Re: Where were A2 clones sold and advertised

[Michael Black <blackm00@gloria.cam.org>]

On Tue, 21 Aug 2001, Mike Pfaiffer wrote:

> Ernest wrote:
> 
> > I've been thumbing through my Byte mags ('79-85) and I haven't seen a single
> > A2 clone advertised so far. Were clones sold through magazines like Byte?
> > Did you have to buy them at local shops or were they mail order only?
> > 
> > E.
> 
> 	Here in Winnipeg there were a couple of people who ordered the parts and 
> made them locally. These were usually sold in a couple of places. 
> Frequently the clones were better than the actual machine. One clone my 
> brother had was a ][+ but had lowercase.
> 
> 				Later
> 				Mike
> 
I just pulled out a Byte that happened to be nearby, August 1983.
On page 521, Suntronics has an ad that shows some "Apple Compatible
Products", a disk controller, a keyboard, 80-column card and a Z80 card.
Just below it, "Concord Computer Products" is selling "bare bones
Euro cards, no keyboard, no power supply but 48K of RAM" for $399.

On page 525, "Micromail" is selling Apple II compatibles for$990.
Page 529 is a full page ad from Formula International for Apple
II items.  A "6502 CPU motherboard" that has to be an Apple clone,
and all the other components one needs to build  a clone, or you
can buy a "pinecom" kit for $645.

There isn't any point in going further, because there is plenty
in this single issue that points to the clone industry.

If you went to Toronto around that time, there were a bunch of
stores that had risen up to sell Apple II clones and components.
They were sort of an odd mix, because they existed to sell only
clones and things to make clones, but you could buy parts there
too, so long as they were the parts used in such computers.
Here in Montreal, there were some simlar stores, though I don't
think it was as widespread.  Most of them faded out, though one store
existed up until a few years ago as a more general computer store,
having grown from it's clone-origins.

There was an electronic hobbyist magazine published in Canada
at the time, ETI, and it was full of ads for the clone shops.
They'd run articles about making your own "Apple IIs" including
disclaimers about how you'd need a legal ROM, and then mumble
stuff about getting copies of such things. 

A few years after the peak, they ran an article sort of chronicling
the history.  It claimed that the start had come with those Euro
boards, and then when the supply ran out, somebody started making
their own.  I'm not sure how factual that is, because it was never
clear how much of the boards were locally made, an how much was
imported.

I'm hazy about the time frame, but there was a lesser industry
built up around the Big Board, a Z-80 based computer that had
just about everything on a single board.

And of course, some of the people into the Apple Clone industry
moved onto the "IBM PC" clone industry, which followed the same
path as the previous cloning (at least in terms of generic shops
like I'm writing about). 

    Michael