So, a few things. It sounded like you were expecting the disk commands to exist in ROM, but they don’t. Both DOS and ProDOS were loaded off bootable disks into RAM. ProDOS was designed to have similar commands as DOS for the most part, but the disk format was completely different. DOS used the CATALOG command, which ProDOS also supports, but for the latter it displays a catalog for an 80-column screen. CAT was the ProDOS command for displaying a catalog in 40 columns. Also, all DOS and ProDOS commands can be made to work on drive 2 by adding ,D2 to the end of the command.
Also should mention that at the time of the ][+ computer you also had 13 and 16 sector disk formats. 13 sector dos disk formats were kind of phased out by 1980 or so. But they were relatively frequently found early on (I say relatively, as in the beginning 'disk' drives were not common. When the ][+ came out (1977-1978) you were hard pressed to find a consumer disk drive and most still loaded from cassette tape.
@@mica7191 These Apple computers are not Macintoshes, they're the computers Apple made before they came out with the Mac. There also was some overlap - for quite some time you could buy either an Apple II model or a Mac. Apple did make other computers over the years, but the Apple II series and the Macintosh family were the most successful ones. Don't feel bad for not knowing this; there was a time when I didn't either. Welcome to today's lucky 10,000! (
I remember on the Apple 2e I typed PR#2 or PR#3 to make whatever you type on the screen to print as you press the buttons The PR#3 or PR3 the screen changed from being 40 lines to 80. The font changed to small and it looked cool The ISA slots were because of Wozniak Wise fought to get 8 expansion slots and jobs only wanted to 1 for a printer and one for a modem. Wozniak and a lot of the programmers wanted open source with maximum number of ISA slots Steve Jobs wanted a machine that was a hundred percent proprietary that would not work with anything else or any other hardware That's why this machine has the expansion slots but none of the other ones do And statues of him in every city
Oh, man. The memories came flooding back when you showed that BASIC manual. When I saw the cover I instantly remembered that that's how I learned how to program in Apple BASIC back in the day. Good times.
I remember setting up Apple 2 family of computers for a school district. Most of the manuals were sent to the dumpster! I mean we had so many and no one but us three techs had any use for them! And after a while we didnt even need them!
Watching this, I felt just like that Christmas morning in 1988 when I got my Apple IIe Clone (TK3000 IIe in Brazil). I must have spent the whole day reading the manual, learning commands and trying to list/load the two disks I had. Thanks!
The traditional slot for the floppy controller was slot 6, not slot 7. And you could still boot from a floppy without the language card’s autostart ROM by typing PR#6 at the BASIC prompt.
Agreed, though it's PR# and whatever port is to be "printed" to. You can technically have as many cards as slots. #3 is usually 80 column card iirc. Other defaults were established as standards in various software packages.
@@saganandroid4175 since the most common slot for floppies is #6, the instruction demands that the system print to slot 6, initiating the card, which causes a load from floppy.
We used Apple IIe computers in 1983 junior high computer class. That was my favorite class and learned the most. I remember the Apple II series in high school, as well, with Apple Writer printer and other accessories. We had the Commodore 64 at home, programming was different but had some similarity too.
>Apple Writer printer You mean Imagewriter printer. Apple writer was a word processing package. imagewriter was the printer. the original imagewriter was a rebranded C. Itoh printer with a custom rom.
Thanks for the video. Just a suggestion when you are drilling out a rivet use a bigger drill bit and drill so the larger part of the rivet falls off, and you just push the center pin into the case. That way you will not have metal bits inside the power supply.
As others have pointed out, typing "PR#6" would reboot from the floppy. Another less known feature was that you can redirect input from a slot, also. The II+ systems I used had teletypewriters attached to slot 3, if you wanted to type on the teletype keyboard instead of the Apple keyboard, you would type "IN#3" and it would shift keyboard focus to the teletype.
Oh, that’s wonderful. I presume you could hook-up the serial output back to the Teletype as well, and have two separate locations to use the Apple II from!
Somewhere between 30 to 40 years later and I learn IN#3. I had a Z80 card in my II clone and never knew how to use it. I assume that would have at least done something interesting.
The correct command for listing directory is "CATALOG." "CAT" was a shortcut added in ProDOS, which is why it didn't work when you booted the earlier DOS 3.3 master disk. Also the Apple II series don't have DOS built in, you have to load it from diskette. So even if you had used the correct "CATALOG" command earlier in the video (before booting the master disk) it would have come back at you with "?SYNTAX ERROR" anyway. You can optionally add "Sx" and/or "Dx" (separated by commas) to access a drive other than the one you booted from. "Sx" = "slot X" (what slot the drive you want to access is plugged into) and "Dx" for drive (1 or 2). So, "CATALOG,S5,D2" would view the directory of the 2nd drive attached to the controller in Slot 5. "CATALOG,D2" would view the directory of the disk in Drive 2 on the controller which you booted DOS from. To interrupt a BASIC program, use CONTROL-C. Using the RESET button works, but is more of a "using a hammer to kill an ant" method, it works but is kinda overkill, because it resets a lot of stuff. (for example, if you were in a graphics mode, using the RESET button would dump you back into text mode, whereas if you had used CONTROL-C you would stay in graphics mode.) You can warm boot the machine, there is no need to power cycle every time you want to switch disks. Just type PR#x, where x is the slot of the disk controller where you want to boot from. It will boot from Drive 1 (the first drive) attached to said controller. By convention, disk controllers are installed in Slot 6, however there is nothing preventing you from installing it to any other slot, with the proviso that boot ROMs (such as the one on the language card) are usually hardcoded to expect the disk controller in slot 6. A lot of commercial Apple II games either use their own proprietary disk operating system, or are just "bare metal" (just raw binary data written to the disk) so they wouldn't show anything (or would show an I/O error or somesuch) using the CATALOG command. You just boot those by either turning on the computer with them in the drive, or you can do the PR#x command to warm boot. You can get into the machine language monitor by typing "CALL - 151." (note, there is no space between the minus sign and the letter 1, I had to put one in there because TH-cam interprets it as a text format command for strikethrough text. :P) And if you find yourself dropped into the monitor for whatever reason, you can get back to DOS/BASIC by typing "3D0G" (the number 3, letter D, number zero and letter G. I just think of the band "Three Dog Night" to remember this. ;- ))
Actually many early games used a licensed and modified DOS 3.3. 4am’s _Passport_ program automatically uses the games own RWTS disk routines to read the game and write it out as a normal DOS 3.3 disk. Some game use ProDOS. Many Br0debund titles use Roland Gustafsson’s 18 sector/track RWTS disk functions.
The 3D0G advice does work, however doing Ctrl+C (C presumably meaning "continue") from the monitor is faster/easier/etc. Both will transfer execution to the warmstart vector at $3D0 in memory. Whatever software is running will usually place a jump instruction there that will get you back to said software. This is most commonly BASIC, thus you will see in a lot of places that this "reenters BASIC without deleting your program", however this will work for lots of other software, and is not limited to BASIC.
The IIGS is a wonderful addition especially since you have two rarer and highly sought aspects; the first is you have a Woz edition, which is mentioned in other comments, and the IIGS chiclet style ADB keyboard, which is what caught my attention. It was Apple’s first ADB keyboard and was only sold with the IIGS. It works with any ADB Mac from the SE to the Blue and White G3 tower. These keyboards often got repurposed for use with Macs and are often harder to find then the IIGS.
The Woz edition is no more sought after than the non-Woz versions - they're very common (I believe something like 50,000 were made with the silk-screened signature).
Yep, the reason you could not "cat" some of the disks was because they were formatted for the wrong OS. The games disks were DOS, while the disk you booted from was ProDOS. The formats are different. copy II Plus can read the catalog for either OS. also, the ROM on the "language card" (the ram card) is intended for non "plus" original apple II computers, and it upgrades the machine from the original integer only basic to applesoft floating point basic. The ][ plus already has applesoft built in. also, you can swap out the character rom on your ][ plus, located on the motherboard under the keyboard, to have lowercase. Doing so replaces inverse text with lowercase. It's a regular 2716 pinout rom or eprom. Most people just would buy an 80-column card for lower case, though. word processing on 40 columns sucks. (not that a ][/]] plus 80 column card is NOT the same as the //e 80 column cards. the one for the ][/][ plus goes in a regular slot, usually slot 3, while the one for the //e goes in a special 80 column card slot. The best and rarest 80 column card for a II plus would be a videx ultra term. That could do 128 columns on a mono monitor. also also, as you found out, there are 2 types of disk drive connectors and controller cards. Drives made for the //e, //c and //gs have the db-19 connectors. The original drives for the ][ and ][ plus use the rectangular pin connectors. The electronics and signaling are the same, though (at least for the 5.25 inch drives. Not so for the 3.5 inch drives). People have made adapter cables to plug either type of 5.25 drive into either type of controller. The IIgs will work with any of the apple disk drives that have a db-19 connector. there is a card that will allow an apple //e, ][+, or ][ to use an apple 800K double sided 3.5 inch drive (called the "LIRON" card) , and a DIFFERENT card (that is rarer) which will allow an apple 1.44 (1.88) meg 3.5 inch drive (called the "superdrive" controller). There are drivers for the IIGS 16 bit OS (GSOS) that will let you read 3.5 inch MS-DOS disks on the IIgs! The apple 3.5 inch drives used a variable speed spindle motor that allowed more sectors to be stored on the outer tracks. So double density disks got 800 meg, while HD disks got 1.8 meg. apple never made double density or double sided 5.25 inch drives. 3rd party manufacturers did, and sold them with a patched version of dos that could use them. Also, if you have a scsi card for the IIgs, it can read Macintosh formatted HFS partitions (but not MS-DOS scsi partitions). The scsi card will also work in a ][ or ][ plus, but only with prodos. Both prodos and GO/OS have a partition size limit of 32 megabytes. apple made a hard drive called the "profile" that used a proprietary interface card. Interface cards were available for the II series and the Apple ///. It could also plug into a built in port on the apple lisa. The profile came in 5 and 10 megabyte versions. These are very very rare. the IIgs can also be booted off of an apple talk network (via the serial ports on the iigs) from a macintosh file server running the right software on MAC OS system 7.x If you can find one of the rare apple talk to ethernet bridges made by asante, people have hacked together linux software that will emulate a mac file server that will let you network boot a IIgs.
