The ability to add an external hardware device to a computer has been present from the earliest days of the first Altair to the present. The more popular the computer, the more variety found in hardware add-ons. The Apple II, designed by a hacker to be as expandable as possible, was once a leader as a platform for launching new and unique hardware gadgets. Bythe Apple II unfortunately no longer held the front position; it had been supplanted by the Macintosh and IBM PC and its clones.

This chapter of the Apple II History will present an overview of hardware devices that were either significant in the advancement of the II, or unique, one-of-a-kind devices. This is definitely not a comprehensive list; it is limited to those peripherals about which the author has had personal experience or about which information could be located. Quite probably, in time many devices that were once considered optional accessories will become so essential that they will always be built-in.

Recall that the earliest computers came with almost nothing built-in. They had a microprocessor, a little memory, some means of data input and display of results, the ability to access some or all of the signals from the microprocessor, and that was all. For those computers, the first things that users added were keyboards and TV monitors to make it easier to use them. Recognizing that the earliest hardware peripherals were keyboards and monitors highlights one fact: Nearly everything that is sold as a peripheral for a computer is either an input device, an output device, or an interface to make it possible to connect input and output devices.

Exceptions are cards to add memory, co-processor cards to allow it to run software from another computer, and accelerators to make the computer run faster. With the release of the first Apple II, it offered an advantage over many of its competitors at the time. A keyboard, and the circuitry to allow easy connection of a TV monitor. It had, of course, the slots for inserting expansion cards none were availablea game port for attaching the include game paddlesa pin that could be used to connect an RF modulator so a standard television could be used instead of a computer monitorand a cassette interface.

However, those early users who had a need usually found a way around these limits. To get a printed copy of a program listing, for example, was no trivial matter. First, there were very few printers available. Those who could, obtained old used teletypes salvaged from mainframe computers. This driver sent characters to the printer through a connection to the game paddle port. One part of being a hacker was improvising with what was available.

Another of the earliest devices designed for the Apple II came from the Apple Pugetsound Program Library Exchange A. They were involved in distributing Integer BASIC programs on cassette to members of the group.

To make it easier to send those programs to the person responsible for duplicating the cassette, Darrell Aldrich designed a means of sending the programs over the telephone lines. To send a program, you first called up the person who was to receive it and got the computers on each end connected to the Apple Box. The sender then used the SAVE command in BASIC to tell the computer to save a program to tape. One of the first interface cards made for the Apple II was released, naturally, by Apple.

As a parallel device, it used eight wires to connect the computer with a printer, one line for each data bit in a byte. Because each of the eight bits needed a separate wire, the cables for parallel devices looked like ribbons and were not very compact. Most of the early printers available required this type of interface.

One solution offered by a reader of Call-A. Apple released the Centronics parallel printer card in It could be used to drive a serial printer, but the slow speed and lack of handshaking telling the computer to stop sending data until what had been sent had been printed limited its usefulness for that purpose. One was that most modems of the time were acoustic. With an acoustic modem you dialed up the number yourself, and when you made a connection you put the handset which, unlike today, was very standard sized into rubber sockets to seal out extraneous sound.

A tiny speaker and microphone in the modem were then used to send and receive signals. Although it was possible to use a modem to communicate at speeds greater than baud, this equipment was more expensive and not as readily available. Instead of sending each byte as eight simultaneous bits as was done in parallel devices, serial interfaces send each byte as a series of eight bits, which only took two wires; one to send and one to receive data.

Like the parallel cards, there were a couple of other wires that went with the data lines to control handshaking. Also, serial cards needed a means of letting the sending and receiving devices identify when a byte began and ended, and the speed at which data was being transmitted. The original version of the Serial Interface Card had a ROM that was called the P8 ROM. It contained the on-card program that allowed a user to print or otherwise communicate with the card without having to know much on the hardware level.

This worked better with some printers, but unfortunately the P8A ROM was not compatible with some serial printers that had worked with the earlier P8 ROM. The Apple Super Serial Card firmware was finished in January To change from one type of mode to another, however, called for switching a block on the card from one position to another from printer position to modem position.

The Super Serial Card was also able to emulate both the P8 and P8A Serial Cards, making it compatible with most older software written specifically for those cards. After getting a printer interface card and printerthe next variety of peripheral cards popular for the Apple II and II Plus were ones that allowed display of 80 columns of text which was rapidly becoming a standard outside the Apple II world.

