Re: Want an Apple I workalike?

[steve@dosius.zzn.com (Dosius)]

blackm00@cam.org (Michael Black) wrote in message news:<6447bcd3.0309081644.77cb6965@posting.google.com>...
> Obviously, the Apple II is doable from scratch.  The schematic
> was printed in the manual, and all the parts are nice and
> standard.  
<snip>
> And making a homemade version of the Apple, I or II, has a certain
> legitimacy.  I can imagine someone looking at the schematic back
> then, and figuring out the price of the parts, and realizing that
> if they put in the work, they could get an Apple for considerably
> less.  (Someone once wrote about their copy of the KIM-1, and I
> remember one really neat article in Kilobaud where someone wanted
> to use the original TRS-80 BASIC ROMs, so they had to figure out
> what hardware was needed, and modified their existing Z-80 system
> so it would run the ROMs.)  I don't know if anyone ever did that.  But
> given that premise, there is a certain authenticity to someone building
> an exact copy.  Except for carbon dating (and likely date codes),
> it would be basically the same thing whether someone did the building
> 25 years ago, or last week.

I wish I knew how to build a computer.  That said, yes, the Apple
][/][+ is a mindnumbingly simple design, I banged out a simple
emulator with mono gfx in a matter of hours.

I once thought, and maybe it's possible, that it would be nice to
build a small Apple ][+ clone, perhaps fully expanded, and maybe with
a 3.5" drive (one, perhaps, compatible with the Dapple Megadisk format
</plug>), prolly with PS/2-style keyboard/mouse ports, PC joystick
port, etc., which are easier to find stuff for, and a Unidisk
connector.  (//e would be even nicer :D, plus you can shove 3136K of
RAM in it)

-uso.