Actually, his biggest problem is that the AppleSoft command is CATALOG, not CAT. ProDOS let you use CAT to do 40-column directory listing, while CATALOG did 80-column.
@@heliumphoenix Catalog is actually a dos 3.3 or 3.2 command, not applesoft. Boot straight to applesoft without a boot disk, and you have no disk commands at all.
Great video, I love your excitement at powering it up! I remember seeing an Apple ][ for the first time at the 1978 Royal Easter Show in Sydney, Australia. Very exciting stuff, I dimly recall they had the onlookers lining up to play Breakout. The RESET key on the earlier ]['s used to result in a great deal of annoyance to users. There were numerous fixes published in computer magazines of the day, some involved loading a reset-prevent program off cassette after power-on, another was to fold and tape a piece of cardboard into a square tube and place it over the key. Other methods involved soldering/soddering a pushbutton switch in series. But IMO the most elegant solution was to lift the keycap and place an O-ring on the key stem, making it harder to push. The top panel clips were made IIRC by 3M. Interestingly, Apple were not the first to use these on a computer. Digital Equipment Corporation used exactly these same clips on their PDP-9 computer back in the late 60s. I have some of these myself. The little posts do tend to break, and, as you have discovered like many other Apple ][ owners, they were never stuck down terribly well... :)
I'm sure someone below said it but many games are self-booting disks so always try them as boot disks. You can't run the CATALOG command (used in DOS 3.2, 3.3) on them because they often use their own disk format. This video takes me back to grade school when I was first exposed to Apple ][ and ][ plus machines. Great stuff.
Put the controller in slot 6 not slot 7 because most software was written to look at slot 6. Disks written for Dos can not be read by prodos. Boot up Dos 3.3 or prodos then put in a disk, type "catalog" to list files, as you found out prodos can use " cat" or catalog. To change drive type a command and designated drive. Example: CATALOG D2 IT will then address drive 2 until you switch back to drive 1 by CATALOG D1 IF YOU HAVE ANOTHER CONTROLLER for total of 4 drives say in slot 5, to switch type CATALOG S5,D1. IF YOU a to see drive 2 since slot 5 is activated just type CATALOG D2, so you have to add the slot variable and the drive variable to switch to the drive, you can use slot 7 but most commercial self booting disk may not work because they are hard cider to look for slot 6. Slot 7 is used mostly for hardrives or RGB video cards. Slot 4 COM cards, slot 3 for eighty column cards. Slot 2 serial cards. Slot 1 parallel cards or memory cards 128k to 3 meg. Slot 0 language card or Rom language card.or memory cards as previously mentioned, any questions drop me an email
i have had a apple ii plus for a year now that i got from my grandfather and i have been keeping it on the back burner while i work on my amiga 500, looking at this video i might have to look at it sooner.
The Apple ][ drives were super cheap, but they *WILL* read a peanut butter sandwich, if you can fit it into the drive. Simplicity was the word of the day. The downside was the 6502 had to do everything. There is a reason the Apple ][ series had some of the best copy protection methods for floppy disks ever. Because you could do crazy shenanigans with the hardware, because it was so basic. Half tracking, quarter tracking, track arcing, you name it.
Great start in getting it together but several mistakes... Diskdrive card belongs on Slot 6; The Language card is in Slot 0, and then count to six to put the disk drive in slot 6. There should be 1 slot left as slot 7. Language card does not have a ROM. That is a Glue Logic or PROMs for the management of the 16K added RAM. In Dos 3, you use "Catalog" or "Director" to get the disk listing. In Pro Dos, it is "Cat" or "Dir" You were right on the Printer card needing to be serial. The Apple Suer Serial Card is the best option to get but the older Serial cards would be Period Correct for that machine. You can also get other cards fo the Apple II, like the CP/M Card (goes into Slot 5 or 7) and an 80-column card (goes into Slot 3). You need to decide how you want that Apple to be set up and then get the needed cards for it.
For the Europlus, the PAL colour card went in slot 7. Also used for RGB cards, I never actually saw one of those working myself back in the day as RGB monitors were too expensive for anyone I knew to afford.
Me too. Bought in 1981 when our family knew nothing about computers and my dad was offered the Apple II+ with 48K and the Integer Basic card installed for a reduced price... as I later found out, 48K was the full complement on the board - more than the computers (not Apples) at school had when they were purchased 6 months later!
The ram in the II plus is not made by Fairchild. It was made by Fujitsu. Fairchilds logo was just an 'F' or a stylized 'ƒ'. Fujitsu on the other hand is the F with lines over top and bottom.
Fantastic video! Brings back a lot of memories. In the early 80s (1982) my High School only had a handful of computers, The "computer room" had two Apple II machines (both with a single floppy drive), a Microbee (an Australian computer), a HUGE Canon programmable calculator and a kit computer based on the Signetics 2650 CPU that was designed by Electronics Australia magazine. I was part of a die-hard bunch that would rush to the room during lunch breaks to be first on the Apple machines. Fun times.
Same here. In 1980 (might have been 1981) my high school's Maths Department in Sydney originally had two 2650 machines (not kits, but built by a company in Sydney) that were the first purpose-designed Australian educational school computer (predating the Microbee by a few years), these were always breaking down because the students thought it was fun to rub their feet on the carpet and 'zap' the steel case, which broke them. They then had to be sent away for servicing (again). They were replaced by Apple ]['s after a year or so. We also had two(?) huge Canon Canola punched-card programmable calculators with nixie tubes too!
We had Apple IIs in computer class in high school circa 1987. Even then I knew they were out of date and there were better systems. I already knew some BASIC programming because I had a TI-99 at home.
I'm a bit disappointed you hadn't read up on the floppy controllers. It's one of Woz's signature designs along with the NTSC color output. What Woz did was to move all the complexity of the floppy controller into carefully timed software. They bought the drives without much logic because they didn't need that logic.
This is how I first come to terms and experience when I had my first apple 2, back then you didn't have all those community groups support or internet, so back in those days it was by way of books, reading material, magazines and experimenting. (which mind you those apple 2 books were quite expensive and out of reach).
Your palpable joy during the video reminds me of mine back in high school when I used these and learned to do all sorts of interesting things on these (I graduated in 1984). These machines are what ignited my love for computers that lasts to this day. You haven't lived til you have bought a copy of Byte magazine and loaded the program inside it... by typing all the binary on the pages (to be fair it also showed where the variables and other important bits were and that helped me learn programming)... if you typo'ed anything, you wound up going back and checking each and every byte til you found the error. Yep, not on a disk, printed on a page. And yeah ,it was easy to yank the top off and wind up with the glued upper half still attached to the lower half and not the lid, if the thing was a few years old. I actually ran my ribbon cable to the middle bigger slot in the back since I had no card there. less tension on the cable. A strip of scotch tape across the top of the slot to keep the ribbon from getting caught in the lid. OH, the sound of those drives, just like I remember... thanks for this video and have fun! Oh yeah, we had an Appletalk network to a Corvus Constellation network (hard) drive the size of a II+ we could store stuff on. fun hack target.
Things missing from the box are the Apple DOS manual and floppies, Apple BASICS manual, and a general operations manual. That second PCB under the keyboard is the add-in card that gives it upper and lower case.
Some quick notes: Dos commands refer to the most recent disk unless you specify a different slot (,s#), disk (,d#) or both. Slot 6 is the default floppy slot, but 5-7 will work. pr# to activate a card or in# to redirect input from a card. int activates the faster integer basic. init formats a disk and tells it to run first. catalog for the disk catalog. dos commands can be embedded in basic programs with the ctrl-d (character 4) inside print statements. The catalog with have an "A" or a "B" to indicate the difference between applesoft and binary programs, the latter using the brun, bload and bsave commands. The cassette interface looks kinda like rca connectors but they are microphone (3.5 mm) if I recall, but nobody used them unless maybe for audio (muse voice, for example, to load samples).
This was my first computer more than forty years ago. It came with a programming language built in and a listing of the entire operating system in the manual - something you don't see much of today. For more than $1,000 there was no mouse, no display and no mass storage. I hooked it up to my TV that I used vice-grips to change the channel of and stored programs on a cassette recorder.
I remember the command being the whole word "CATALOG". I remember this, because as a hunt and pecking 12 year old, CATALOG was the first word I learned to type really fast.
I wrote and compiled a lot of FORTH embedded firmware using an Apple 2+ back in the day. By the way, many logic chips were more susceptible to static damage 40 years ago. Sometimes it pays to use a static strap. But, likely, most users/owners would not bother even then.
Funny story: When Apple developed the Disk II, they asked Shugart for stripped mechanisms. Shugart sent them defective samples to work with, because they wanted Apple to buy more expensive, fully loaded drives. Apple's engineers got the defective mechanisms working anyway, and asked for more. The Apple II does most of its disk management in software. That's why the drive electronics and disk controller could be so simple compared to, say, Commodore's. The drives don't even have a limit switch; when they power up, they just send the head "out" enough times that it has to be back on track 0 no matter where it was when it was shut off.
How can you possibly talk about the original Disk ][ floppy drive and not mention the fact that Steve Wozniak himself designed it? Of the 25 drive prototypes, 19 of the Shugart SA390 drives actually did work with no issue, the remaining did not. The only other engineer involved in design was Cliff Huston who mainly worked on optimizing Wozniak's design for a production line and he was the one who got the remaining defective SA390 drives to work. He assumed all the drives were working and the problem was just a calibration and timing issue, which is what the "defect" actually was with those Shugart drives. The design of the Floppy drive is considered even more brilliant and elegant then the Apple II itself, not to mention highly profitable. Woz took what originally required 40+ chips down to 9 chips that could be manufactured for
That missing track 0 switch is why they make all that racket when they start seeking. They also don't use the index hole. They do have a write protect notch sensor however. So you need to cut both sides to write to both sides when flipping the disk.
The ROM on the Language Card only adds the ability of the system to autoboot a card with ROM like the Disk II Controller with the Apple II's firmware ROMs, not the II+'s. The II+ firmware does not need that extra ROM to scan the slots for bootable code.
