of wheat” incandescent light bulb with a green filter.

[@SavvySage]

Interesting. At first glance, it looks similar to an LED, when it's actually not. Thanks for the tip!

[@catsaregovernmentspies]

I have never heard of a "grain of wheat bulb" before. I looked it up and now I have learned something new today. I love when that happens. Thanks

[@medes5597]

Green LEDs of that power and consistency had just been invented, and cost about $400 per LED in '77.

[@NicConstitution]

Fantastic video. Thank you for posting. My best friend's dad was a school counselor and was able to bring home a Bell+Howell Apple II+ (the black case). A few years later I was able to buy a slightly used Apple IIc of my own, which I still have (5-1/4" floppies too). This video really makes me want to dig the old girl out of mothballs and see if she has any life left. Those are some great childhood memories.

[@petercofrancesco9812]

My dad was a teacher and he brought an Apple IIe home for the summer. We loved that computer so much.

[@pcs9518]

I still have my Apple II Plus from when I was a kid. I’ve acquired many spare parts over the years because it still works and I still use it now and then. I’m so glad I got my parts and software back in the day because the prices now are insane.

[@avenueb]

wow hats off amazing that you kept that and have not upgraded yet

[@yamil.343]

How far we’ve come.. this took me back in a flash to the ‘80s.

[@Psycandy]

we had one rule in computer class at school... you could only play games if you wrote them. we had apple IIe machines and were learning pascal. at that time i got a spectrum and started making sprites; by final year only two of us were legitimately playing games in class. so that's how i got into computer graphics :)

[@johnpenner5182]

a great review - lots of good details. thx for publishing this. 👾

[@Nebulous6]

The Apple IIe is such a great general-purpose computer. They got pretty much everything right on that one. One of my favorite classic computers with a wealth of software and peripherals.

[@overdriver99]

OMG such a complete introduction of Apple II. Thank you! this is classic.

[@dave4shmups]

Awesome video on the IIe! I’m in my 40s, and I definitely remember playing games like The Oregon Trail and Lemonade Stand on the IIes at my local elementary school when I was younger.

[@tgerald]

Wow! This really brought back memories.

[@KOTYAR1]

Absolutely one of the best documentaries. Thank you so much

[@SavvySage]

Thanks for the feedback! Much appreciated. :)

[@SavvySage]

CORRECTIONS: 11:46 - Yes, I know it is the number / pound / hash sign-some people have referred to it today as the "hashtag" symbol. 12:32 - I was supposed to say "rows", not "columns". (Thank Craig for catching that!) 12:32 - There's actually 4 rows of text in mixed color mode, not three. (Thank Giovanni for catching that!) 19:45 - According to an Apple brochure from 1986, the Apple IIe Enhanced had the extended 80-column card included as standard. (Thanks Alan for catching that!)

[@andrewhussey2002]

I thought it was just called a hash symbol. Obviously, if you tag something with it then it's a hashtag. Calling it hashtag is like calling @ an attag. 😊

[@editingsecrets]

At the time it was properly called the octothorpe but most people referred to it as the number sign, from the telephones of the day. Hashtag is a modern day anachronism.

[@sataniclivesmatter]

‘The Apple LlE” lol

[@thihal123]

Definitely was not called the hashtag which is an internet era term. It was called either the pound sign or number sign

[@editingsecrets]

@@thihal123 #NotMyHashtag

[@markthibault8579]

Great video that brings back fond memories of my early days in computing. Lode Runner, Flight Simulator, and Choplifter were my favourite Apple games back in the day.

[@toneighty6083]

Sooo many hours of Lode Runner.

[@lausk9613]

Don't forget Wizardry and Ultima too

[@davidsteinberg3663]

This is excellent. Got my //e in 1983. Just an awesome machine. This video brought back so many memories. I put an alligator clip on my video card to "hack" the graphics, giving me the Double-Hi-res ability. That was a proud moment!

[@saganandroid4175]

Alligator.clip? What?

