Re: Your first A2.

[a_specto@alcor.concordia.ca (Mitchell Spector)]

mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon) wrote:

>>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.  ;-)

    Your right, I just did a little digging and found Apple even had
official part numbers for II Plus systems that shipped in the three
RAM configurations. I don't know why, but I thought I remember
48K being standard then. Thanks for the correction.

    They did remove support for 4K DRAMs though, right? Or was
that just the jumper blocks to select between 4K and 16K chips
that I'm thinking of?

>>    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!

    Yep, when I upgraded from my II Plus with composite monitor to
the IIgs with an RGB, I right away noticed Hi-Res graphics looking
not quite the same (dithering more apparent, things looking much
too sharp for their own good, even the color itself).

    RGB versus composite is one factor, though even when connected
to a composite display, the IIgs still displays High/Double-High-Res
slightly different than a II Plus or IIe. It's subtle, but there.
There was an 1986 or 87 issue of A+ that had an article on it,
which unfortunately I don't have on hand (they discussed the
technical details of the IIgs dealer demo and how it was written
in that same issue).

Mitchell Spector
a_specto@alcor.concordia.ca