26:23: On the _non-velcro but velcro-like_ lid-holding things: Yes, they're stock. Yes, it's pretty common for one to come unstuck. Some TH-camr had a solution for how to glue them back on, because you need to bond them REALLY solidly, because there's quite some pull on them, but unfortunately I forgot whose video I watched that in and what the solution was, so someone else will have to help with the particulars.
My guess would be acetone rather than just superglue or epoxy, but I haven’t seen the video you’re referring to so that’s just based off of other plastics experience. It creates a weld rather than just a bond, so it should hold up to the force.
@@kaitlyn__L As I recall, the "velcro" is held on by double-sided tape. My II+ is in storage so I cannot verify this, although I distinctly remember that when one of mine fell off 40+ years ago there was a thick black sticky tape on the back of the velcro pad and it had lost enough stickiness to come loose.
For the drilling you can get drill stops that wrap around the drill bit. I’ve used them when drilling into walls without knowing where mains wires were. Reduces stress sooooooo much.
I'll always have fond memories of the Apple ][+ being the first computer I ever touched in kindergarten (back in the days when a school would only have one or two of them in the library.) I was one of just two lucky kids in my class to get to try it out. And the ][e was the first I learned to program on, so you can imagine my wanting to say "CATALOG" when you were trying to read the diskettes.
My first computer with a timecard, 2 apple cat 1200 bd modems, 6 1.2M floppies, greyscale (ega) monitor, 10MB HD about the size of a small suitcase, running Fidonet and celerity bbs (the darkside). BBS door games were the best (The Pit), Karatika was a great game, Temple of Apshai, Ultima II, ect.. The good old days. Thanks for the video, put a big smile on my face.
The Apple II+ has two BASIC options, one is Applesoft BASIC, which is what you were using (with the "]" prompt.) The other is Integer BASIC, which can be loaded off floppy into the language card. Integer BASIC uses the ">" prompt. And as the name implies, it only handles integer math, no floating point. Programs on floppy can be listed as "A" = Applesoft, "I" = Integer, "B" = Binary, "T" = Text. You need to have Integer BASIC loaded in order to run "I" type files.
I'm assuming Integer BASIC is also the older and less capable of the two (in more ways than just lack of floating-point support), and dates back to the days before BASIC on ROM was a thing?
@@stevethepocket integer basic was written by steve wozniac, it was pretty "basic" (obviously no fp maths etc) steve jobs apparently kept telling wozniac to upgrade it to better cope with users requirements and competing computers, he never did, so they ended up contracting microsoft to write applesoft basic.....integer basic was held in roms on early apple 2s, the language card was a paged 16k ram card that overlayed the 16k rom area so you could load in either integer or applesoft basic into the language card , most apple 2s come with applesoft so to run any integer basic programs , you had to load integer basic into the 16k language card in order to run these older basic programs.....
The sound that the computer made when you turn it off/on gave me flashbacks instantly. The beep and jiggling sound the disk drive makes 😂. I haven’t heard that sound in like 35 years.
I had an Apple IIe, and if I remember correctly, it had the same style of not quite Velcro fastener on the lid as yours does. I wasn't the original owner, however, so it may have been an aftermarket addition.
Only the controller and the drive electronics are non-standard; the actual drive itself is a shugart mechanism) Boot order is 7-6-5... but most people (and later versions of ProDOS) use 7 for 3.5", 6 for 5.25", and 5 for HD. The 80 Col card is almost always slot three.
The PAL colour card (for using a US NTSC Apple II+ with a PAL TV) slotted into 7 because the video signal is also supplied to that slot as I vaguely recall.
I grew up with the Apple ][e and took an Apple ][c to college. I always loved the sound of the disk drives booting up. We had the joystick and paddles for it, and I used to draw pictures using the Koala Pad. I played a bunch of the Ultima games on there along with Sherwood Forest (you got sent to the Isle of Soapmouth if you used foul language). Thanks for the trip down memory lane!
I believe in the manual for my kaypro computer it says to remove any disks when power cycling, and to usually use the reset button or soft rest with keyboard over power cycling
When we moved our Apple II s back in the day, we set the drives on top to carry them, and then put them wherever we wanted when we set it back down. ;)
I think my first encounter with an Apple II was 1980 in the high school library. The single Apple in the whole school was kept in the library and reserved for seniors use with maths II programming problems etc because it was 'special' while the many TRS-80 MIs and later on a couple of MIIIs, were kept in a general classroom for computer classes. The slots built into the Apple were a killer feature really. If the TRS-80s had that they could have gone a lot further than they did.
Im 40. My first encounter was also in Elementary school. We had a computer lab that had Apple IIe and IIgs models. I loved going to the lab because it was the only room that was air conditioned. Then we moved from Minneapolis MN to a small town in Utah in 1994 and the funny thing was in the back on the shop class they had about 10 apple Lisa (mac XL) computers. I dont remember if they were Lisa or Lisa 2's BUT I remember them having 2 disk drives. They did have modern computer labs with PCs and Mac LC's also.
I bought one several years ago. First step, open power supply, replace RIFA caps. Badly cracked and almost falling apart. Power up, no smoke or flames. Great computers.
Yes, the cost of disk controllers was substantial apparently, so woz designed his own using discrete chips. I find it amazing that most of the technical design and even system software for the apple 2 was done by woz, nobody even knew who jobs was back in the early apple days.....
Ah, takes me back. I had a IIe with 2 floppy drives but did a number of upgrades to it. I eventually ran a BBS on it, so in addition to the super serial card I had a clock card so it knew the time, an enhanced 80 column card that allowed up to 1 meg of ram (ram-disks for manipulating files) and a SCSI card which I bought used with an external 10Mb drive - obviously which had to boot into Prodos. Obviously a hard drive was a bit of a luxury for regular everyday use, you could of course run your software and games off floppy - it's just a lot slower to do so.
My dad being the Ham radio enthusiast we had a packet radio system running off a 2e. Still have it and I’d imagine it still functions. Had instant messenger long before most. Just had to connect by call sign. Was very cool being a kid in the 80s and having my father be at the bleeding edge of it all back then.
@@petevenuti7355 I used a product called GBBS which does both appear to be available and have newer versions which have been updated since then. It's available under GPR to run in a virtual machine on a modern system or presumably to run on original hardware.
@@petevenuti7355 yes I have copies still. I also have a neat program to transfer applewriter files to dos program like Ms works. It uses a serial connection to pair the PC with the apple. I've got cabinets full of old apple stuff. Need to go back and see what I've got.
The Apple IIGS was my first computer and seeing the box brought me back. Thanks for that. EDIT: That book came with my IIGS and somewhere around 1990 when i was 10 i went through the book and learned programming. I creeit that book with starting my love for programming.
You can plug your card into any slot and then activate it using the command "PR#?" where ? is the slot number from 0 to 7. However, slot 0 usually is for the RAM/ROM card, slot 3 is for 80 columns card. I remember I put floppy controller on slot 5 and 6. Yes, back in the old day, I have 4 floppy. Mine have all 8 slots fully loaded with cards. Slot 0 and slot 2 have 2 128K RAM cards which form a 256K RAM disk, slot 1 have a super serial card, slot 3 have a 80 columns card, slot 4 have the CP/M card, slot 5 and 6 have floppy cards, slot 7 have a PAL card. I also remember if you do a "CALL -151" you can go into the monitor and then you can access the memory directly and write assemble code or disassemble program.
Calling the amount of plastic used “wasteful” is a bit silly. These computers were premium-sturdy-and made to last. It’s how people like me, at 20 years old, can use these computers in 2024 as they were intended, with minimal work to be done on recapping the boards, etc.
I remember around 1990, when I was in first grade. They had Apple II's in elementary school, and would introduce computers early. There would be one in every class room. In the basement was a computer room with more recent Macintosh computers. Even in middle school, I remember some rooms still had an Apple II tucked in a corner, though the school had upgraded to what ever mac was around in 1996 in every room as the main computer.
I enjoyed learning along with you. I did buy one of these in 87 as an 11 year old, but I only knew how to play games on it. As I have become nostalgic and want to learn what I didn't then, I've found myself owning a collection of Apple II's that I don't really know. I'm looking forward to more with this Apple II Plus.
I used an Apple II in 1982 on work experience at a local university Data Processing department. I had already used BBC BASIC and APPLE BASIC wasn’t too different. I had three programs to write in a week and I was shown the department. I’ll never forget the 10MB disk packs that were 14” in diameter, in a clear plastic cake drum…
If you're looking for other 'unique' or 'rare' old Apple ][ equipment, you may want to keep an eye out for the 'Black Apple's'. Ones that were made for Bell & Howell, they were loaded with more AV & I/O type features. Don't remember when they were made (only used them a couple times) think it was 1980 or 81. Seeing this video really brings back memories as I had a ][+, ][e, //gs all back in the day. :) Also if you're able, get the original docs. The original docs when you bought one included the entire motherboard circuit board schematic (which was GREAT), as well as assembly code dumps for all the ROM chips. (EDIT) actually your video got me to search my manual collection (still have my old ][+, //gs, etc manuals). Anyway the manual with the schematic & ROM dumps is "Apple ][ Reference Manual" (030-0004-C); for DOS you want "Apple II; The DOS Manual" (030-0115-B); "BASIC Programming Reference Manual, ][ Applesoft" (030-0013-E); "The Applesoft Tutorial" (030-0044-D). As for a general system overview you want the "Family System" manual (030-0287). And YES, the original apple ][ did have the 'velcro like' holders on it to keep the cover on. As for printers, the Apple ImageWriter I & II were common, however they were pricey so a lot of people (myself included) started with an Epson FX-80. As for the IIgs a good starting point for an overview would be the "Apple IIgs Owners Guide" (030-1292-B), and the "Apple IIgs System Software User's Guide Version 5.0" (030-1622A). I had the Woz version of the //gs (modified with extra memory and ramdisk card, plus a transwarp IIgs). Kind of sad that I got rid of the older systems now as the nostalgia is peaking. Need to probably start up KEGS and run some older programs for a bit. :) Oh, and BTW, 'CAT' is not a DOS command. it's 'CATALOG'. Don't be lazy. :P And that 'language' card is probably an integer basic card + memory. (you had to add that to get Integer BASIC as you only had Applesoft BASIC otherwise). And yes, math was interesting back then. Really was glad when math libraries got standardized back around 84 or so. Before that everyone ran their own.