[@davidsteinberg3663]

@@saganandroid4175 Crocodile clip - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocodile_clip

[@robbieburns3564]

I bought one last year. I used to have one when I was young (saved up for 6 months). The unit I bought was low cost in incredible shape and filled with cards (including the mouse card!). It had the low priced and it has the 65C02 enhancement upgrade. I'm looking for one of those apple green CRT monitors now. They're pretty rare but still keeping an eye out!

[@DougDingus]

You did a great job educating people about this great computer! Today, one can use the machine to run programs fetched directly from the Internet using a FujiNET device, use common USB drives for storage and or running software, play game software released this year and create documents, use spreadsheets and all sorts of stuff... I got mine a long time ago and have used it as an 8 bit workstation ever since.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

7:57 The floppy controller card didn’t actually have anything resembling a floppy “controller” on it. It was basically some low-level circuitry for doing analog/digital data conversion (and I suppose stepper motor control and power on/off), and not much more. All the clever encoding/decoding stuff was done in software, written by Woz.

[@shorttimer874]

IWM, Integrated Woz Machine, if I remember correctly.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

@@shorttimer874 That was later. It would have been the guts of that card on one chip.

[@mikentx57]

I bought a //e back in late 1983. It had the expansion card to bring it to 128Kb memory and 80 columns text. One 5.25 floppy drive, a monochrome green screen monitor and an Epson MX-80 dot matrix printer that could wake neighbors down the block when it printed. All this for $2,100. Roughly $6,100 in 2023 dollars. I loved it and loved programming it. So much so that I changed my major in college from chemistry to compute science. I bought Apple Pascal that I think was about $200. it compiled code so slow you could go off and have lunch and come back. Later I discovered KYAN Pascal that would compile in a flash and ran very fast and cost only $40. I also bought an Einstein Apple Basic compiler. That actually compiled your Apple Basic code into machine language file and would run about 10 times faster than normal. As for other software that I bought and used. When I bought my //e I bought a game called "Rendezvous' a 3D space flight simulator where you could launch your rocket and rendezvous with an orbiting space station. You can imagine how slow 3D graphics could be on a 1Mhz 8 bit CPU. I also very soon bought a copy of Sublogic's "Flight Simulator". It was monochrome and you flew over a 6x6 line grid area that had two airports on it and what looked like cut out mountains on one side of the grid. A few months later, Flight Simulator II came out that was in color and had real world airports. Like everyone I had "Print Shop" that I am sure everyone else had. Other games I had (and can remember) that may ring a bell for some: The Oregon Trail. Carriers at War Pinball Construction Set

[@buckrogers5331]

Very well done! Thank you. Bought the Apple 2+ clone and had a ton of fun with it back in 1983/84. Also that was a time when folks started using it to program class lessons in effect creating the first computer lab based lessons.

[@ZenHulk]

I started on trs80, was fun, then got appleiie for my 13th birthday in 1984, used it in 3 years of programming classes in high school, had the floppy drive, monitor, we also had a commodore 64 for games.

[@Mueller3D]

Super minor geeky issue: You said that floating point has a performance cost when it came to compiling programs. Since Basic is interpreted, there is no compiling, just running. Integer basic was noticeably faster than Applesoft, but certainly more limited. It didn't have any of the hi-res graphics commands. You had to use poke & call to access those functions. One other detail that was very annoying to anyone programming the hi-res graphics: It did not have 280x192 resolution with 6 colors. It was 280x192 in monochrome. Getting colors to appear properly was a mess. Single dots would appear one color or another depending upon if they were in odd or even positions, and if the high bit was set for the byte they were stored in, it would change the available colors from green/purple to orange/blue. Any two dots next to each other would be white, though the edges would have color fringes depending upon what the single edge dots would have appeared like by themselves. All of this is due to the fact that the colors were simply an artifact of how NTSC interpreted the dots in different positions.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

I take it that didn’t work in the PAL world, then? By the way, the xscreensaver collection includes a program called “apple2”, which simulates an Apple II display in all its period authenticity, complete with the horrible colour fringing, just like you describe.

