Re: Your first A2.

[mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon)]

Mitchell Spector asked:

>mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon) wrote:
>
>>I still have my 1980 Apple ][+, bought with 16K and cassette only!  ;-)
>>Paid $1200 for it, and bought a new cassette deck, 10" color TV, and
>>Sup'R'Mod the same day.  A week later, I ordered another 32K of
>>4116 chips from JDR for about $60 (saving $250 or so!).
>
>    Wasn't one of the "features" of the Apple II Plus that it shipped
>with 48K RAM standard out of the box? 

No, it was available in 16K, 32K, and 48K versions, at least at the
end of 1980.  It could be trivially upgraded by adding 4116's, and
they were just starting to drop below $4 per chip by then.  (Of course,
they were _very_ expensive from Apple.  I guess they could always
say they paid $10 per chip, and deserved a 2x markup.  ;-)

>    Unless you meant to say you had an original Apple II, although
>those were sold prior to 1980. I started out my Apple II days with
>a full 64K RAM, though by that time the (then) only 2 month old 
>Apple IIc came with 128K. That seemed enormous back then!
>Of course when I picked up a color monitor (not TV!) shortly
>afterwards, it was more exciting than any amount of RAM. :)

I can understand that!  I used a small color TV for two years, before
getting a green-screen Zenith monitor, which made 80-columns
indispensible in five minutes of use!  Of course, I couldn't afford a
Videx, so I built a Videx clone on an etched board.  It worked
beautifully!  But, even after trying an RGB monitor years later, I
still preferred the TV for color, or a composite monitor.  The Apple
II was _designed_ for composite color!

-michael

 Email:  mjmahon@aol.com
 Home page:  http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/