You can tell how excited he was simply by the number of times he called things by the wrong name. The excitement was palatable. (I'm a relatively recent Apple II collector myself. I've got a IIe and a IIgs and has a EuroPlus for a while before I sold it to a good home to free up collection space) There are some _amazing_ modern expansion cards for Apples. Booti, Yellowstone, Mockingboard (which I recently built one of), Dan II, ESP32, plus some classics. Getting an 80 column card, plus a z80 card is a period correct way to run CP/M. Bonus points if you can get a genuine Microsoft z80 card. 😀Super Serial Card is useful also to use with ADTPro so you can write your own disks.
Great video! I went through the same progress a few months ago, when i wrote my Basic-3d and SVG-renderer for the Apple II. It has really wierd BASIC and features. Copying files from windows to floppy image was also a big headscratcher. Awaiting you next episodes--
I started using Apple IIe and later Apple II+ in early 1980's probably from 1982--84 when I was in 2nd year high school. Prior to this I used TRS-80 and much earlier the Timex-Sinclair 1000 and its variants.
Yeah, that is what it was. I didn't know until I started looking it up on the internet after recording the video. Turns out "DOS" and "ProDOS" are *very* different.
When my dad brought home an Apple ][ plus in 1979, he set it up on his bedroom dresser and attached it to the TV with the same sort of RF modulator used for video games like Atari. You'd switch the TV to a non-broadcast channel (usually 3, because in those days in New York, 2 was CBS, 4 was NBC, and 7 was ABC, 11 was independent station WPIX, and 13 was PBS... There was no Fox network yet. All other channels were mostly static.) Then you'd flip the toggle switch on the RF modulator from TV to Computer and power on the Apple. Good times.
Your comment about apples dysfunction regarding expandability is explained by the fact that there were two great minds at work inside Apple… Steve Wozniak was a brilliant hardware engineer and wanted to create a hobbyist computer and new people would want to add things… Steve Jobs on the other hand wanted to create a consumer appliance… He saw no need for anyone to ever open the computer much less add new cards… And that Becomes painfully clear when the Apple to see is released which is completely enclosed and has no expandability to speak of… I'm really loving your fresh eyes approach to the Apple… I'm going to subscribe and watch more… Continued success and best wishes
I'm a simple man, I see a new video from you Shelby and I instantly live whatever you're working on, personally used to own an imac and then another mac machine but can't remember the model, now all i got left is the mobo, keyboard (with the adb cable ends snipped) and mouse from a Mac Quadra 630, always love your videos, keep up the awesome work!!
The top plastic is so thick because it was designed to support a monitor on top of it. If it was thinner, it would probably have needed a metal reinforcement.
The keyboard functionality was something to get used to. As you saw, there's no backspace. You use the left and right arrow keys, but they do not erase. The Return key takes whatever comes before the cursor, back to the beginning of the line, and enters that. It erases from the cursor forward. There is a way to edit lines of Basic that you've entered. You hit Esc, and then use the I, J, K, and M keys to move the cursor up, left, right, and down, respectively (diamond pattern). You use this to get to a line you've entered. You then press Esc again, and use the left and right arrow keys to get to the part of the line you want to change, and type over it. There is no insert-character function. You may have to retype some of what you want to keep. If you want to erase a remainder of the line, you take the cursor to that part, and hit Return.
Next time use an oversized drill bit. That way you can just take the to little disk off and push the rest of the divit in. That way you only have to pick the rest of the divit out and all the metal shavings stay outside. Plus the drill bit won't poke inside whatever you are removing it from.
The automatic boot is part of the firmware of the Apple ][+, but the ][ needs the replacement F800-FFFF firmware to do that. (Most of the disk boot code is actually on a ROM on the disk controller.) Originally drives were meant to go into slot 7, but somehow they wound up going in 6 instead, which has become a convention for the Apple ][ line. The disk ][ is a single-sided drive. If there's a monitor I associate with the Apple ][+, it's the Amdek Color I. CAT is a ProDOS-8 command, so it won't work if you boot without a DOS. (It's CATALOG on the older DOS 3.3.)
My elementary school had a library full of apple II plus machines in the early 80s and by the time I got to middle school they had a lab full of IIe computers so I feel like I was lucky... Or I guess old now. Still haven't forgotten 6502 assembly. Also add ,D2 for drive 2 on your commands.
Thanks for the all the great videos! Just a quick note: many power supplies need to be loaded or they can damage themselves. Not sure about the Apple II off the top of my head but it's always a good idea to provide some form of load to a power supply.
Had a Apple //e as a kid that a neighbor had given to us with a bunch of games. This happened in the early 90s. Favorite thing to do with it was play Archon and Galaxian (which auto booted) and borrow books from the library to type in games into the basic prompt. I think at the time the local library had Apple 2s and software you could borrow. I did not have experience working with copy 2 plus or ProDOS though. I do not recall saving any of the games typed in from the books to disk back in the day.
Regarding the plastic "Velcro" latches: Yes, the adhesive does let go; you're lucky that it's still stuck to its mate and not lost. I've used "3M VHB Heavy Duty Mounting Tape 5952" to reattach mine (as I understand it, this double-sided tape has been used to attach trim to automobiles). It comes in large rolls, which is way overkill for the ~2" you need, but I've found lots of uses for it around the house.
By the time I was in Kindergarten and 1st grade, 1988, my school's Computer Lab was still 20 Apple 2 Plus machines with green phosphor, adjustable monitors.
if I remember correctly, you would type Catalog to view the contents of the floppy. also, on a floppy disk, you will see a square slot on the side of the disk, if it is not blank, it may have a sticker looped over it. this is the write protect slot. you can make a single sided disk, double sided by using a hole punch to make another write protect tab on the other side. just put one floppy over the other, with the write protect slot over the blank side of the floppy you want to make double sided. to line the holes up correctly.
Re. power cycling - Yeah. I never had a problem with this, but I remember we used to open the drive before power cycling, just because we heard rumors that a surge could scramble data on the disk.
Regarding your comment about the plastic being so thick, it was for interference suppression. New rules had been implemented in the late 1970s so that the wave of home computers arriving would not interfere with other devices. This is why the TRS 80 went from a separate keyboard design to an all in one. Apple used this thick plastic that was embedded with aluminum particles to help absorb any stray RF signals. This is also why the composite to broadcast converter was a separate device - Apple didn't make the converters, so an issues arising regarding interference were the responsibility of the converter company. Most were made to fit inside the Apple's case to take advantage of the RF shielding.
The only experience I had with the Apple II series when I was a kid was playing educational games on them. They all booted directly from the disk, so I never interacted with any kind of DOS or BASIC. Which is sad, because I think it really would've helped me get used to programming a lot earlier. I didn't get to experience BASIC until a few years later when my Dad bought an IBM JX (that's right, _not_ PCjr). Anyway, I'm really interested to see where you go with this series. It might be interesting to into the Logo programming language, since it allows you to draw nice geometric shapes on the screen and stuff.
![PASULOL รามเกียรติ์ ตอนที่ 4 นนทกพบรัก [Ramakien Ep.4: Nonthok in love]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/tMUQgmZzf_A/mqdefault.jpg)
So, a few things. It sounded like you were expecting the disk commands to exist in ROM, but they don’t. Both DOS and ProDOS were loaded off bootable disks into RAM. ProDOS was designed to have similar commands as DOS for the most part, but the disk format was completely different. DOS used the CATALOG command, which ProDOS also supports, but for the latter it displays a catalog for an 80-column screen. CAT was the ProDOS command for displaying a catalog in 40 columns. Also, all DOS and ProDOS commands can be made to work on drive 2 by adding ,D2 to the end of the command.
Never used a Mac... but saw 20
27'' iMacs in my high school's graphic design classroom...
Also should mention that at the time of the ][+ computer you also had 13 and 16 sector disk formats. 13 sector dos disk formats were kind of phased out by 1980 or so. But they were relatively frequently found early on (I say relatively, as in the beginning 'disk' drives were not common. When the ][+ came out (1977-1978) you were hard pressed to find a consumer disk drive and most still loaded from cassette tape.
@@stevekristoff4365 Apple II was so sturdily built
@@mica7191 These Apple computers are not Macintoshes, they're the computers Apple made before they came out with the Mac. There also was some overlap - for quite some time you could buy either an Apple II model or a Mac. Apple did make other computers over the years, but the Apple II series and the Macintosh family were the most successful ones. Don't feel bad for not knowing this; there was a time when I didn't either. Welcome to today's lucky 10,000! (
I remember on the Apple 2e I typed PR#2 or PR#3 to make whatever you type on the screen to print as you press the buttons
The PR#3 or PR3 the screen changed from being 40 lines to 80. The font changed to small and it looked cool
The ISA slots were because of Wozniak
Wise fought to get 8 expansion slots and jobs only wanted to 1 for a printer and one for a modem.
Wozniak and a lot of the programmers wanted open source with maximum number of ISA slots
Steve Jobs wanted a machine that was a hundred percent proprietary that would not work with anything else or any other hardware
That's why this machine has the expansion slots but none of the other ones do
And statues of him in every city
Oh, man. The memories came flooding back when you showed that BASIC manual. When I saw the cover I instantly remembered that that's how I learned how to program in Apple BASIC back in the day. Good times.
I have the same kind of feelings, just with commodore computers instead.
Applesoft
I remember setting up Apple 2 family of computers for a school district.
Most of the manuals were sent to the dumpster! I mean we had so many and no one but us three techs had any use for them! And after a while we didnt even need them!
Absolutely, I didn't even remember I'd forgotten that manual, but the second it came on screen I was right back.
Me too. I was obsessed.
Watching this, I felt just like that Christmas morning in 1988 when I got my Apple IIe Clone (TK3000 IIe in Brazil). I must have spent the whole day reading the manual, learning commands and trying to list/load the two disks I had. Thanks!
Did you know there are literally memes about this @rigues ? Xmas morning Apple unwrappings. Lemme find you some links.