[@RobinDale50]

Correct, and the amazing thing about all the color trickery that Woz pulled was that there was no color generating circuit in the Apple II. It was all done with a monochrome signal (bits) sent and manipulation of the color signal based on those bit positions. It was a really clever design that saved chips at the time, but no other color machine after that did it that way, all subsequent color computers had "proper" color generating circuitry to output a color signal.

[@Mueller3D]

Right, for PAL, the signal was black & white only, unless you added a special card to generate the PAL color signal.

[@jacksong6226]

The power light was not an led

[@chouseification]

yeah that text on an Apple was always odd due to those tone shifts you mention - I did a bit of graphics programming in junior high in class, and making sure to poke bits was always interesting without a good reference manual (which the teacher did not have) lol

[@davidboudreau4054]

In 1982/83 I worked at Orange Micro. We made a product called The Grappler. It was a printer interface card that plugged into one of the expansion slots on the Apple ][e. I provided technical support over the telephone for the users of this product. I did my first resume on a Apple ][ and printed it on their daisywheel printer.

[@terryc7142]

My first computer contact! My Jr High School had six of them. I learned and eventually taught BASIC programming on them. Many nostalgia; such wow!

[@brolinofvandar]

My first exposure to a personal computer was an Apple II, brought into work by a fellow instructor while I was in Great Lakes as an ET-A school instructor. He worked in the office, so that's where he setup the computer. Platform instructors, like myself, would come in during breaks and whatnot and look over shoulders at the computer, which was usually being used to play text adventure games. First time I encountered the game known as both Adventure and Colossal Cave. That was around 79-80 time frame, I think. Later, in 84, on my second ship, the USS Vreeland FF-1068, the ship's Welfare & Rec had bought an Apple II (maybe a IIe?) for the crew, and it was setup in a space adjacent to our ET shop, so we sort of took care of it. Same time frame I got there, we got an EW who knew Apples well. I remember going into town with him to get an adapter to make it speak, or something like that. Also around that time frame, Dragon Magazine published a program in MS-Basic for generating AD&D characters. I can remember typing that program into that Apple, translating it into the Apple version of Basic to make it work, and saving it on a floppy disk. A floppy disk that inadvertently got bent in storage, but, I had a printout of the code. Skip forward to around 88-89 or so, and my first PC I owned, an IBM clone called a BIOS Model G. 6MHz, 640K RAM, 20Mb hard drive. On that machine, I again retyped that program, this time translating it back into MS GW-Basic (on a DOS 3.2 machine). I may still have a copy of the code...somewhere. It was quite interesting to me recently, when Colossal Cave became available on Steam in a graphical format. I've played a bit of it. The beginning, at least, is almost exactly how I pictured it in the text version. On the other hand, I think some of my "memory" of playing the game may be tricking me... There's another text adventure game we played back in the 70's on that Apple II that I've not been able to identify by memory. I recall it starting out in an "English flat", but you would go partway up a flight of stairs, jump out a window, and be on an island beach. And, from there, you have to find your way to the other side of the island and get off. Something like that. I never knew the name and haven't found a game that matches what I remember of the plot.

[@BollingHolt]

I was lucky. I bought my enhanced IIe in 2005 before "retro collecting" was a thing. $20 got me the system complete with two drives, color composite Apple monitor, super serial card, mouse, ImageWriter II, and even some original disk software. It's one of my systems that I actually keep hooked up all the time and on display in my home. I REALLY want a Platinum IIe to go along with it.

[@timopint1125]

collecting buuble will go with apple. wait a few cent.

[@BollingHolt]

@@timopint1125 I found me one since I posted that ;)

[@YourConscience-k8g]

@@timopint1125 What?!?

[@Xenonterminus5]

I just found one in brand new condition with everything (printer, drives, mouse, joystick, monitor etc. and a ton of software/floppy’s) for $400. I think it was a good deal

[@BollingHolt]

@@Xenonterminus5 Sweet!!!

[@siroyiryuu]

When I was still in elementary school 30 years ago, I used Apple IIe, and I still miss that lost time.

[@ColdRFusion]

To avoid distortion (& errors) from cassette playback you can adjust the playback volume lower than maximum. Recording volume is usually handled automatically at line level.

