Re: The State of the Apple

[bazyar@mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu (Jawaid Bazyar)]

rcmerrit@apgea.army.mil (Robert C. Merritt <rcmerrit>) writes:

>I was just crusin' the net and decided to peek in here.
>I own lots of old computers (Atari 800xl, Adam, Aqurious, Sinclare, Ti 99/4a)
>and resently I an offer to sell me a Apple IIGS.
>I always heard that the Apple 2 had worst graphics than the Atari so
>I never even looked at one. However I do remember a niffty Conan game
>one one I played in my school many moons ago (well it was an Apple 2+)

 The Apple IIe and previous had pretty gnarled graphics, this is true.

>So, what are the specs on the GS?
>From what I understand it had 256k. 

  Upgradeable to 8MB if you want, all directly linearly accessible to the
processor, no bank switching.

>Could do 320x200x16. 

  And 640x200x4.  The colors are out of a palette of 4096 colors. Doing
256 color images (different 16-color palette per scan line) is supported
in the hardware.

>had a processor
>of 5mhz and could have hard drives and things. 

  The standard processor is 2.8MHz (about twice as fast as a Z80
of equivalent clock speed).  Accelerator products abound, and they are
pushing 15MHz now (that 15MHz may not sound like much, but it seriously
cranks).

  There are people running around with 1GB (yes, gigabyte) SCSI hard drives
on their IIGS's. Flopticals, tape backup units, CD-ROM, etc. are all
supported and widely used.  We have two excellent SCSI cards, the
RAMFast (1MB/sec DMA transfer with 1MB onboard disk cache) and the Apple
DMA SCSI card (also 1MB/sec, no cache, but still quite fast and cheaper).

>I'd like to know when it was in production (I think from 85 to 87??)

  1986 to 1993.

>And why it failed (beyond the though that maybe it didn't and just was
>canned to put efforts towards the mac)

  Apple decided it didn't want to support two platforms.  Until the Mac LC,
the IIGS was Apple's single best selling computer, ever.

>Also how does it compare to say a PCjr (The IBM of that time that had 16 color)

  The IIGS is far and away superior to the PCjr.  No comparison whatsoever.
It's more comparable to the Mac LC series. Performance easily beats
an LC II (16MHz '030) in most tasks with a 9MHz accelerator.

  The IIGS is an exceptional computer, because it has slots (what a concept!)
What forces people to constant upgrade their Macintoshes allows the IIGS
owner to keep up with new technology - from video mixing, to full motion
real-time video digitizing, SCSI flatbed scanners, the best HyperMedia
package in existence, UNIX, Multi-Finder add-on packages, seamless TrueType font
capability, and a flair for telecommunications due to a number of exceptional
(better than any Mac or PC) terminal programs and BBS systems.

  In short, get that IIGS and drop a few bucks into it. You'll not regret it.

--
 Jawaid Bazyar              |   Like UNIX? Like your Apple IIGS? Then ask
 Procyon, Inc.              |   me about GNO/ME for the Apple IIgs!   
 bazyar@cs.uiuc.edu         |   P.O Box 620334
 --Apple II Forever!--      |   Littleton, CO 80162-0334   (303) 781-3273