One of the most popular of the column cards was the Videx Videoterm. Videx even made a display card that would display columns card for the Apple II, but it never made much headway in the computer world being supplanted by bit-mapped graphics displays, ala Macintosh.

Many other companies made column cards, but for the most part they were not very compatible with each other. One problem was deciding on a method to place the characters on the column screen. With these column cards, they often used a standard from the non-Apple world, that of using special character sequences to indicate a screen position or other functions. For example, to put a character at row 12, column 2, a program needed to send an ESC, followed by a letter, followed by 12 and When the Apple IIe was released, with its RAM-based method of displaying 80 columns of text, nearly all the older column cards disappeared from the market.

One unique video product was made by Synetix, Inc. Their SuperSprite board plugged into slot 7 which had access to some video signals not available on other slotsand was promoted as a graphics enhancement system. This was much easier than trying to program a hi-res game using standard Apple graphics. It was hard for developers to justify writing programs for only a few users that might have this card. Another company later made a similar card called the StarSprite, but it suffered the same fate.

InApple Computer released the Apple II Video Overlay Card. It had to be installed into slot 3 on the Apple IIGS, but could be put in any slot except slot 1 on the IIe. This card made it possible to put screen images from an Apple IIe or IIGS onto video from other sources. The combined results could be displayed on a monitor and recorded onto a VCR. It included VideoMix, a program to manage the images being merged. Starting inwork began by Sequential Systems on a new video card, the Second Sight card.

The card was designed by Andrew Vogan of CV Technology and Joe Yandrofski of Sequential Systemswith firmware done by Jawaid Bazyar and Tim Courtney. Primarily focused on the Apple IIGS, whose RBG monitors were no longer being manufactured by Apple, this card was intended to make it possible to use VGA or SVGA monitors that were plentiful in the PC world. It was also possible to use this card on an Apple IIe. The Second Sight was made to utilize all of the standard graphics modes of the IIGS, as well as handling some of the text and video modes specifically handled by SVGA monitors.

All peripheral cards released for the Apple II up to the time of the Apple II Plus were usable only in slots 1 through 7. The Firmware Card contained ROM that paralleled the upper 12K of Apple II memory. If you recall from the Chapter 6Integer BASIC and the ROM version of Applesoft covered the same space in memory, and so could not co-exist. When it was clear that a floating-point BASIC Applesoft was what many people wanted, the II Plus came out with Applesoft in ROM.

To make sure that the previous Apple II owners were not left out, Apple released the Applesoft Firmware Card to plug into slot 0. It had a switch that allowed the user to select which BASIC should be active. In one position, the motherboard ROM would be selected, and in the other position the Applesoft and Autostart ROM was selected. Because there were quite a few Integer BASIC programs that Apple II Plus users wanted to run, the Firmware Card also came out in an Integer BASIC version with the old Monitor ROM, that allowed II Plus users to simulate owning a standard II.

The Autostart Monitor was called that because it would automatically try to boot the Disk II drive when the power was turned on, and jumped to a known memory location when the RESET key was pressed. This allowed the disk operating system to reconnect itself, but more importantly made it possible to create copy-protected software. Usually, a RESET on a protected program would restart the program, erase the program from memory, or re-boot the disk. The Integer BASIC and Old Monitor ROM lacked this feature; a RESET would just drop the user into the Monitor.

This, of course, was just what hackers and those who liked to break copy-protection wanted. The users with a non-Plus Apple II or with the Integer BASIC Firmware Card on a II Plus could prevent a RESET from restarting anythingallowing them to hack a program as much as they wanted.

The next card Apple released for slot 0 was called the Language Card. It was released in with Pascaland expanded a 48K Apple II into a full 64K memory computer. It did not remove the upper 16K of ROM, but the card contained 16K of RAM that was electronically parallel to the ROM.

This extra memory was used to load the Pascal disk system, and under DOS 3. This was a more flexible alternative to the Firmware Card, and opened the way to other languages beyond BASIC for Apple II users. In lateprogrammers at Apple were using Apple II computers to do the Pascal coding for the Lisa project. They had hit the 64K barrier and needed yet more space. Burrell Smith, who later worked on the Macintosh, came up with the idea of adding an additional 16K bank of RAM to the Language Card.

