Re: //e, //c, //gs Questions

[spec@vax2.concordia.ca (Mitchell Spector)]

In article Maynard Lilac <texicus@hotmail.com> writes...

>I recently bought a number of Apple computers, monitors and disk drives.
>I have an Apple //e, a //c and a //gs. I also have 4 different monitors.
>One is a 9 inch monochrome model that came with the //c. Another is
>called an Apple Monitor ///. Another is simply called an Apple Monitor
>and came with the //e. The last one came with the //gs and seems like a
>slightly smaller version of the standard Mac 13 inch RGB monitor.

    It sounds like you have an Apple 'Monitor IIc', 'Monitor II'
and 'Monitor III'. These are all basically the same type, they're
green phosphor monochrome displays with a composite (RCA) input.
There is not much to say about them, except that the Monitor III
is the least nice of the three, due to it having a slow phosphor
refresh that causes "ghosting" and an anti-glare mesh that makes
the display fuzzy and hard to read.

    The latter one you describe sounds like an AppleColor RGB,
which was designed specifically to be sold with the Apple IIgs.
It is a 12" analog RGB display operating at NTSC (15.75 kHz)
scanning frequency, which makes it incompatible with PC's and
Macintoshes (except under very rare conditions).

>I also have an assortment of external drives, both 5.25 and 3.5 inch.
>I'd like to ask a bunch of questions about these systems if I may.

    The 5.25 drives should be compatible with all the above
systems, you may just need an adapter or controller card in
some cases. The 3.5 drives are a different story, and it
will depend what type they are (i.e. Macintosh 400K/800K,
UniDisk 3.5, Apple 3.5, SuperDrive) and which machines you
plan to use them on.

    The IIgs supports the UniDisk 3.5 and Apple 3.5 (and
SuperDrive in 800K mode) directly through its back port.
The IIc supports only the UniDisk 3.5 (must be a IIc with
ROM '0' or higher) and the IIe requires an interface card
to support any type of 3.5 drive. There are a number of
different controllers and they vary in what they support.
You can still purchase the SuperDrive card, and it works
on both the IIe and IIgs to support the 1.44 MB drive.

>Operating Systems:
>
>What operating systems will run on these 3 Apples?

    The standard OS for your Apple IIe/c is ProDOS 8; the latest
revision is 2.0.3. Another common OS for those machines is Apple
DOS (which was replaced by ProDOS 8) of which the final revision
was 3.3. You will mostly want to stick with ProDOS 8, but there
will be certain cases where DOS 3.3 is required (mostly to run
older games and software since they're not ProDOS compatible).
ProDOS 8 supports hardrives, DOS 3.3 does not (or at least not
without patches and then extremely poorly).

    The Apple IIgs can run the above OS in emulation mode, but
it has a native operating system called GS/OS (latest revision
of that is 4.0.2). This is a 16-bit OS that runs only on the
IIgs machine, and has many advanced features that make use of
its greater processing power, memory and mouse driven interface.
GS/OS comes part of System Software (the latest and final release
is System 6.0.1) which includes a IIgs implementation of the
Macintosh Finder under the same name and _very_ similiar (it
is mouse driven and works like Mac System 6 without the Multi-
Finder, but also sports a sprinkle of System 7 feature plus
some still not found in System 8.x).

    Note that an older OS exists called "ProDOS 16", but this
was replaced by GS/OS and almost completely forgotten about
today (except by a few older games) as it is quite slow and not
even a true 16-bit OS (it was made to serve as a temporary OS).

>I had a //+ back in the early 80s and can recall certain programs
>written in BASIC running without loading any operating system.

    Yep, all Apple II's have Applesoft BASIC built-in ROM (the
exception is the original Apple II, which has Integer BASIC)
and lets you start entering and running programs without the
need to load any software. The only catch is your then only
able to "LOAD" and "SAVE" programs off casette tapes, so it
is *necessary* to boot a DOS 3.3 or ProDOS 8 disk to add the
required interface drivers to work with floppy disks or other
types of storage. It will still use the version of BASIC in
ROM however, since your loading a command interface driver
that slips in between BASIC and the floppy controller.

>I still have a lot of my old programs and games for the //+ and
>was curious if these would work with the //e, the //c and the //gs.

