Apple Card Catalog

[dog_cow@macgui.com (D Finnigan)]

Just the other day I thought that it might be useful to construct a
comprehensive Apple Card Catalog. That is, a database of all known Apple II
and IIgs expansion cards which filled a slot on the backplane.

I know that there are various collections out there, such as the What is the
GS site which is GS-only, but there doesn't seem to be anything
comprehensive.

Therefore, I propose a database-driven catalog which could contain the
following information on each known card:

- Card Name
- Manufacturer
- Year Released
- Revisions
- Expansion (for example, the RamWorks daughter cards)
- Compatible with (e.g. GS only, //e only, etc)
- Typical Slot (all, slot 6, Aux only, etc)
- Category (e.g. disk controller, printer, communications, etc)
- I/O Locations
- ROM disassembly
- Description
- Programmer's Info / Usage

We could also have various photos of each card, and we could even provide
subjective information on "obtainability." As an example, the Disk ][
controller could be classified as "Common," the AppleMouse card as
"Uncommon," and some cards might get the distinguished label of "Rare."
Also, we could have a button which one can click to increment a "People who
own this card" statistic. We'd be relying on word of honor, of course, but
it would be a neat statistic none the less!

Also, fields such as year released and manufacturer would be linked, so we
could see all cards released in 1981, for example, or all cards released by
a certain company. Another interesting feature would be the ability to give
the program a list of cards, and then the program uses the above slot
information to determine a suitable card layout, complete with alternate
layouts in case of conflict.

I would be interested if anyone has suggestions on more relevant fields to
add. I'd like to stick to just the facts, so objective things such as
"market/collector value" would not be appropriate here, I don't think.
Having a commonness/rarity index is just toeing the line, IMO.

Any other thoughts on this? I have the skills required to write the code for
such an online database; it'd just be the time of actually filling it out
which would be the critical factor. It's something I have planned for later,
but it's always good to get ideas out, I think.