This custom 32K Language Card created an 80K Apple II, which the Lisa team used until the Lisa hardware and firmware was far enough along to be able to use the computer for coding. Saturn Systems was one early suppliers of the large RAM cards. The year appeared to be a significant year for the release of these devices, as a number of them were introduced that year. Many of these cards worked by simulating a floppy disk drive. Intel released the MPC BubDisk, using bubble memory technology which did not lose its data when power was removed.

It included a battery to hold the contents for up to 3 hours. The KDE offered K of additional storage. It would work like a Language Card if plugged into slot 0, and with the software accompanying the card, it emulated a floppy disk drive. It not only plugged into a slot but also had a ribbon cable that had to plug into onto of the RAM chip sockets on the motherboard, in order to access timing signals. When the Apple IIe was released, there were two different kinds of RAM cards that were made available for it, although the names were deceiving.

The Apple IIe Column Card was a very simple 1K memory card that plugged into the Auxiliary slot on the IIe motherboard, in line with slot 3. Depending on what version motherboard was present on the IIe, a jumper on the card might have to be removed in order to support double hi-res graphics. When Applied Engineering came on the scene, they quickly became one of the most popular suppliers of RAM cards for the Apple II series.

InAE was offering additional memory cards. Like the original RAMWorks, they offered an optional RGB video output module for the card. Additionally, they now sold a card called RAMFactor, intended for use in a standard Apple II slot which meant it worked on an Apple II or II Plus, as well as a Franklin Ace. The RAMFactor also could be expanded to 16 megabytes of RAM with additional plugin cards. Additionally, a battery backup device called RAMCharger would keep the contents of memory active even in the case of a power failure.

In the next version, RAMWorks III, offered the same expansion options, for slightly lower cost. The release of the Apple IIGS provided yet another opportunity for creation of larger RAM memory cards. Apple offered its own Apple IIGS Memory Expansion Card, but started at K and went only up to 1 megabyte of storage. Although other companies made memory cards, Applied Engineering was again at the forefront in with two cards, the GS-RAM up to 1. By they were offering an additional card, GS-RAM Plus, which raised the maximum capacity to 6 megabytes.

In the years when the Apple II was in production, there were still a significant number of and Zbased microcomputers on the market.

One way to have the best of both worlds was to make use of a coprocessor card. This card would allow the Apple II to be used as a type of host computer, handling input and output, while all of the data processing took place on a card plugged into one of the slots on the Apple II motherboard. First introduced at the Fourth West Coast Computer Faire in Marchthis card allowed the Apple II to run software written for the Z microprocessor. This was surprising in two ways: Nevertheless, Microsoft put considerable effort in marketing the SoftCard, to the extent of selling it in colorful boxes and creating documentation that looked professional, much different from many products sold then for the Apple II.

After the arrival of the IBM Personal Computer and its wide acceptance by the business world, there was interest in a co-processor for the Apple II that would run IBM software. This was a system that plugged into slots on a II Plus or IIe, and would allow the user to run programs written for the IBM PC.

It would also read disks formatted for that computer which also used a completely different data recording system than the one used by the Apple II.

One Rana owner, John Russ, wrote to A2-Central then called Open-Apple to tell of his experience with it: The drives are half-high instead of the full height drives used in the normal Elite II, and are very unreliable for reading or writing in either the Apple or IBM format … And this product again shows that Rana has no knowledgeable technical folks or they lock them up very well. We have identified several fatal incompatibilities with IBM programs, such as the system crashing totally if any attempt to generate any sound even a beep occurs in a program, or if inverse characters are sent to the display … The response from Rana has been no response at all, except that we can return the system if we want to.

A co-processor called the ALF had limited distribution. Even the Motorola processor used in the Macintosh came as a co-processor for the Apple II. The most successful device in this category was the PC Transporter, produced by Applied Engineering. It was originally designed by a company in the San Jose area called The Engineering Department TED.

The founder was Wendell Sander, a hardware engineer who formerly had worked at Apple and was involved in the design of the Apple III and parts of the SWIM chip Sander-Wozniak Integrated Machine [ 29 ] used in the IIc and II GS.

Around Applied Engineering began discussions with TED about buying the PC Transporter to sell and market it. At that time, the board was about four times the size it eventually became. The software that helped manage the board originally came from TED also. The PC Transporter used an processor and ran about three times as fast as the original IBM PC. It used its own RAM memory, up to a maximum of K, which could be used as a RAMdisk by ProDOS when not in PC-mode. It used some of the main Apple memory for the interface code that lets the PC Transporter communicate with the hardware.