    They should, each Apple II is fully backwards compatible
with the previous model (there are some minor exceptions, as
in the case of firmware changes or programs that broke major
rules and guidelines). My Apple IIgs is able to run programs
written way back in 1977, which is quite a remarkable feat
considering the differences between it and other Apple II's
(it is the only Apple II which has to switch into emulation
mode, but it is virtually 100% transparent to the user. Lots
of people take it for granted it is so transparent in fact).

>Can the //c and //gs use some Mac OSs?

    No. You cannot run any version of MacOS or 68K software
on any version of the Apple II. The Apple IIgs works on very
similar principles--such as having a Toolbox in ROM with its
own version of QuickDraw (QuickDraw II), ADB keyboards and
mice and an operating system that looks and feels just like
a Macintosh--but it is *not* a Macintosh. In some ways it is
like the Apple Lisa, sharing similar hardware and a GUI, but
are incompatible systems (the Lisa could emulate the Mac as
it had a 68000, though the IIgs cannot with its 65C816 CPU).

    You can share certain things. TrueType fonts can be
copied from the Mac and used directly on the IIgs with
an add-on program called "Pointless". You can convert
and use icons and sound files, graphics as well as other
things. Hardward-wise, external Macintosh floppy drives,
keyboards and mice, a serial MIDI interface (most stuff
from about the 1987+ era). There are even some things the
IIgs has which even the Macintosh today does not, such as
a built-in hardware sound synthesizer.

>System Expansion:
>
>Are expansion cards interchangable between the //+, //e and //gs?

    Generally, yes. There are a couple of exceptions though,
such as multi-function cards not working with the IIgs and
obviously, slot-0 cards (II/II+), auxiliary cards (IIe) and
memory expansion cards (IIgs) being unique to those systems
and *not* being interchangeable.

    Some cards require you slow the IIgs down to 1 MHz (i.e.
Z80 CP/M cards) and then there are certain cards which fall
into the redundant catagory because of the GS's  built-in
features (e.g. DD 5.25 and 3.5 controllers, clock  cards,
serial cards, mouse card, sound cards, etc). Note that if
you use a Slinky RAM card in the IIgs, it be ignored by all
programs in favor of GS memory, except as a RAM Disk device.

>Can the //c be expanded at all?

    Limited for the original model. You could add an external
5.25 drive, and some hacks were engineered to add additional
memory, clocks and accelerator by removing chips and swapping
in boards or replacement chips. A later IIc model, introduced
at the time of the IIgs, offered an internal expansion socket
to add plug-in memory cards (ROM 3 and up) and then there was
a firmware update that let you use "intelligent" devices like
3.5 drives and diskport hardrive (ROM 0 and up).

>What type of cards are used with these computers (like ISA for PCs
>and NuBus for Macs)?

    The slots only accept and use Apple II-specific cards
(someone was attempting to build an ISA slot adapter, but I
don't think anything became of that). Of course, there have
been Apple II IDE and MFM controllers, plus SVGA and SCSI
cards produced. There were Apple II cards made for almost
everything imaginable, supporting many popular technological
computer add-on up until the late 80's era. Forget about any
thing 90's, like 3Dfx Voodoo chipset based cards though. ;-)

    There are seven standard 50-pin slots inside all Apple II
machines (excluding of course, the IIc models) which are all
fully buffered and locked down to a 1 MHz I/O bus. There are
unique slots, such as cards that plugged into slot #0 on the
original Apple II and II Plus (16K Language Cards mostly) or
the 60-pin auxiliary slot in the IIe for bank-switching RAM,
or the 44-pin Memory Expansion Slot on the Apple IIgs. These
slots are Apple II specific as well; actually model specific.

>Can any of these systems use hard drives?

    Certainly. There have been a number of internal and external
solutions made available throughout the years. Currently, for
the Apple IIe and IIgs the most popular (and still available)
is a SCSI card with external SCSI drive or an internal HardCard
with 2.5" IDE mounted to it.

    The Apple IIc required hardrives that connected to the floppy
port, but these were quite slow and have been expensive and quite
rare to come by. The majority of IIc's out there are operated by
floppy drives or RAM Disk. Hardrives on the IIe and IIc are more
of a luxury item, while on the IIgs it is almost an essential item.

>Which of these systems allow memory expansion?