The traditional slot for the floppy controller was slot 6, not slot 7. And you could still boot from a floppy without the language card’s autostart ROM by typing PR#6 at the BASIC prompt.
For extra fun there's the IIGS. 3.5" drives show up as Slot 5 and 5.25" are slot 6 as usual. (even when chained behind a 3.5" drive)
Agreed, though it's PR# and whatever port is to be "printed" to. You can technically have as many cards as slots. #3 is usually 80 column card iirc. Other defaults were established as standards in various software packages.
@@RealJonDoe So how doe sPR#6 mean boot from floppy?"
@@saganandroid4175 since the most common slot for floppies is #6, the instruction demands that the system print to slot 6, initiating the card, which causes a load from floppy.
@@saganandroid4175 run the code from perfiral 6
We used Apple IIe computers in 1983 junior high computer class. That was my favorite class and learned the most. I remember the Apple II series in high school, as well, with Apple Writer printer and other accessories. We had the Commodore 64 at home, programming was different but had some similarity too.
yes, the year i graduated, my school got Apple II's. I still went on and became a programmer and analyst, from the farm.
>Apple Writer printer
You mean Imagewriter printer. Apple writer was a word processing package. imagewriter was the printer. the original imagewriter was a rebranded C. Itoh printer with a custom rom.
Logo? The puzzle of drawing round circles 👌
@@sweintz probably both, as we did some reports and printed them.
we were using IBMs 🙈
Thanks for the video.
Just a suggestion when you are drilling out a rivet use a bigger drill bit and drill so the larger part of the rivet falls off, and you just push the center pin into the case.
That way you will not have metal bits inside the power supply.
Yep. When I heard slightly too small instead of slightly too large I knew that’d happen! Good learning moment in a low pressure situation at least.
@@kaitlyn__L Better yet is to use a old chisel and knock the head off the rivet. That way you don't create any swarf.
@@andyl3361 but risk scraping the case.
Pulling it out of the box brought back some strong memories that I wasn't expecting to have!
Watching you puzzle through BASIC just reading vendor's book while seated at the computer was fantastic reminder of how things were .
As others have pointed out, typing "PR#6" would reboot from the floppy. Another less known feature was that you can redirect input from a slot, also. The II+ systems I used had teletypewriters attached to slot 3, if you wanted to type on the teletype keyboard instead of the Apple keyboard, you would type "IN#3" and it would shift keyboard focus to the teletype.
Oh, that’s wonderful. I presume you could hook-up the serial output back to the Teletype as well, and have two separate locations to use the Apple II from!
People are definitely less aware of the "IN#" option.
IN and PR together were often used for modems, as well.
Somewhere between 30 to 40 years later and I learn IN#3. I had a Z80 card in my II clone and never knew how to use it. I assume that would have at least done something interesting.
The correct command for listing directory is "CATALOG." "CAT" was a shortcut added in ProDOS, which is why it didn't work when you booted the earlier DOS 3.3 master disk. Also the Apple II series don't have DOS built in, you have to load it from diskette. So even if you had used the correct "CATALOG" command earlier in the video (before booting the master disk) it would have come back at you with "?SYNTAX ERROR" anyway.
You can optionally add "Sx" and/or "Dx" (separated by commas) to access a drive other than the one you booted from. "Sx" = "slot X" (what slot the drive you want to access is plugged into) and "Dx" for drive (1 or 2). So, "CATALOG,S5,D2" would view the directory of the 2nd drive attached to the controller in Slot 5. "CATALOG,D2" would view the directory of the disk in Drive 2 on the controller which you booted DOS from.
To interrupt a BASIC program, use CONTROL-C. Using the RESET button works, but is more of a "using a hammer to kill an ant" method, it works but is kinda overkill, because it resets a lot of stuff. (for example, if you were in a graphics mode, using the RESET button would dump you back into text mode, whereas if you had used CONTROL-C you would stay in graphics mode.)
You can warm boot the machine, there is no need to power cycle every time you want to switch disks. Just type PR#x, where x is the slot of the disk controller where you want to boot from. It will boot from Drive 1 (the first drive) attached to said controller.
By convention, disk controllers are installed in Slot 6, however there is nothing preventing you from installing it to any other slot, with the proviso that boot ROMs (such as the one on the language card) are usually hardcoded to expect the disk controller in slot 6.
A lot of commercial Apple II games either use their own proprietary disk operating system, or are just "bare metal" (just raw binary data written to the disk) so they wouldn't show anything (or would show an I/O error or somesuch) using the CATALOG command. You just boot those by either turning on the computer with them in the drive, or you can do the PR#x command to warm boot.
You can get into the machine language monitor by typing "CALL - 151." (note, there is no space between the minus sign and the letter 1, I had to put one in there because TH-cam interprets it as a text format command for strikethrough text. :P) And if you find yourself dropped into the monitor for whatever reason, you can get back to DOS/BASIC by typing "3D0G" (the number 3, letter D, number zero and letter G. I just think of the band "Three Dog Night" to remember this. ;- ))
Actually many early games used a licensed and modified DOS 3.3. 4am’s _Passport_ program automatically uses the games own RWTS disk routines to read the game and write it out as a normal DOS 3.3 disk. Some game use ProDOS. Many Br0debund titles use Roland Gustafsson’s 18 sector/track RWTS disk functions.
they always had to be different
The 3D0G advice does work, however doing Ctrl+C (C presumably meaning "continue") from the monitor is faster/easier/etc. Both will transfer execution to the warmstart vector at $3D0 in memory. Whatever software is running will usually place a jump instruction there that will get you back to said software. This is most commonly BASIC, thus you will see in a lot of places that this "reenters BASIC without deleting your program", however this will work for lots of other software, and is not limited to BASIC.
The thick plastic lid wasn't a waste. It had to support a CRT monitor. And disk drives. :-)
i can see WOZ's hand all over the build & features of this thing... ♥
The IIGS is a wonderful addition especially since you have two rarer and highly sought aspects; the first is you have a Woz edition, which is mentioned in other comments, and the IIGS chiclet style ADB keyboard, which is what caught my attention. It was Apple’s first ADB keyboard and was only sold with the IIGS. It works with any ADB Mac from the SE to the Blue and White G3 tower. These keyboards often got repurposed for use with Macs and are often harder to find then the IIGS.
The Woz edition is no more sought after than the non-Woz versions - they're very common (I believe something like 50,000 were made with the silk-screened signature).
Yep, the reason you could not "cat" some of the disks was because they were formatted for the wrong OS. The games disks were DOS, while the disk you booted from was ProDOS. The formats are different.
copy II Plus can read the catalog for either OS.
also, the ROM on the "language card" (the ram card) is intended for non "plus" original apple II computers, and it upgrades the machine from the original integer only basic to applesoft floating point basic. The ][ plus already has applesoft built in.
also, you can swap out the character rom on your ][ plus, located on the motherboard under the keyboard, to have lowercase. Doing so replaces inverse text with lowercase. It's a regular 2716 pinout rom or eprom. Most people just would buy an 80-column card for lower case, though. word processing on 40 columns sucks. (not that a ][/]] plus 80 column card is NOT the same as the //e 80 column cards. the one for the ][/][ plus goes in a regular slot, usually slot 3, while the one for the //e goes in a special 80 column card slot. The best and rarest 80 column card for a II plus would be a videx ultra term. That could do 128 columns on a mono monitor.
also also, as you found out, there are 2 types of disk drive connectors and controller cards. Drives made for the //e, //c and //gs have the db-19 connectors. The original drives for the ][ and ][ plus use the rectangular pin connectors. The electronics and signaling are the same, though (at least for the 5.25 inch drives. Not so for the 3.5 inch drives). People have made adapter cables to plug either type of 5.25 drive into either type of controller.
The IIgs will work with any of the apple disk drives that have a db-19 connector. there is a card that will allow an apple //e, ][+, or ][ to use an apple 800K double sided 3.5 inch drive (called the "LIRON" card) , and a DIFFERENT card (that is rarer) which will allow an apple 1.44 (1.88) meg 3.5 inch drive (called the "superdrive" controller). There are drivers for the IIGS 16 bit OS (GSOS) that will let you read 3.5 inch MS-DOS disks on the IIgs! The apple 3.5 inch drives used a variable speed spindle motor that allowed more sectors to be stored on the outer tracks. So double density disks got 800 meg, while HD disks got 1.8 meg. apple never made double density or double sided 5.25 inch drives. 3rd party manufacturers did, and sold them with a patched version of dos that could use them.
Also, if you have a scsi card for the IIgs, it can read Macintosh formatted HFS partitions (but not MS-DOS scsi partitions). The scsi card will also work in a ][ or ][ plus, but only with prodos. Both prodos and GO/OS have a partition size limit of 32 megabytes.
apple made a hard drive called the "profile" that used a proprietary interface card. Interface cards were available for the II series and the Apple ///. It could also plug into a built in port on the apple lisa. The profile came in 5 and 10 megabyte versions. These are very very rare.
the IIgs can also be booted off of an apple talk network (via the serial ports on the iigs) from a macintosh file server running the right software on MAC OS system 7.x If you can find one of the rare apple talk to ethernet bridges made by asante, people have hacked together linux software that will emulate a mac file server that will let you network boot a IIgs.
Actually, his biggest problem is that the AppleSoft command is CATALOG, not CAT. ProDOS let you use CAT to do 40-column directory listing, while CATALOG did 80-column.
@@heliumphoenix Catalog is actually a dos 3.3 or 3.2 command, not applesoft. Boot straight to applesoft without a boot disk, and you have no disk commands at all.
Great video, I love your excitement at powering it up! I remember seeing an Apple ][ for the first time at the 1978 Royal Easter Show in Sydney, Australia. Very exciting stuff, I dimly recall they had the onlookers lining up to play Breakout.
The RESET key on the earlier ]['s used to result in a great deal of annoyance to users. There were numerous fixes published in computer magazines of the day, some involved loading a reset-prevent program off cassette after power-on, another was to fold and tape a piece of cardboard into a square tube and place it over the key. Other methods involved soldering/soddering a pushbutton switch in series. But IMO the most elegant solution was to lift the keycap and place an O-ring on the key stem, making it harder to push.