The PC Transporter underwent some minor hardware changes and several sets of software changes mostly bug fixes but a few new features. The major reasons for hardware changes came about because of the availability of cheaper RAM the original RAM was quite expensive and difficult to obtain.

Bythis had become more of a limitation for those who wish to use both MS-DOS and Apple II software on the same Apple II computer, since advanced software needing those more powerful processors was being released for MS-DOS. Many computer users will find that after they initially begin to use their computer that they want it to run faster.

It took about five years for technology to appear that could accelerate the speed of the Apple II. Once these devices began to be available, several companies provided solutions. Number Nine Computer Corporation appeared on the scene briefly in with what may be the earliest accelerator for the Apple II and II Plus. It used 64K of RAM on the card, basically running the Apple II on the RAM on this card, using the actual Apple II for input and output.

It made use of a 65c02 processor, running at 3. Accessing this RAM from the cache was faster than getting it from the slower RAM on the Apple II, which made many program functions work more quickly.

When accessing peripheral cards, it was possible to configure the SpeedDemon to slow down for slot 6 where the disk drive usually was placedand optionally could do the same for slots 4 and 5. Like the Apple Booster card, it had 64K of RAM on the card, and would run programs on the fast RAM on the card. It could be configured to give each slot fast or normal speed.

Although the Accelerator II worked on the Apple II and II Plus, it gave inconsistent results on an Apple IIe. Another problem Saturn Systems faced was the need to change their company name, due to conflict with another business. The new company, Titan Technologies, released the Accelerator IIe in The new card used the 65c02 processor, and added another 16K of RAM to which the Apple IIe ROM code was copied, for faster execution.

However, the additional 64K of auxiliary RAM from the extended column card available for the IIe was not accelerated by this card. In Applied Engineering introduced the TransWarp accelerator board. This product lasted in the marketplace longer than any of the other ones, possibly because AE did far more advertising than the companies producing the older boards.

The K of RAM was divided into four 64K banks. The next step in accelerator technology was to put all the components of an accelerator board into a single chip. These accelerators on a chip made it possible to speed up even the Apple IIc, which did not have physical slots. This technology came to market when two rivals, the Zip Chip and the Rocket Chip, were released.

The Zip Chip, sold by Zip Technology, was introduced at AppleFest in Mayand the Rocket Chip, sold by Bits and Pieces Technology soon after. Running at 4 MHz, the Zip Chip was a direct replacement for the or 65c02 on the Apple II motherboard.

It contained its caching RAM within the housing for the processor, the difference being mostly in height or thickness of dow jones forex trader integrated circuit.

Installing it was a bit more tricky than simply putting a board into a slot; the had to be removed from the motherboard with a chip puller, and the Zip Chip installed in the correct orientation in its place. Software to control the speed of the chip was included, and allowed about ten different speeds, including the standard 1 MHz speed some games simply were too fast to play at 4 MHz, and software that depended on timing loops to produce music had to be slowed down to sound right.

The controlling software also let the user determine which if any of the peripheral cards should be accelerated. The Zip Chip even allowed the user to decide whether to run all sound at standard speed or at the fast speed.

Binary option pricing matlab Rocket Chip, made by Bits And Pieces Technologies, was almost exactly the same as the Zip Chip, with a few minor exceptions. It was sold with the ability to run programs at 5 MHz, and could be slowed down below the 1 MHz speed down to 0. Later, when Zip came out with an 8 MHz version of their Zip chip, a 10 MHz Rocket Chip was introduced. The rivalry between Zip Technologies and Bits And Pieces Technologies came from a mutual blaming of theft of technical information.

Consequently, they had to form their own company and start from scratch to design their own chip. The problem eventually came to court, and it was decided that Zip Technologies was the originator of the technique and the Rocket Chip had to stop production. This made it unnecessary buy used cars stockport cheshire use the high-speed RAM used on the original TransWarp.

Early TransWarp II boards ran at 2. A control panel on the computer was used to change settings on the card, much as the Zip Chip and Rocket Chip used. However, when Bits and Pieces lost its court case, Applied Engineering had to also cease sales of the TransWarp II. Bythe market for international stock brokers in usa for 8-bit Apple II computers was waning, but owners of the bit Apple IIGS were clamoring for faster speed.

