Re: A3 FAQ

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

In article dave.ottalini@pro-applepi.wap.org (Dave Ottalini) writes...
> 
> 
>THE APPLE /// FAQ FILE
[snip]
>Shipments of the machine started in 1981 or so and almost immediately there
>were problems.  The biggest one: the chips would pop out of their sockets after
>only a few hours (primarily due to heat).  This led to the famous "two-inch
>drop" where owners would pick their machine up and drop it two inches to reseat
>the chips. This short-term solution was not totally satisfactory, however, and
>Apple ended up replacing every main circuit ("mother") board.  At about that
>time, IBM came out with the PC and Apple introduced its Lisa and Macintosh
>lines. A ///+ was introduced with a new //e-style keyboard and a few other
>upgrades.  But in 1984, Apple ended its production run at approximately 100,000
>machines.

	Just to correct things in the timeline a bit, the Apple III was first
introduced in May 1980. It was December 1981 that saw a reintroduction of the
Apple III -- a revamped system with all or most of the serious problems gone.
The Apple III Plus didn't come along until December 1983, yet the _entire_
Apple III line was discontinued only four months later!

 	The IBM PC was introduced inbetween the old III and the "fixed" III,
August 1981 to be exact. The Apple Lisa didn't surface until a few years
following -- January 1983. The Macintosh line (which was spawned from the
Lisa, basically a more evolved version) was introduced exactly one year later
in January 1984.

Here's a visual timeline graph to make things clear! :-) (From 1980 until
1985, though I could do one from 1976 to 1996 in a bit ;-) Note that each
notch in the graph represents two months.

        1980______
              |-
              |-
              |- <--------------- Apple III
              |-
              |-
        1981__|-__
              |-
              |-
              |-
              |- <--------------- IBM PC
              |-
        1982__|-_<--------------- Apple III (fixed version)
              |-
              |-
              |-
              |-
              |-
        1983__|-__
              |- <--------------- Lisa, Apple IIe
              |-
              |-
              |-
              |-
        1984__|-_<--------------- Apple III Plus
              |- <--------------- Macintosh 
              |- <--------------- Apple IIc [Apple III discontinued]
              |-
              |-
              |- <--------------- Mac 512
        1985__|-__
              . 
              .

>2) WHAT ARE THE ///'s CAPABILITIES?
> 
>Keyboard Friendliness
> 
>6)  Dedicated cursor or arrow keys.
>10) Automatic repeat for all keys and the speed can be tripled.

	Arrows keys arranged as a 1/4th counter clock-wise turned "L"
on the Apple III, and a straight line ("----") on the Apple III Plus.
Arrow keys had two levels of sensitivity when pushed, the second level
(simply pressing down with more pressure) caused the speed up of 
auto-repeat. A great feature I wouldn't mind on other systems today! :) 

>19) Computer "ON" light.

	If the light-lamp underneath burns out, a minor system failure
will occur causing system to loop into a RAM Diagnostic at cold-boot.
Replacing the dead light solves this (I found a common LED a working
replacement, though recommend a real mini-lamp).

>3) WHAT ABOUT ITS BUILT-IN FEATURES?
>
>7) Sound   : 64 volume settings and over seven octaves.
>8) Speaker : of speech producing quality.

	Has a 6-bit DAC worth mentioning. Digital sound playback possible,
although just a tad-bit fuzzy being only 6-bit rather than 8/16-bit.

>4) WHAT ABOUT SOS - THE ///'S OPERATING SYSTEM?
>
>17) Programs can run 20% faster by pressing Control-5 on keypad (no
>    video).

	Interesting, does this allow the 6502-B to run at a full 2 MHz?

>8) WHAT'S THIS ABOUT "SOS"?
> 
>serial card for telecommunications; ".Audio" lets your /// talk to you;

	By "talk to you", do you mean you can have speech-synthesis,
digitized sound or merely "beeps & blips" by toggling the speaker?
If it's speech synthesis, I'd love to try this. :)

Mitchell Spector
m_spect@vega.concordia.ca / spector@vax2.concordia.ca