The top panel clips were made IIRC by 3M. Interestingly, Apple were not the first to use these on a computer. Digital Equipment Corporation used exactly these same clips on their PDP-9 computer back in the late 60s. I have some of these myself. The little posts do tend to break, and, as you have discovered like many other Apple ][ owners, they were never stuck down terribly well... :)
I'm sure someone below said it but many games are self-booting disks so always try them as boot disks. You can't run the CATALOG command (used in DOS 3.2, 3.3) on them because they often use their own disk format. This video takes me back to grade school when I was first exposed to Apple ][ and ][ plus machines. Great stuff.
Put the controller in slot 6 not slot 7 because most software was written to look at slot 6. Disks written for Dos can not be read by prodos. Boot up Dos 3.3 or prodos then put in a disk, type "catalog" to list files, as you found out prodos can use " cat" or catalog. To change drive type a command and designated drive.
Example: CATALOG D2 IT will then address drive 2 until you switch back to drive 1 by CATALOG D1 IF YOU HAVE ANOTHER CONTROLLER for total of 4 drives say in slot 5, to switch type CATALOG S5,D1. IF YOU a to see drive 2 since slot 5 is activated just type CATALOG D2, so you have to add the slot variable and the drive variable to switch to the drive, you can use slot 7 but most commercial self booting disk may not work because they are hard cider to look for slot 6. Slot 7 is used mostly for hardrives or RGB video cards. Slot 4 COM cards, slot 3 for eighty column cards. Slot 2 serial cards. Slot 1 parallel cards or memory cards 128k to 3 meg. Slot 0 language card or Rom language card.or memory cards as previously mentioned, any questions drop me an email
i have had a apple ii plus for a year now that i got from my grandfather and i have been keeping it on the back burner while i work on my amiga 500, looking at this video i might have to look at it sooner.
It's in beautiful shape! Congratulations. The ][+ was my high school computer in the 80s and I'll never forget it.
2:10 - Dude... you wanna get carpal tunnel? that's how you get carpal tunnel! (but props to the wrist strength)
The Apple ][ drives were super cheap, but they *WILL* read a peanut butter sandwich, if you can fit it into the drive. Simplicity was the word of the day. The downside was the 6502 had to do everything. There is a reason the Apple ][ series had some of the best copy protection methods for floppy disks ever. Because you could do crazy shenanigans with the hardware, because it was so basic.
Half tracking, quarter tracking, track arcing, you name it.
Your comment made me commit tiny laugh. :D
Ahhhh, fond memories of Locksmith, Copy 2 plus, Essential Data Duplicator, wildcard nmi & hardcore computist magazine.
Great start in getting it together but several mistakes...
Diskdrive card belongs on Slot 6; The Language card is in Slot 0, and then count to six to put the disk drive in slot 6. There should be 1 slot left as slot 7.
Language card does not have a ROM. That is a Glue Logic or PROMs for the management of the 16K added RAM.
In Dos 3, you use "Catalog" or "Director" to get the disk listing. In Pro Dos, it is "Cat" or "Dir"
You were right on the Printer card needing to be serial. The Apple Suer Serial Card is the best option to get but the older Serial cards would be Period Correct for that machine.
You can also get other cards fo the Apple II, like the CP/M Card (goes into Slot 5 or 7) and an 80-column card (goes into Slot 3). You need to decide how you want that Apple to be set up and then get the needed cards for it.
For the Europlus, the PAL colour card went in slot 7. Also used for RGB cards, I never actually saw one of those working myself back in the day as RGB monitors were too expensive for anyone I knew to afford.
Can you add a timestamp for these in your comment?
There were parallel printer cards. Had one.
And never heard of "Director" in DOS; maybe that was ProDOS only?!
First computer I ever touched. Took 2 hours to type in a game called Hurkle written in BASIC.
Best thing Apple ever made. All downhill from then on.
thanks Jobs
Me too. Bought in 1981 when our family knew nothing about computers and my dad was offered the Apple II+ with 48K and the Integer Basic card installed for a reduced price... as I later found out, 48K was the full complement on the board - more than the computers (not Apples) at school had when they were purchased 6 months later!
@@cbnewham5633 It would be nice to think there was some was DNA still left in Apple.
The ram in the II plus is not made by Fairchild. It was made by Fujitsu. Fairchilds logo was just an 'F' or a stylized 'ƒ'. Fujitsu on the other hand is the F with lines over top and bottom.
Came here to say the same. Fujitsu for sure, and the part number will likely be of the form MBxxxx-yy or similar.
LOL, I had to laugh at and with you about the one drive that was "harrowing"!
Fantastic video! Brings back a lot of memories. In the early 80s (1982) my High School only had a handful of computers, The "computer room" had two Apple II machines (both with a single floppy drive), a Microbee (an Australian computer), a HUGE Canon programmable calculator and a kit computer based on the Signetics 2650 CPU that was designed by Electronics Australia magazine. I was part of a die-hard bunch that would rush to the room during lunch breaks to be first on the Apple machines. Fun times.
I would rush during recess, lunch then after school until we were kicked out then eat my packed lunch on the way home 🤩
Same here. In 1980 (might have been 1981) my high school's Maths Department in Sydney originally had two 2650 machines (not kits, but built by a company in Sydney) that were the first purpose-designed Australian educational school computer (predating the Microbee by a few years), these were always breaking down because the students thought it was fun to rub their feet on the carpet and 'zap' the steel case, which broke them. They then had to be sent away for servicing (again). They were replaced by Apple ]['s after a year or so. We also had two(?) huge Canon Canola punched-card programmable calculators with nixie tubes too!
This was downright fun to watch!
We had Apple IIs in computer class in high school circa 1987. Even then I knew they were out of date and there were better systems. I already knew some BASIC programming because I had a TI-99 at home.
Same here. After using a 99/4A at home, I was disgusted by the Apples at school.
I'm a bit disappointed you hadn't read up on the floppy controllers. It's one of Woz's signature designs along with the NTSC color output. What Woz did was to move all the complexity of the floppy controller into carefully timed software. They bought the drives without much logic because they didn't need that logic.
I was a bit surprised when Shelby said the logic was in the drive rather than correctly in software 😅
And yet they still charged obscene amounts of money for dumb drives.
This is how I first come to terms and experience when I had my first apple 2, back then you didn't have all those community groups support or internet, so back in those days it was by way of books, reading material, magazines and experimenting. (which mind you those apple 2 books were quite expensive and out of reach).
Your palpable joy during the video reminds me of mine back in high school when I used these and learned to do all sorts of interesting things on these (I graduated in 1984). These machines are what ignited my love for computers that lasts to this day. You haven't lived til you have bought a copy of Byte magazine and loaded the program inside it... by typing all the binary on the pages (to be fair it also showed where the variables and other important bits were and that helped me learn programming)... if you typo'ed anything, you wound up going back and checking each and every byte til you found the error. Yep, not on a disk, printed on a page. And yeah ,it was easy to yank the top off and wind up with the glued upper half still attached to the lower half and not the lid, if the thing was a few years old. I actually ran my ribbon cable to the middle bigger slot in the back since I had no card there. less tension on the cable. A strip of scotch tape across the top of the slot to keep the ribbon from getting caught in the lid. OH, the sound of those drives, just like I remember... thanks for this video and have fun! Oh yeah, we had an Appletalk network to a Corvus Constellation network (hard) drive the size of a II+ we could store stuff on. fun hack target.
Things missing from the box are the Apple DOS manual and floppies, Apple BASICS manual, and a general operations manual. That second PCB under the keyboard is the add-in card that gives it upper and lower case.
Some quick notes: Dos commands refer to the most recent disk unless you specify a different slot (,s#), disk (,d#) or both. Slot 6 is the default floppy slot, but 5-7 will work. pr# to activate a card or in# to redirect input from a card. int activates the faster integer basic. init formats a disk and tells it to run first. catalog for the disk catalog. dos commands can be embedded in basic programs with the ctrl-d (character 4) inside print statements. The catalog with have an "A" or a "B" to indicate the difference between applesoft and binary programs, the latter using the brun, bload and bsave commands. The cassette interface looks kinda like rca connectors but they are microphone (3.5 mm) if I recall, but nobody used them unless maybe for audio (muse voice, for example, to load samples).
Don't forget Ctrl-g for beep
This was my first computer more than forty years ago. It came with a programming language built in and a listing of the entire operating system in the manual - something you don't see much of today. For more than $1,000 there was no mouse, no display and no mass storage. I hooked it up to my TV that I used vice-grips to change the channel of and stored programs on a cassette recorder.
I remember the command being the whole word "CATALOG". I remember this, because as a hunt and pecking 12 year old, CATALOG was the first word I learned to type really fast.
I wrote and compiled a lot of FORTH embedded firmware using an Apple 2+ back in the day. By the way, many logic chips were more susceptible to static damage 40 years ago. Sometimes it pays to use a static strap. But, likely, most users/owners would not bother even then.
Funny story: When Apple developed the Disk II, they asked Shugart for stripped mechanisms. Shugart sent them defective samples to work with, because they wanted Apple to buy more expensive, fully loaded drives. Apple's engineers got the defective mechanisms working anyway, and asked for more.
The Apple II does most of its disk management in software. That's why the drive electronics and disk controller could be so simple compared to, say, Commodore's. The drives don't even have a limit switch; when they power up, they just send the head "out" enough times that it has to be back on track 0 no matter where it was when it was shut off.
How can you possibly talk about the original Disk ][ floppy drive and not mention the fact that Steve Wozniak himself designed it? Of the 25 drive prototypes, 19 of the Shugart SA390 drives actually did work with no issue, the remaining did not. The only other engineer involved in design was Cliff Huston who mainly worked on optimizing Wozniak's design for a production line and he was the one who got the remaining defective SA390 drives to work. He assumed all the drives were working and the problem was just a calibration and timing issue, which is what the "defect" actually was with those Shugart drives. The design of the Floppy drive is considered even more brilliant and elegant then the Apple II itself, not to mention highly profitable. Woz took what originally required 40+ chips down to 9 chips that could be manufactured for
@@MrRobarino The Apple II disk controller is Woz's masterpiece.