With its Mac-like desktop but in colorthe IIGS could do more, but at a price of a hit in performance.

The TransWarp GS was popular because it made the Apple IIGS more usable in its graphic desktop mode and of course it also accelerated text-based software. It was also popular for those who dared to physically modify the card to run even faster than the 7 MHz speed at which it was rated. One method was to increase the amount of RAM used for caching from 8K to 32K. The other modification was to change the oscillator on the board from 28 MHz to 40 MHz.

If successful, this could result in a speed increase to as stockbroker lev brickman in new york as 10 MHz, and if done along with the cache RAM upgrade gave users an Apple IIGS as much as three times the performance of certain tasks on the computer.

Zip Technology got into the Apple IIGS accelerator market in with the ZipGS card. The card used some new technology that combined the functions of several individual chips onto a single chip. The product best graphics binary options signals service advertised a lower power draw, which was supposed to make it jane king stock market cooler.

Originally, Zip Technology had promised three different versions of their accelerator: The Zip GS, Zip GS Kursus trading forex bandung, and Zip GSX. The first two were to be simple replacements, just as the older Zip Chip had been a replacement for the or 65c02 microprocessor on 8-bit Apple II computers.

However, these chip-based versions never appeared; adding the cache and other hardware to a made it too large to work well in a IIGS, because it blocked access to four slots.

The product that eventually was released was the Zip GSX card, which had a ribbon cable that plugged into the socket on the motherboard after removing the original processor.

As with the TransWarp, there were Classic Desk Accessory and Cara analisa forex sederhana Panel connections to change settings for the card. Zip Technology caused some frustration amongst stock broker jobs in edmonton that wanted a IIGS accelerator. The product was announced, and then nothing appeared for quite a while.

It appeared that they were funding the research and development of the Zip GSX with money from early orders; it was not until nearly a year had passed before the product began to ship. They further irritated customers by shipping new trading places stock explained first, and withdraw money from atm without debit card the older orders later.

In comparing the two accelerators for the Apple IIGS that made it to 60 seconds binary options software how it works, they differed in some small ways.

The TransWarp GS was more careful to accelerate the firmware and the IIGS user experience, whereas the Zip GSX was strictly a hardware accelerator. Click here for more information about Zip Technology and their involvement in the Apple IIc Plus. A modem is a unique peripheral device, because it makes use of two-way communication, sending and receiving data to and from the computer.

Modems connect to computers in two ways, either as internal or external. Internal modems had all the functions on a plug-in card, and attached to that card was either a line to an acoustic coupler on the earliest modemsor the phone line itself was attached to the card.

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External modems were, naturally, external to the computer case. The modem plugged into the serial card, and then the phone line plugged into the external modem. Standards had been created as far back as for transmission of computer data over standard telephone lines. The Bell dataset published that year could handle baud referring approximately to bits per secondand the Bell dataset from allowed for baud connections. Both and datasets allowed for simultaneous two way data transfer.

In the s, the Bell standard was created, which profitable strategies for index 500 in binary options do baud as half-duplex one computer at a time sending information ; the Bell standard allowed baud full-duplex operation computers on both ends transmitting simultaneously.

From the standpoint of the user connected, a half-duplex connection did not echo keypresses back to the user. In full-duplex mode, the local echo was not necessary, since the character typed was sent back to the originating computer. The primary problem with internal modem cards was that every different computer required a different card for its own unique card architecture.

The advantage of an external modem from the point of view of the manufacturer was that it was possible to build one style that worked on many computers, as long as they had the same type of serial port card in the computer. Hayes was one of the first companies to create a modem affordable to the home or hobby computer user.

Its first product was made for the S bus on Altair or similar computers. The success of this first product led to forex faktorius creation of the Hayes Micromodem for S computers and the Hayes Micromodem II for the Apple II. Another company that forex advanced trading modem hardware for early microcomputers was Novation.

Novation was in business as far back asselling an acoustic coupler that could be added onto Model 33 teletypes. In they brought out a better product, the Novation Apple-Cat II. This was a baud live trading at nairobi stock exchange that used the Bell protocol. Stock market liquidity formula also included software for BSR protocols an early version of X for control of home electronic appliances that were plugged into BSR-compatible modules.

With additional hardware and software, it could work as a forex strategy master manual.rar answering machine, controlling a connected cassette recorder.

A clock module could be added, to allow date and time stamping of files with appropriate DOS extensions.

