Re: Apple and the Holy War

[pausch@saafNOSPAM.se (Paul Schlyter)]

In article <20000512110050.02270.00002578@ng-fx1.aol.com>,
Supertimer <supertimer@aol.com> wrote:
 
> pausch@saafNOSPAM.se (Paul Schlyter) wrote:
> 
>>> Interestingly, so was the IIe version of WordPerfect.  When my friend
>>> switched from Wordstar to the DOS version of Wordperfect, performance
>>> slowed down.
>> 
>> Interesting -- I got the impression that WordPerfect performed better
>> than WordStar.....
> 
> Something happened.  Didn't WordPerfect have greater memory
> requirements?  I know that he bumped the RAM up to 640k after WP.
> WordPerfect did have more features if I remember correctly.
 
WordPerfect certainly did have greater memory requirements.
The first WordStar for the PC was essentially a port of the CP/M
version of WordStar: as such it ran fine in a TPA of only 64K
or even less.  WordPerfect certainly required more than 64K.
 
>>>> The PC then had only one advantage: meomory space (640K RAM on
>>>> the PC vs 64K on the CP/M machine), which sometimes mattered.
>>> 
>>> And this was exactly why I stayed with the Apple II.  ;-)
>> 
>>You mean the memory space issue didn't matter to you?
> 
> It did.  On the IIe, I had 1MB of extended memory and all
> of my productivity apps supported it.  If it were not for this,
> I would have tossed the IIe.
> 
> The IIe addressed the memory space issue via bank
> switching.  As a programmer, I would have not liked this,
> but from an application use standpoint, memory was
> memory.
 
I was a programmer who wanted to write my own software.  So
to me this mattered.
 
> When the programs I wanted couldn't be made available
> via this method, the IIGS had appeared.  With its 16MB
> memory space, it was just what I needed.  So I moved
> up.
> 
> Wasn't the IIe released a few months after the original
> IBM PC?
 
Probably -- the first IBM PC appeared already in 1981: floppy-only,
16K RAM, and quite expensive.
 
>>> I didn't move to the PC until the advent of Windows 95 and
>>> the '486 and when I moved over, the main thing I did was
>>> still word processing and page layout.  The internet was
>>> what caused me to jump ship, but I still have my IIGS
>> 
>> Here I think we have a clue to our different pserspectives: when I
>> say "Apple II", I'm always thinking of the Apple II+ or possibly IIe
>> or IIc.  I've never used the IIgs, as a matter of fact I've never
>> even seen in in real life.  This is probably because the IIgs
>> appeared years after I had abandoned the Apple II.
> 
> This is probably the root of the difference.  Also probably
> because the Apple II series did not make as much a
> dent overseas as it did in North America.
> 
> How about the IIe?  Was it widely promoted in your country?
 
Yes it was, and I've used one many times.  However whatever
advantages the IIe had I was adding, piece by piece, to my
II+: 80-column display, lowercase letters on keyboard, 128K
RAM (not addressed like on the IIe, but instead like "8
language cards in parallell". Could be used as a RAM disk
but not much more).
 
> But I can see where you are coming from.  If I had a II+ as my
> only Apple II, I would see the Apple II as a computer with a
> maximum of 64k of RAM with no lower-case support.
 
To me the Apple II+ wasn't like that: I had added lower-case support
(essential in CP/M), and I had 240K RAM on it (48K on the
motherboard, 128K on an extended memory card, and 64K on the
Appli-Card Z80 card, with an option to add another 128K addressable
from the Z80, using bank switching of course).
 
> I'm glad my first exposure to the Apple II series was the IIe
> otherwise I wouldn't be on csa2 now.  ;-)
 
I'm on csa2 now.... :-)
 

-- 
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