Re: Apple III???

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

In article eshepher@quicksilver.com (Eric Shepherd) writes...

>Paulhc <paulhc@swbell.net> wrote:
> 
>>What is the Apple III that I've been seeing in some posts?  I think I
>>know what is looks like but actually never seen it in person.  I
>>remember when I was in grade school the only computers we ever used were
>>dozens of Apple ][e's, one Apple //c, 5 Mac LCII.  Never any Apple III. 
>>I'm assuming it's pretty old for 2 reasons. 1: Beige color (new ones
>>were a silver, right?). 2: No other versions of the III like the Apple
>>][ (Apple ][+, ][e, //c, gs, etc.) 
> 
>The Apple /// was released around 1981 or so, I believe.  

    May 1980 actually, then re-introduced (a take-two so to speak, as if 
the first run was a failed practice) 19 months later with fixed and newly
redesigned motherboard in December 1981. If I'm not mistaken, these fixed
motherboards had the DRAM memory on a raised daughterboard.

>It had numerous problems, and was replaced by the Apple ///+ shortly
>thereafter (although it was still labelled "Apple ///" on the case).

    Your thinking of the "fixed" III above. The Apple III Plus actually
did have that label on it's case, and even several enhancements which
made it a solid machine (i.e. built-in clock with replacable battery,
256K standard, improved keyboard, interlaced graphic mode to double
the verticle resolution, ports with thumb-screws and icons labeling,
etc). The III Plus came out in December 1983, just a month before the
first Macintosh was rolled out.

>It was intended to be a business computer.  It had its own operating
>system (SOS, upon which ProDOS is heavily based), its own programing
>languages, and was fairly unique in a number of ways.  It had an Apple
>][+ emulation mode which would run most (but not all) Apple II
>software of the day.

    Of course there was extra logic on the motherboard to prevent you
from emulating more than a stock Apple II Plus (48K, 40 columns and
uppercase text, 1 MHz operation, Low-Res and Hi-Res graphics).

>It was discontinued in 1983 or so. 

    Actually it was discontinued the same month the Apple IIc was
introduced: April 1984. I get the feeling the machine was already
"dead" several months before that.

Mitchell Spector
spec@vax2.concordia.ca