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Further, the Cat had a serial port that allowed another connection of a serial device, such as a printer or even an external second modem. Novation also advertised one important advantage of using the Apple-Cat II. A standard telephone handset could be added to the module that would be mounted on the back of the computer, and they included a type of cradle that went into the ventilation slots on the side of the Apple II.

This made the computer look like a very large telephone, but it allowed it to really work as a standard phone if desired. Dialing was done from the keyboard, using included software.

Finally, the Apple-Cat had a built-in tone generator, which was used by some programmers to create music software. UnfortunatelyNovation never heavily promoted this feature of the Apple-Cat, or it might have been used by games to provide better sound effects. The hacker community made use of it to simulate many telephone network features, such as the sound of a dime, nickel, or quarter being dropped into a pay phone, or the ring sound on an Audi stock market symbol for goldman sachs or U.

Novation later offered full-duplex performance. This was accomplished through a second expansion board that was plugged into a free slot on the Apple II, with a ribbon cable connecting the two boards. If there were no free slots available for the expansion board, it was possible to remove a chip from the second board, connect with the same ribbon cable, and lie that board horizontally on icici bank put option of the Apple II power supply with double-sided tape to hold it in place, and to electrically isolate the board from the metal power supply.

As a followup to the Micromodem II, Hayes began to design external modems, for connection to an RS serial interface card. To make this work, the company had to create a set of commands that could be sent from the computer to control functions dialing, hanging up, etc. This led to the creation of what became known as the Hayes command set, instructions for control of the modem.

Inthe Smartmodem was released, setting the standard for others that followed. By the late s, Applied Engineering was selling two slot-based modems, the DataLink and the DataLinkcompatible with the Apple II Plus, IIe, and IIGS. InApple released a pair of modems with its own name on it: These were released in beige and white versions, and connected via serial cables to the Macintosh or to any Apple II with a Super Serial Card or similar interface.

By the later s it was no longer in production, as the company had moved on to internal modems that were Macintosh-specific. Over the following years, as standards were developed to handle it, modem speeds continued to increase, jumping to baud, thenthen 14, or The Apple IIGS was capable of connecting via at least a The primary input device for the Apple II was, of course, the built-in keyboard.

There were expanded keyboards available for the II and II Plus, bypassing the uppercase-only limit. There was once even a keyboard that had plug-in modules that would redefine specialized function keys to make them specific for different programs. Another company sold pressure sensitive pads that were attached to the Apple II keyboard above the top row and could be programmed to generate series of keypresses. The original IIe had a socket for the addition of an external numeric keypad, and the II GS and later versions of the IIe had this keypad built-in.

Because of the detached keyboard in the II How to make money homesteading it was possible to select between a couple of different versions of keyboards offered by Apple as well as from some third party companies. The next most commonly used input device after the keyboard was the set of game paddles included with every II and II Plus.

But some users needed more specialized ways to input data to the computer. A large number of interesting input devices were made available through the years; here follows a brief description of some of them. Creating pictures on the hi-res graphics screen was always a challenge. Using the game paddles or a joystick is one method that could be used, but it was difficult getting accurate lines and curves. This was a large flat surface, about thirty inches square, with a grid printed on the surface.

Using a stylus attached to a wire leading to the tablet, and appropriate software, this could be used to draw pictures on the Apple II hi-res screen. There were two different releases of the Apple Graphics Tablet. The original one, which was released when the II Plus was the latest machine, was discontinued by FCC order because of RFI radio frequency interference problems.

The second version, to correct that problem, was released after the IIe was in production. It used two DB-9 connectors to install on the back plate of the computer, leading to the peripheral card plugged into a slot inside.

These DB-9 connectors are the same type used on the back of the IIc and II GS for connection of a joystick. Koala Technologies made several graphics-based input devices for the Canadian dollar currency rate in pakistan II and other computers. Their first product was the Koala Pad. It was compatible with any software that used a joystick.

Using a finger or the supplied stylus, a user could draw on the pad and produce pictures on the hi-res screen with the supplied software or with some other software packages. This was a device to aid preschoolers in using a computer. It was intended to help children ages three and over to learn letters, numbers, and colors, using the Muppets from Sesame Street as a learning aid. Other devices current stock market dow been released to aid in graphics manipulation on the Apple II.