That missing track 0 switch is why they make all that racket when they start seeking. They also don't use the index hole. They do have a write protect notch sensor however. So you need to cut both sides to write to both sides when flipping the disk.
The ROM on the Language Card only adds the ability of the system to autoboot a card with ROM like the Disk II Controller with the Apple II's firmware ROMs, not the II+'s. The II+ firmware does not need that extra ROM to scan the slots for bootable code.
26:23: On the _non-velcro but velcro-like_ lid-holding things:
Yes, they're stock. Yes, it's pretty common for one to come unstuck. Some TH-camr had a solution for how to glue them back on, because you need to bond them REALLY solidly, because there's quite some pull on them, but unfortunately I forgot whose video I watched that in and what the solution was, so someone else will have to help with the particulars.
My guess would be acetone rather than just superglue or epoxy, but I haven’t seen the video you’re referring to so that’s just based off of other plastics experience. It creates a weld rather than just a bond, so it should hold up to the force.
@@kaitlyn__L As I recall, the "velcro" is held on by double-sided tape. My II+ is in storage so I cannot verify this, although I distinctly remember that when one of mine fell off 40+ years ago there was a thick black sticky tape on the back of the velcro pad and it had lost enough stickiness to come loose.
For the drilling you can get drill stops that wrap around the drill bit. I’ve used them when drilling into walls without knowing where mains wires were. Reduces stress sooooooo much.
I'll always have fond memories of the Apple ][+ being the first computer I ever touched in kindergarten (back in the days when a school would only have one or two of them in the library.) I was one of just two lucky kids in my class to get to try it out. And the ][e was the first I learned to program on, so you can imagine my wanting to say "CATALOG" when you were trying to read the diskettes.
My first computer with a timecard, 2 apple cat 1200 bd modems, 6 1.2M floppies, greyscale (ega) monitor, 10MB HD about the size of a small suitcase, running Fidonet and celerity bbs (the darkside). BBS door games were the best (The Pit), Karatika was a great game, Temple of Apshai, Ultima II, ect.. The good old days. Thanks for the video, put a big smile on my face.
That keyboard sounds amazing btw. It must feel awesome to touch.
I have to say, I GREATLY enjoyed watching you futz around with CAT when CATALOG was staring you in the face the whole time 😂
The Apple II+ has two BASIC options, one is Applesoft BASIC, which is what you were using (with the "]" prompt.) The other is Integer BASIC, which can be loaded off floppy into the language card. Integer BASIC uses the ">" prompt. And as the name implies, it only handles integer math, no floating point. Programs on floppy can be listed as "A" = Applesoft, "I" = Integer, "B" = Binary, "T" = Text. You need to have Integer BASIC loaded in order to run "I" type files.
I'm assuming Integer BASIC is also the older and less capable of the two (in more ways than just lack of floating-point support), and dates back to the days before BASIC on ROM was a thing?
@@stevethepocket integer basic was written by steve wozniac, it was pretty "basic" (obviously no fp maths etc) steve jobs apparently kept telling wozniac to upgrade it to better cope with users requirements and competing computers, he never did, so they ended up contracting microsoft to write applesoft basic.....integer basic was held in roms on early apple 2s, the language card was a paged 16k ram card that overlayed the 16k rom area so you could load in either integer or applesoft basic into the language card , most apple 2s come with applesoft so to run any integer basic programs , you had to load integer basic into the 16k language card in order to run these older basic programs.....
The sound that the computer made when you turn it off/on gave me flashbacks instantly. The beep and jiggling sound the disk drive makes 😂. I haven’t heard that sound in like 35 years.
I had an Apple IIe, and if I remember correctly, it had the same style of not quite Velcro fastener on the lid as yours does. I wasn't the original owner, however, so it may have been an aftermarket addition.
Only the controller and the drive electronics are non-standard; the actual drive itself is a shugart mechanism)
Boot order is 7-6-5... but most people (and later versions of ProDOS) use 7 for 3.5", 6 for 5.25", and 5 for HD. The 80 Col card is almost always slot three.
The PAL colour card (for using a US NTSC Apple II+ with a PAL TV) slotted into 7 because the video signal is also supplied to that slot as I vaguely recall.
I grew up with the Apple ][e and took an Apple ][c to college. I always loved the sound of the disk drives booting up. We had the joystick and paddles for it, and I used to draw pictures using the Koala Pad. I played a bunch of the Ultima games on there along with Sherwood Forest (you got sent to the Isle of Soapmouth if you used foul language).
Thanks for the trip down memory lane!
I believe in the manual for my kaypro computer it says to remove any disks when power cycling, and to usually use the reset button or soft rest with keyboard over power cycling
It's always nice watching you take on things that are perhaps new to you. Your whole approach is entertaining and informative
In dos 3.3 I believe the command was catalog , d2. Used one in highschool around 1979 so I may be wrong.
So cool!! Growing up, my family had a n Apple IIc+ with a ImageWriter II. It was a neat machine.
When we moved our Apple II s back in the day, we set the drives on top to carry them, and then put them wherever we wanted when we set it back down. ;)
I think my first encounter with an Apple II was 1980 in the high school library. The single Apple in the whole school was kept in the library and reserved for seniors use with maths II programming problems etc because it was 'special' while the many TRS-80 MIs and later on a couple of MIIIs, were kept in a general classroom for computer classes. The slots built into the Apple were a killer feature really. If the TRS-80s had that they could have gone a lot further than they did.
Im 40. My first encounter was also in Elementary school. We had a computer lab that had Apple IIe and IIgs models. I loved going to the lab because it was the only room that was air conditioned. Then we moved from Minneapolis MN to a small town in Utah in 1994 and the funny thing was in the back on the shop class they had about 10 apple Lisa (mac XL) computers. I dont remember if they were Lisa or Lisa 2's BUT I remember them having 2 disk drives. They did have modern computer labs with PCs and Mac LC's also.
I bought one several years ago. First step, open power supply, replace RIFA caps. Badly cracked and almost falling apart. Power up, no smoke or flames. Great computers.
Apple's floppy drives were *considerably* cheaper, not slightly cheaper. It was a brilliant job by Woz.
Yes, the cost of disk controllers was substantial apparently, so woz designed his own using discrete chips. I find it amazing that most of the technical design and even system software for the apple 2 was done by woz, nobody even knew who jobs was back in the early apple days.....
Ah, takes me back. I had a IIe with 2 floppy drives but did a number of upgrades to it. I eventually ran a BBS on it, so in addition to the super serial card I had a clock card so it knew the time, an enhanced 80 column card that allowed up to 1 meg of ram (ram-disks for manipulating files) and a SCSI card which I bought used with an external 10Mb drive - obviously which had to boot into Prodos. Obviously a hard drive was a bit of a luxury for regular everyday use, you could of course run your software and games off floppy - it's just a lot slower to do so.
My dad being the Ham radio enthusiast we had a packet radio system running off a 2e. Still have it and I’d imagine it still functions. Had instant messenger long before most. Just had to connect by call sign. Was very cool being a kid in the 80s and having my father be at the bleeding edge of it all back then.
@@DouglasHeyen that’s awesome
Is the BBS or packet radio software around anywhere still?
@@petevenuti7355 I used a product called GBBS which does both appear to be available and have newer versions which have been updated since then. It's available under GPR to run in a virtual machine on a modern system or presumably to run on original hardware.
@@petevenuti7355 yes I have copies still. I also have a neat program to transfer applewriter files to dos program like Ms works. It uses a serial connection to pair the PC with the apple. I've got cabinets full of old apple stuff. Need to go back and see what I've got.
The Apple IIGS was my first computer and seeing the box brought me back. Thanks for that.
EDIT: That book came with my IIGS and somewhere around 1990 when i was 10 i went through the book and learned programming. I creeit that book with starting my love for programming.
You can plug your card into any slot and then activate it using the command "PR#?" where ? is the slot number from 0 to 7. However, slot 0 usually is for the RAM/ROM card, slot 3 is for 80 columns card. I remember I put floppy controller on slot 5 and 6. Yes, back in the old day, I have 4 floppy. Mine have all 8 slots fully loaded with cards. Slot 0 and slot 2 have 2 128K RAM cards which form a 256K RAM disk, slot 1 have a super serial card, slot 3 have a 80 columns card, slot 4 have the CP/M card, slot 5 and 6 have floppy cards, slot 7 have a PAL card. I also remember if you do a "CALL -151" you can go into the monitor and then you can access the memory directly and write assemble code or disassemble program.
Calling the amount of plastic used “wasteful” is a bit silly. These computers were premium-sturdy-and made to last. It’s how people like me, at 20 years old, can use these computers in 2024 as they were intended, with minimal work to be done on recapping the boards, etc.
I remember around 1990, when I was in first grade. They had Apple II's in elementary school, and would introduce computers early. There would be one in every class room. In the basement was a computer room with more recent Macintosh computers. Even in middle school, I remember some rooms still had an Apple II tucked in a corner, though the school had upgraded to what ever mac was around in 1996 in every room as the main computer.
I enjoyed learning along with you. I did buy one of these in 87 as an 11 year old, but I only knew how to play games on it. As I have become nostalgic and want to learn what I didn't then, I've found myself owning a collection of Apple II's that I don't really know. I'm looking forward to more with this Apple II Plus.
Seeing you learn about the A][ in real-time is so much fun! Reminds me of when I got my ][+ in ~2018 and did the exact same :)
Great video! I am excited to watch a series of you learning about this system.
I used an Apple II in 1982 on work experience at a local university Data Processing department. I had already used BBC BASIC and APPLE BASIC wasn’t too different. I had three programs to write in a week and I was shown the department.
I’ll never forget the 10MB disk packs that were 14” in diameter, in a clear plastic cake drum…
If you're looking for other 'unique' or 'rare' old Apple ][ equipment, you may want to keep an eye out for the 'Black Apple's'. Ones that were made for Bell & Howell, they were loaded with more AV & I/O type features. Don't remember when they were made (only used them a couple times) think it was 1980 or 81. Seeing this video really brings back memories as I had a ][+, ][e, //gs all back in the day. :) Also if you're able, get the original docs. The original docs when you bought one included the entire motherboard circuit board schematic (which was GREAT), as well as assembly code dumps for all the ROM chips.