    All do. The IIe and IIc work with bank-switching (read in small
64K chunks at a time) or Slinky-type RAM boards (reads bytes in a
sequential order, one byte at a time I believe; Hence the nickname
"Slinky" since it slinks byte by byte like a slinky toy going down
stairs--step by step without jumping around. I may be off here,
this is just my understanding off how the two work). In any case,
most programs see the second 64K (128K has been the standard RAM
for both machines) though to see beyond that programs have to be
specifically written or patched to use extra memory. In the case
of older II/II+ software, some things may not even see beyond 64K,
or even 48K or less (Applesoft BASIC for example). Souped up IIe
and IIc systems often had anywhere from 256K to 1 MB added, or in
rare cases, up to 3 MB.

    The Apple IIgs used a different, more direct memory addressing
technique because it used a 65C816 (it's address bus is 24-bit, or
16,777,216 bytes, whereas the 65C02 had a 16-bit address bus, or
only 65,536 bytes). I think it used linear addressing, though not
sure if it saw memory in chunks or as one big piece, probably the
former based on what I know. I'll let a programmer step in here. :)
The IIgs had either 256K or 1 MB+ built-in, and could be expanded
up to 8 megabytes in total (through plug-in boards that used DRAM,
in either ZIP/SIP and DIP packages, or SIMMs). For software, 1 MB
is the minimum standard, while 4 MB is the recommended standard.

>Monitors:
>
>All these computers have a video port on the back which seems to be a
>simple RCA port for monochrome video.

    Yep, they all output composite NTSC output. Just plug them into
a composite monitor or TV/VCR with RCA connector inputs. You will
need an RGB or monochrome screen to support 80 columns usably, but
a TV screen works fine for color graphics.

>The //c and //gs have an additional 15 pin Mac-like video port.

    They are not the same. The Apple IIgs has an analog RGB out
port that works at NTSC scanning frequency (it supports monitors
that scan at a frequency of 15.75 kHz horizontally) and that
excludes VGA/SVGA frequency monitors.

    The IIc has a Video Expansion Port. This just provides you
with the raw signals to *BUILD* an output port, so unless you
purchase/build an convertor box (or one of the rare LCD screens
that use the port directly) it is wouldn't be of any use to you.

>I only have one monochrome video cable and was wondering if I
>could use standard RCA video cabling to connect my various monitors
>to these computers.

    It'll work fine. Just note that the IIgs requires an RGB
monitor to optimally display its resolution and 4096 colors
(the composite output of the GS is fine when emulating older
Apple II's, but makes a mess with IIgs graphics. Part of that
is due to the nature of NTSC, the other is Apple using a non-
standard NTSC output which isn't very clean).

>Can the //c and //gs, since they have the Mac-like RGB port, use
>Mac monitors?

    No, not at all. The only way to use a Macintosh monitor
on the Apple IIgs is with the Second Sight SVGA slot card,
and even then you will need a Mac->VGA adapter. There is
no such option for the IIc (or the IIe really, since the
Second Sight firmware was never completed to support it).

>Can the smallish RGB monitor which came with the //gs be used on a Mac?

    Normally, no. However if you have the original NuBus
video card it will support it in a very limited fashion.
That is, in interlaced mode (read: Migraine headaces if
you stare at it too long, or at least eye strain since
it has a low dot pitch and 60 Hz refresh max). ;-) I
just posted details about the card a couple of days ago
so the information should still be on your newserver.

>Requisitioning:
>
>Where would I be able to find various Apple components and old programs
>and OSs for these Apple computers? I've seen a couple web sites which
>have some older Apple // stuff for sale, but they seemed very expensive.
>Also, if anyone could point me to some good Apple // web sites which
>offer nearly endless amounts of info on these systems I would be very
>grateful.

    Well you can download the OS's mentioned above from Apple's
FTP site (ftp://ftp.apple.com/dts/aii) though you will need to
get your Apple II's online or have a Macintosh handy which can
process the disks for you (I never had to do that, but I did do
the reverse and have the Apple IIgs process System Disks for my
Macintosh Plus that had no software). :)

    If you want to buy hardware and software, subscribe to the
newsgroup 'comp.sys.apple2.marketplace' or if you want to try
locally, check the classified section in the back of newspapers,
garage sales, thrift shops or (I'm not kidding) dumpsters and
trash piles (you can sometimes find computers being thrown out
with the weekly trash. Yep, sicken to see and pretty wasteful).
There's several good web sites for information and places to
purchase things as I'm sure people here will point out. Start
by checking out:

- http://www.allelec.com   (Alltech Electronics)
- http://www.crl.com/~joko (Shareware Solutions II)
- http://www.byteworks.com (The Byteworks. Not sure about URL)

Mitchell Spector
spec@vax2.concordia.ca