[@artiem5262]

I was at Apple supporting the Apple ][, Apple /// and //e during its development; the IOU and MMU were designed by Walt Broedner, who did the layout (rubylith) by hand on home-grown light tables in Bandley 3. There were a few sets of wire-wrapped CMOS equivalents for use by the software team, who switched off shifts, keeping them busy 24 by 7. Walt later did the IWM, the Integrated Woz Machine, a single-chip group coding disk controller that was widely used (at that time, just about everyone in the computer racket did MFM or M2FM disk controllers using large and expensive disk controller chips. Woz used group coding and produced a controller that was magic in comparison, and cheap). The Woz board had two 256 by 8 PROMs on it. One PROM contained the boot code, and the other was a state machine that did the magic. Incredibly exciting times at Apple in early 1981!

[@bernstock]

Brings back great memories, awesome video!

[@disconer]

Grade 11, first year computer science was introduced in 1981, these beasts were the funnest to learn from - floppy disk, we miss you

[@tomhammer1784]

Wow does this bring back memories. I purchased an Apple IIe in the mid 90s. And spend many late night programming. While I took Fortran in college I struggled with it due to the method of typing punch cards, taking them to the computer center and waiting 2 or 3 hours to get my printout. Often with several errors or it bombed completely. The nearly instant feedback with the IIe made it easy to see the errors in my logic and make instant corrections. I bought the book Basic Computer games and used some of that programming as a basis for my own by understand the logic in the programing and modifying to my application. One of my best programs was bio-rhythms which also used graphics to display that sine curve of two people to see their compatibility. Also wrote a football program with no graphics, but you would call plays and random number generators would indicate your success. Can say it was true to life as not sure of the statistics I used to generate the results. Eventually got a II gs, but the next step after that was a mac. Thanks for the trip back!

[@FrankG5874]

We had the Apple IIe in school as in 1986 Mercer County Special Services School District (Which is a regional school district in New Jersey for students with disabilities and serves the Trenton/Princeton, NJ area) signed a contract with Apple to supply the schools with computers. The partnership between MCSSSD and Apple still continues almost 40 years later.

[@BigRobChicagoPL]

I just got mine for free, including an apple black and white monochrome crt, two external 5 and a half floppy drives, and about 30 discs. It's a IIe Platinum according to friends and it lived a very hard life of running 24/7 as a factory machine controller. This is evident by the burn in on the screen of how many stacks were produced. I started collecting tech that is disappearing and think this will be a super addition. You really just don't see these anymore at all and it'll be exciting to play with BASIC and all the introduction discs. My favorite is the IIe intro disc that compares the unit to a typewriter lol. Also just realized I now finally have a computer to use my Image Writer II with

[@ckca7180]

Thank you making this video to remind my memory in the early 80s.

[@markanderson3740]

My junior/high school bought itself a lab of 20, with 4 IIg models, for the start of my grade 9 class. We somehow had 'warez' for it, Taipan being my first and 'lifetime favorite' videogame. even now I play it in a browser window. Warpig was another fabulous invention, just ran too slow to play. My last assignment was to create an animation. every traditional method I saw was tedious and so slow to redraw. I noticed the character engine was effectively instantaneous to reflect updates. So I did a ton of reading and created an assembly routine that would push new 'font description' information into the character table. I drew a little loderunner that fit in the display space, and a table to describe the visual progress. sounds good, right. i mean everyone else was tracing with a turtle onto a page, and flipping buffers at the videocard. My teacher, who had begun when i did in that lab, was usable to decipher my program (newb) AND it ran so fast that it wasn't easily distinguishable. I only got an A-. kinda killed programming for me sadly.