(EDIT) actually your video got me to search my manual collection (still have my old ][+, //gs, etc manuals). Anyway the manual with the schematic & ROM dumps is "Apple ][ Reference Manual" (030-0004-C); for DOS you want "Apple II; The DOS Manual" (030-0115-B); "BASIC Programming Reference Manual, ][ Applesoft" (030-0013-E); "The Applesoft Tutorial" (030-0044-D). As for a general system overview you want the "Family System" manual (030-0287). And YES, the original apple ][ did have the 'velcro like' holders on it to keep the cover on.
As for printers, the Apple ImageWriter I & II were common, however they were pricey so a lot of people (myself included) started with an Epson FX-80.
As for the IIgs a good starting point for an overview would be the "Apple IIgs Owners Guide" (030-1292-B), and the "Apple IIgs System Software User's Guide Version 5.0" (030-1622A). I had the Woz version of the //gs (modified with extra memory and ramdisk card, plus a transwarp IIgs).
Kind of sad that I got rid of the older systems now as the nostalgia is peaking. Need to probably start up KEGS and run some older programs for a bit. :)
Oh, and BTW, 'CAT' is not a DOS command. it's 'CATALOG'. Don't be lazy. :P
And that 'language' card is probably an integer basic card + memory. (you had to add that to get Integer BASIC as you only had Applesoft BASIC otherwise). And yes, math was interesting back then. Really was glad when math libraries got standardized back around 84 or so. Before that everyone ran their own.
You can tell how excited he was simply by the number of times he called things by the wrong name. The excitement was palatable.
(I'm a relatively recent Apple II collector myself. I've got a IIe and a IIgs and has a EuroPlus for a while before I sold it to a good home to free up collection space)
There are some _amazing_ modern expansion cards for Apples. Booti, Yellowstone, Mockingboard (which I recently built one of), Dan II, ESP32, plus some classics. Getting an 80 column card, plus a z80 card is a period correct way to run CP/M. Bonus points if you can get a genuine Microsoft z80 card. 😀Super Serial Card is useful also to use with ADTPro so you can write your own disks.
Made your own expansion card?
Is there documentation on how to do that?
Great video! I went through the same progress a few months ago, when i wrote my Basic-3d and SVG-renderer for the Apple II. It has really wierd BASIC and features. Copying files from windows to floppy image was also a big headscratcher. Awaiting you next episodes--
Your description of the Woz Disk Operating System is exactly right. It's a work of genius.
CAT B :)
- There’s a first time for everything. Nice demo though.
I started using Apple IIe and later Apple II+ in early 1980's probably from 1982--84 when I was in 2nd year high school. Prior to this I used TRS-80 and much earlier the Timex-Sinclair 1000 and its variants.
Welcome to the world of Apple II! You see what is on the disk, you need to type: CATALOG
I've used Jaz and Zip disk SCSI versions with the Apple SCSI card on the II+, //e and GS. There are some caveats but it's kind of cool.
A distant dusty memory tells me that sometimes you have to type CATALOG instead of CAT.
Yeah, that is what it was. I didn't know until I started looking it up on the internet after recording the video. Turns out "DOS" and "ProDOS" are *very* different.
LOL I was yelling at the screen... Catalog! CATALOG! 😂
Also, prodos can’t read dos3.3 disks (and vice versa), that’s why the i/o errors.
I saw something once that said CAT was 40-column output and CATALOG was 80
@@ZenoTasedro That's true, but only when ProDOS is running.
OMG... That was me in 1984 in high school computer programming class, what a year, by the end of the year, talked my dad into buying me an apple 2e
When my dad brought home an Apple ][ plus in 1979, he set it up on his bedroom dresser and attached it to the TV with the same sort of RF modulator used for video games like Atari. You'd switch the TV to a non-broadcast channel (usually 3, because in those days in New York, 2 was CBS, 4 was NBC, and 7 was ABC, 11 was independent station WPIX, and 13 was PBS... There was no Fox network yet. All other channels were mostly static.) Then you'd flip the toggle switch on the RF modulator from TV to Computer and power on the Apple.
Good times.
There was another card in the IIGS that can be used with the II+. It was the one furthest from the PS. You can tell by the beveled front.
There were IIgs systems in IIe housings. That could just be for compatibility. The RAM expander I had was like that.
@@codahighland I did not know that. Thanks for the added info. I might be worth a try though.
Your comment about apples dysfunction regarding expandability is explained by the fact that there were two great minds at work inside Apple… Steve Wozniak was a brilliant hardware engineer and wanted to create a hobbyist computer and new people would want to add things… Steve Jobs on the other hand wanted to create a consumer appliance… He saw no need for anyone to ever open the computer much less add new cards… And that Becomes painfully clear when the Apple to see is released which is completely enclosed and has no expandability to speak of… I'm really loving your fresh eyes approach to the Apple… I'm going to subscribe and watch more… Continued success and best wishes
I'm a simple man, I see a new video from you Shelby and I instantly live whatever you're working on, personally used to own an imac and then another mac machine but can't remember the model, now all i got left is the mobo, keyboard (with the adb cable ends snipped) and mouse from a Mac Quadra 630, always love your videos, keep up the awesome work!!
The top plastic is so thick because it was designed to support a monitor on top of it. If it was thinner, it would probably have needed a metal reinforcement.
The keyboard functionality was something to get used to. As you saw, there's no backspace. You use the left and right arrow keys, but they do not erase.
The Return key takes whatever comes before the cursor, back to the beginning of the line, and enters that. It erases from the cursor forward.
There is a way to edit lines of Basic that you've entered.
You hit Esc, and then use the I, J, K, and M keys to move the cursor up, left, right, and down, respectively (diamond pattern). You use this to get to a line you've entered. You then press Esc again, and use the left and right arrow keys to get to the part of the line you want to change, and type over it. There is no insert-character function. You may have to retype some of what you want to keep. If you want to erase a remainder of the line, you take the cursor to that part, and hit Return.
Next time use an oversized drill bit.
That way you can just take the to little disk off and push the rest of the divit in. That way you only have to pick the rest of the divit out and all the metal shavings stay outside.
Plus the drill bit won't poke inside whatever you are removing it from.
out of my 8 bit machines the apple is my favorite, but i still have lots to learn, or would like to.
When drilling out rivets, use a bigger bit. You don't push it all the way through. It'll cut the flange of the soft aluminum rivet.
The automatic boot is part of the firmware of the Apple ][+, but the ][ needs the replacement F800-FFFF firmware to do that. (Most of the disk boot code is actually on a ROM on the disk controller.)
Originally drives were meant to go into slot 7, but somehow they wound up going in 6 instead, which has become a convention for the Apple ][ line.
The disk ][ is a single-sided drive.
If there's a monitor I associate with the Apple ][+, it's the Amdek Color I.
CAT is a ProDOS-8 command, so it won't work if you boot without a DOS. (It's CATALOG on the older DOS 3.3.)
My elementary school had a library full of apple II plus machines in the early 80s and by the time I got to middle school they had a lab full of IIe computers so I feel like I was lucky... Or I guess old now. Still haven't forgotten 6502 assembly.
Also add ,D2 for drive 2 on your commands.
my 4th grade computer lab in the early 90s was filled with IIs and IIPluses. putting in that work on Oregon Trail and Number Munchers
Thanks for the all the great videos! Just a quick note: many power supplies need to be loaded or they can damage themselves. Not sure about the Apple II off the top of my head but it's always a good idea to provide some form of load to a power supply.
Love it much! Have my one with fully equipment still over here and keep it "holy". Thx for that great backflash!
Had a Apple //e as a kid that a neighbor had given to us with a bunch of games. This happened in the early 90s. Favorite thing to do with it was play Archon and Galaxian (which auto booted) and borrow books from the library to type in games into the basic prompt. I think at the time the local library had Apple 2s and software you could borrow.
I did not have experience working with copy 2 plus or ProDOS though. I do not recall saving any of the games typed in from the books to disk back in the day.
Regarding the plastic "Velcro" latches: Yes, the adhesive does let go; you're lucky that it's still stuck to its mate and not lost. I've used "3M VHB Heavy Duty Mounting Tape 5952" to reattach mine (as I understand it, this double-sided tape has been used to attach trim to automobiles). It comes in large rolls, which is way overkill for the ~2" you need, but I've found lots of uses for it around the house.
By the time I was in Kindergarten and 1st grade, 1988, my school's Computer Lab was still 20 Apple 2 Plus machines with green phosphor, adjustable monitors.
if I remember correctly, you would type Catalog to view the contents of the floppy.
also, on a floppy disk, you will see a square slot on the side of the disk, if it is not blank,
it may have a sticker looped over it. this is the write protect slot.
you can make a single sided disk, double sided by using a hole punch to make another
write protect tab on the other side. just put one floppy over the other, with the write protect slot
over the blank side of the floppy you want to make double sided. to line the holes up correctly.
Re. power cycling - Yeah. I never had a problem with this, but I remember we used to open the drive before power cycling, just because we heard rumors that a surge could scramble data on the disk.
Regarding your comment about the plastic being so thick, it was for interference suppression. New rules had been implemented in the late 1970s so that the wave of home computers arriving would not interfere with other devices. This is why the TRS 80 went from a separate keyboard design to an all in one. Apple used this thick plastic that was embedded with aluminum particles to help absorb any stray RF signals. This is also why the composite to broadcast converter was a separate device - Apple didn't make the converters, so an issues arising regarding interference were the responsibility of the converter company. Most were made to fit inside the Apple's case to take advantage of the RF shielding.
Apple II+ My first computer. Still have it. Loved it!
I had an Apple 2pluss in 1991. In a book store I found the only program on floppy for this computer it was Star Gate.
The only experience I had with the Apple II series when I was a kid was playing educational games on them. They all booted directly from the disk, so I never interacted with any kind of DOS or BASIC. Which is sad, because I think it really would've helped me get used to programming a lot earlier. I didn't get to experience BASIC until a few years later when my Dad bought an IBM JX (that's right, _not_ PCjr).
Anyway, I'm really interested to see where you go with this series. It might be interesting to into the Logo programming language, since it allows you to draw nice geometric shapes on the screen and stuff.
The disk goes (usually) in slot 6, but works in any slot except #0.