Re: Apple III help please?

[zaphod@dumaine.gac.edu (William Voelker)]

In article <mark-110893094611@128.157.9.146> mark@trillian.jsc.nasa.gov  
(Mark Manning) writes:
> If I remember correctly, the Apple III could run either Lisa software
> or Apple software depending upon which OS you boot under.   
Unfortunately,
> I also believe that the OS at the time was DOS 3.3.  Therefore, ProDos
> working on the III is ify (though knowing Apple they probably took the
> Lisa into consideration when writing ProDos :) ).
> mark@trillian.jsc.nasa.gov

The Apple III ran SOS (Sophisticated Operating System) that was a superset  
(I believe) of what ProDOS is now (and it was much cooler---it could  
access up to 512K & use it all---with an 8-bit chip.  Exceptional  
programming.  The machine in its first incarnation was another matter.   
Kept dying, burning stuff out...).  BASIC was not automatically available  
from the prompt (they used a system much like in Mess-Dos, where BASIC is  
separate---the Apple III BASIC was Business Basic, a pretty good language,  
from what I have seen.  It could emulate Dos 3.3 in <gasp> 40 Columns!   
Lisa compatability was right out---the Lisa was a 68000 machine running at  
5mhz, while the III was a (again, this is from memory) 6502B chip running  
at 3mhz.

The Lisa was an interesting machine in and of itself---a complete ``desk''  
of programs came with it (Paint/SS/WP/DB/Comm/& some others), and it used  
rectangular instead of square pixels---which made for some interesting  
compatability differences when they made the mac/lisa machines that let  
them use up their last few Lisas they hadn't sold.  It was a nice idea,  
but way too slow and pricey for the time (5mhz, $10k).

William J. Voelker
zaphod@nic.gac.edu