[@editingsecrets]

Nice overview! Free emulators are available to put a simulated Apple II window up on screen on your modern computer, as an application or in your browser, with ordinary files representing the Apple disks. A good friend in high school had one. I spent some time playing around with it. Other high school friends had Commodore and Tandy machines. Hooray, you show Lode Runner! Aw man, that Imagewriter II shot brought back memories of the loud buzzing sound it made! Fuzzy weird color artifacts on text were from an ingenious workaround by Woz to get a little more out of the very limited hardware. Very hard to read for a long period of time! Disk notcher is a brand new gadget to me. Keyboard was a huge improvement for touch typists, with Return on the home row just like a typewriter. Expansion cards should be pulled out smoothly using even pressure with a hand on each end of the card, not ripped out with a one-handed twist. We're back to video ram sharing with main ram in the new generation M chips of Apple Silicon, but with CPU and RAM all on the same chip. History of BASIC at Dartmouth and it being Microsoft's initial claim to fame, would be good subject for a history video. Also, the magazines of the day like Creative Computing that had programs to type in as well as articles and reviews. IBM was surprised by the personal computer revolution. Apple II was a huge influence on the IBM PC design including the slots.

[@mikejetzer4155]

I was in high school when the //e came out and used my //e until I replaced it with a Unix workstation around 1991. I never used the cassette port or heard of any of my friends using it. I knew it existed, but disk drives were ubiquitous.

[@fireball0762]

the guy that narrates this should do history of microcomputer videos for middle/high school students!

[@SavvySage]

That doesn't sound like a bad idea 🤔

[@ChrisRobinsonKF6NFW]

This computer launched many public schools computer lab programs. In particular. my school took advantage of this, and had I believe 16 (15 for student use 1 for instructor)of these. I was one of the first yrs students that participated. here we are 40 yrs later and now!

[@Greg_M1]

The happiest days of my life began in 1978 when I bought one of the first Apple II computers and began to learn how to program in 6502 assembly to make games. There were, of course, no guides, manuals or videos to learn from. Though, once the book Assembly Lines came out from Roger Wagner, I was set free to explore and expand. I produced Minit Man, Moebius the Windwalker, and Windwalker as a one-person production team during the first decade, doing all my own (excellent) coding, animation, design, sounds and more. Such empowerment, such "containment", meaning it's all right there in the box, nothing else required but time and imagination. Ultimately I spent 25 yrs producing computer games, the final being (much less fun) Duke Nukem 3D, the original. Yes a good game, but not fun to produce since I was now a 'creative director' managing a small local team with dozens of external contractors. Just not as much fun, nor contained. Those were the days. And though I never sought fame or self-promotion like some in your short list, I still to this day receive fan mail for Moebius and Windwalker. It's only now, with the advent of web apps using Javascript, HTML and CSS with a dash of php thrown in, that one can be a solo producer without the immense overhead the the 'big games' require. Apple II. It started things moving in the newborn personal computer world.

[@TheBasementChannel]

This is such a great showcase and roundup of the model. Excellent video.

[@SavvySage]

I'm glad you enjoyed it!

[@stpworld]

i foud. a lost vhs that talks all about how the IIGS is made and it has steve waz

[@JavisoGaming]

Awesome video! Thanks!!!

[@JohnAranita]

This was the first computer I've used. It was difficult. It was in a back room of a science classroom in high school.

[@darktetsuya]

oh this was a blast from my past! in grade school this was the first computer I ever used. surprised to learn there were even more apple command codes than the ones I already knew. was definitely blown away when I discovered the IIGS upgrade, though.

[@henrypile2385]

Great video, and it brings back memories! I had the chance to build my own Apple ][ buying an empty clone motherboard and soldering all components onto it. Had to burn the AppleSoft EPROMs as well… In the end it had all necessary expansion cards (80char, Z80, floppy I/f, clock, RAM expansion) and a modified character EPROM as well. Two floppy drives with switchable 40/80 tracks and faster DOS served as storage. I used it for a long time, in the end it was surpassed by my Amiga 2000 (for obvious reasons), but I still used it in parallel for some more years.

[@TacianoPerez]

Brilliant video. All core facts are there, with no fluff. Excellent editing too.

[@SavvySage]

Thank you so much!

[@StevenWeyhrich]

nice summarization of the Apple IIe! Well done!

[@storm1968eu]

our middle school had 5 Apple IIe. in the summer of 1985 i took a one week informatics introduction course with 9 other pupils. so we had to share the 5 computers. i learned to work with it, and learn to program in basic. going to the Tandy electronics hardware store to buy one 5,25" floppy disk for the course was an adventure on its own. i still have it somewhere. a few months later i bought my very first micro computer, a Sinclair QL. so not a Commodore 64 like most kids got. i spent hours and hours on it programming the silliest routines in SuperBasic, and to play a game of QL Jabber (shooting all sorts of virusses) now and then. a year later i decided to become an industrial engineer.

[@DanielSchulz-e5h]

Hmmm, besides Basic wasn't there also a way to program in Assembler? If I recall correctly it was started with some poke commands, or was it by typing 'call -151'?

[@michaelmicek]

Yeah, the "monitor", with the CALL. (Not to be confused with the CRT display.) That allowed you to display and change contents of memory byte by byte in hexadecimal. You could also do that in BASIC using decimal with PEEK and POKE of course. There was also mini-assembler if you had Integer BASIC loaded.

[@jacksonj3082]

WOW - used the IIc with VisiCalc in early 80's

[@1teamski]

One of my favorite memories in middle school was sneaking into the computer lab that was equipped with Apple II's with my buddy. We had two floppies with us: Flight Sim and Castle Wolfenstein. We had a ball just trying to figure out the games while sitting there in the dark of the room. That era really brought the imagination to a new high.......

[@DumbBunny5328]

Quick correction (probably already mentioned) The very early IIes used a keyboard that more resembled the II plus with beige keys with larger white centred text. Also, the IIe’s power light is still an incandescent bulb but it has a green filter over it

[@SavvySage]

Yes, the keyboard bit is brought up at 2:57

[@basketballsteve54]

I logged thousands of hours using the Apple IIe, good memories.

[@mihispemdedisti]

My grandma had one of these. I remember playing a terrific Star Wars game, where you recreate the attack on the Death Star. There was also an Amazon Trail game; I just remember getting eating by snakes a lot. Miss you, Grandma!

[@JonathanEzor]

My first computer! Thanks for this!

[@ThePianoPutterer]

Well done! A great arrangement. Thanks for the sheet music... I'm looking forward to giving it a try. Keep up the great work!

[@RudysRetroIntel]

Excellent work and video! Thanks for sharing

[@xheralt]

I knew someone who owned an Apple Lisa, saw it in his house back in the day -- a (classic absent-minded) university professor of industrial art and design. He's always preferred Macs, making him an early precursor of what would become Apple's core constituency...artsy types with more money than sense.

[@BollingHolt]

Truly excellent and thorough video!

[@SavvySage]

Thanks!

[@btceth4714]

Had one of these as a kid-- was upgraded to the 128K and Mockingboard C

[@chouseification]

I was actually in the MECC offices a few times back in the day. They were right in my school district, so they used us as a testing site - Oregon Trail was fun, but Lake Odell was way better (same general idea though). I forget the name, but my favorite was a title where you assembled logic puzzles - they were teaching people boolean logic via "games" - that game used a mouse on the Apple IIe computers.

[@VaporheadATC]

We used these in school. We would play Oregon Trail and other programs. We would constantly swap video monitor connections around so you would be typing on someone else's screen, etc. lol

[@rmr24]

I still remember unboxing my brand new Apple IIe, exciting times!

[@slporter]

I did all of my highschool homework on this machine. We even made film credits for my film class on the IIe. The only reason we had it was my mother won a prize from Reader's Digest so they spent that cash on the family computer. Thanks, Mom! I wanted a PC because our school was PC not MAC but I'm glad we had it as college offered both and it made it easy to move between systems.

[@smalltownMainer]

my iie enhanced from 86 has the filter caps in the iec power socket, they are the disk style. and for the processor mine has the rockwell 6503.

[@randywild6900]

In 1984, at a computer store in New Orleans, there was a line of about 10 people waiting to buy a IIe. When I got in the store, I saw many computers still in boxes on the floor. They were selling fast. I had my IIe for many years.

[@cascadesouthernmodeltrains7547]

My favorite games from the Apple II days were Robot Odyssey and Taipan. And I used to write programs for all sorts of tasks in Apple Basic. My earth science teacher asked the class to figure out when the C and F temps were the same. He had just given us the conversion formula. I asked if I could use the computer in class for this. He said he didn’t have a calculator program for the computer. I told him I didn’t need it for a calculator. He said sure, knock yourself out. I wrote a simple program that did the conversion and compared the results, if the results didn’t match it would subtract one from the base number and try again. It took me about 2 minutes to write the program and less than a second to get the answer. I got a couple extra points for writing the program.

[@yogiyoda]

I had no idea the Apple IIe was capable of displaying color! My dad bought it with a green and black monitor so I thought it couldn't do color. I have fond memories of the IIe. We got it when I was around 10 years old and I didn't use another computer until college. Had lots of fun programming and gaming. I guess it came in useful for typing up school assignments to be printed out on our screeching dot-matrix printer too!

[@k4vms]

The Xerox Start system was the first IT system commercially released with a graphical user interface. The Star was developed at the Xerox PARC where Steve Jobs first saw a graphical user interface and recruited engineers to develop the MAC. Ricky from IBM(Formerly of Apple Computer / Apple)

[@FarrellMcGovern]

I had a high school co-op placement at an Apple Education lab with the Carleton Board of Education in Ottawa. We saw all the newest tools and programs for the Apple 2 computers. We even had a LAN for them, the Corvus Constellation. I taught myself LOGO and ended up teaching high school teachers LOGO programming. We even had a Terripin floor turtle which was a robot connected to an Apple that would run around on the floor, and had a pen in it. If you put out paper, you could have it draw the same things that were drawn on the screen in LOGO. Fun times.

[@LenTexDIY]

My favorite game was Lode Runner! Thanks for the memories

[@xheralt]

Apple Trek. *E....#..K* pew. pew. pew. pew. BOOM!

[@MoLewis57]

Got an Apple II+ in late 1982, when I was taking a a computer science course in the 7th grade ( My public junior high school that had 20-year old text books that were falling apart remarkably also offered a computer science elective that taught programming in AppleSoft BASIC ). I can't even count how many hours I spent in the basement writing program to amuse myself and my friends ( text games, graphic games, and programs that drew fancy pictures, programs that tried to pick which football team would beat the spread ( It didn't work better than a coin flip. Each week I would enter all the scores of all the games, and when it game time to pick the games, I would combine the point differential of each team with the point differential of all its opponents ( strength of schedule factor ) , to give each team an expect point differential and then compare the two teams playing to calculate which team would beat the spread. However, the fatal flaw was that I neglected to account for home field advantage and injuries ), etc. ). Buying that Apple II+ was a gigantic investment for my Dad, but it was worth it, as now both his sons have had long and successful careers as software developers.

[@phbrinsden]

I had a II+ in early 80s when my kids were in middle school. THEIR children are now a Marine and an analyst in Deloitte. I’m now 80 but enjoy an MBAir M2 with Studio monitor. How times have changed. I kind of miss the dot matrix buzz.

[@jimdevilbiss9125]

We had an original Apple to with integer, basic to describes and a fanfold printer. The school had two of them. My wife guidance counselor scheduled the entire school using the three apples. Took the most part of the weekend, but it was the smallest amount of conflicts ever produced at the time.

[@SuperWindows78]

Dang this did better than the technology showdown videos and it’s only been 10 months

[@SavvySage]

Probably for the better

[@RockwellAIM65]

Applewriter II had a programming language that is worth looking at. I used it to manage databases until dbase-ii became available on the IBM PC, where we typically had larger drives + datasets to play with. I never bought an Apple ][ until year 2000... the equipment always just kind of landed in my lap when it was new + I would use it until someone wanted the machine. That's how it was... many of us never paid for hardware we just had machines going through our possession then after awhile they'd go back to their owner with some modicum of work done, which they typically thought was AMAZING!

[@Bobrogers99]

Back in the 80s, I assembled a computer lab in our little rural school from cast-off Apple IIe units donated by residents and other schools as well as IIc units from a federal grant. Even with my limited tech knowledge I found it easy to pirate from some donated computers to make the others functional. Along with Imagewriter printers we had a complete lab at no cost to the taxpayer! Those IIe units were popular with schools because they were so durable.

[@saganandroid4175]

How does a 1983 computer have an area marked CD ROM 4:30 on the mobo?

[@SavvySage]

The CD ROM in particular is one of the system chips if I recall-despite it using the term CD however, it has nothing to do with the compact discs that were just coming out around that time.

[@InitialiseDisk]

Great video! You’ve taught me a lot so thanks.

[@joyoflego-]

Apple II Forever !!

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

5:55 Quite a few used Z-80 chips (guess where the “80” in “TRS-80” came from).

[@SavvySage]

Well aware of that, I've done my research 😅

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

@@SavvySage “Used on pretty much every home computer of the time”

[@SavvySage]

@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 I was obviously overexaggerating-many of the popular systems from that era in the US (aside from PC Compatibles and the Macintosh) used the 6502 (or compatible) CPU, but there were plenty that used the Z80, such as the TRS-80 like you mentioned.

[@stormykeep9213]

My dad got a IIe around '83/'84, it was our first PC. I remember as a kid he had this subscription to an Apple magazine called "Nibble." In it were free games, not on disk but it was the code for them. You had to just copy the code and play. My dad would change the game's creator name to either mine or my brother's....we would get a kick out of seeing our names pop up on the game's loading screen 🙂I still have some our store bought games from it as well.

[@Bigoukun]

Ah, the Apple2e… My dad had one, he made me play on it as a kid. (It already was an antique back then.) He still have it, but I don't know if it still work.

[@rager1969]

I'm partial to ADT Pro, but you need a Super Serial card in your Apple II (built-in on the IIc and IIgs), a serial cable and a Windows computer with a serial port.

[@Xenonterminus5]

I just found one in brand new condition with everything (printer, drives, mouse, joystick, monitor etc. and a ton of software/floppy’s) for $400. I think it was a good deal

[@jsngallery]

i have one!! complete with all the boxes, books, stickers, etc. it’s the upgraded one to Apple IIe plus. microzines, indiana jones game, page maker, etc.

[@scoogy2]

I used both the ll+ and lle at work at an Apple Developer (Clear Light) in Florida.

[@phbrinsden]

My first computer was Apple II+ with a 9 pin dot matrix. I had to use PC at work but now I’m 81 and I love MBAir M2 and iPad Air M1. etc.

[@bronwynecg]

I had one of these as a kid and I LOVED LOVED programming (more like typing in ) BASIC with it from some books my uncle gave me. I swear I'd be a programmer right now if only I could have figured out how to save stuff on that thing >_

[@MrFloydBiggles]

I swear I thought exactly what you said except mine was a IIc

[@jescis]

I take it you didn't have a cassette recorder and the audio plugs connected, or anything to tell you (by books or magazines) about the commands SAVE & LOAD for cassette tapes 😁😁🖖🖖😉😉

[@bronwynecg]

@@jescis I had the floppy drive and for the life of me I do not recall ever seeing the command... To be fair, the books I had were aimed at adults so I presume it thought you already knew about the save command, so..... 😅 I **do** remember trying the save command on my own which never seemed to work anyway...

[@jescis]

@@bronwynecg well I was going to mention the BLOAD and BSAVE commands, but I didn't know you had the Disk Drive, those two commends are for loading and saving on disk the previous comment commands were for saving and loading from tape 😉😉

[@gklinger]

Very well done!

[@Christopher-N]

Back then, I thought the 'e' in Apple IIe meant it was an "educational" unit, specifically intended for schools (which is where I encountered it).

[@RealPlaystation4ThePlayers1995]

Can you play DOOM For Apple IIe?

[@TheCheekymonkey212]

Sweet Jesus, I used apple II in junior high and I’m now 42. I feel old.😂

[@jamesdye4603]

I took a programming course in HS and the computers we used were AppleIIE.