It worked on either the II Plus or IIe, and used a stylus attached by two thin dacron lines to potentiometers within the tablet, which tracked the position of the stylus. Movements of the stylus tracing over a picture were translated into drawings on the hi-res screen. The software included allowed creation of curves and lines, and used Fontrix fonts for lettering. Fontrix was a program that could produce detailed hi-res graphics pictures, and had many characters styles, or fonts, available to label those pictures.

A unique feature of the Digital Paintbrush was the ability to connect two make paypal money doing surveys using the system via a modem and phone line and allow how does full tilt poker make money users to draw pictures how to make quick money in jhb would appear on both computers simultaneously.

One input device that perhaps made the most inroads in the Apple II world was the one that was unique and essential to the Macintosh: The original design work for the mouse on the Mac was done by Burrell Smith, using a part of the VIA chip on that computer to generate interrupt signals trade value 3ds system gamestop the mouse was moved so the software could draw it on the Mac screen.

Because the Apple III used the same chip, Andy Hertzfeld and Dan Kotke worked in their spare time on a way to use a mouse on that computer, and display and move a cursor on its screen. To help with the graphics, they asked for help from Bill Budge. He was an Apple II programmer who had written some fast graphics routines, and had previously created games on the Apple II Raster Blaster in and later Pinball Construction Set in They were able to get a simple graphic-based word aufgeld put optionsschein going on the Apple III, but since that computer was not selling well, decided they needed to make this work on the Apple II.

It took some clever hardware and software work between Smith, Hertzfeld, and Budge to implement gold cfd trading strategy on the Apple II which did not have easy access to video timing signals as was possible on the Apple III or the Mac. By the summer of they had the mouse-driven graphical word processor running on the Apple II, even using proportional text.

Steve Jobs ultimately heard about the project and insisted that he be given a demonstration. After he saw cot report forex, Jobs said that the hardware part of it belonged to Apple, since it was created with company resources. It was turned over to the Apple II division, and they ultimately created a card that used quite a few more chips than their original design had required.

In Mayfive months after the Macintosh came out, and one month after the release of the Apple IIc, Apple announced availability of the AppleMouse II.

It came with an interface card for the Apple IIe, or the mouse alone for the Apple IIc with a plug for the IIc joystick port; the built-in hardware and firmware was already designed to handle the mouse. Bundled with the AppleMouse II was a program called MousePaint.

Written by Bill Budge, this program was not the word processor that had been originally used to demonstrate the mouse, but instead it was a graphics program based on MacPaint that came with the original Macintosh.

MousePaint used the standard hi-res graphics screen and worked only under the ProDOS operating system, but gave Apple II users the ability to do graphics in much the same way as Macintosh users.

The AppleMouse II also made it possible stock share trading company pty limited programmers to design software that used the mouse as a pointing and input control device.

However, many programs using this device on the IIe or IIc were not graphic-based, but rather were text-based, and usually made use of the MouseText characters that were built into the Apple IIc and in the Enhanced IIe. ComputerEyes was a video acquisition system sold by Digital Vision, Inc. The product was a black box, 4 by 4 by 1. Any video source that could output NTSC video or standard non-interlaced video how to do online intraday trading of sharekhan be used for input to the box.

Compatible video sources included video players VHS or Betamaxvideo disc players, or consumer video cameras. That video signal was converted to a pixelated image that could be displayed on the Apple II hi-res screen.

The program included with the ComputerEyes hardware could be used to adjust the synchronization of the video source and the computer, capture the images either normal or grey-scaleand save those images to a disk. With the grey-scale option, eight different versions of the image were created and superimposed on each other. Digital Visions came out with versions of ComputerEyes that worked on other popular computers in the s and s, including the Commodore 64, Atari, Amiga and IBM PC.

They also had a ComputerEyes GS card that ran on the Apple IIGS, though picture scanning was felt to be rather slow. But that was not enough for those who wanted to have better quality music production, and so production of synthesizer cards was in full swing by the early s. Some of those cards included the following:. ALF Music Card ALF Products, Inc.

The Mountain Music System Mountain Computer, Inc. Soundchaser System Passport Designs, Inc. It allowed four track recording and sound manipulation, using the Apple II primarily as a controller. This was one of the most advanced music hardware system available in the days before the release of the II GS. The alphaSyntauri was a significant music product for the Apple II.

It was released early in its life, in It came with a keyboard, foot pedals to control some of the sounds, game paddles to control other effects, a card to plug into the Apple II, and a sound generation card such as the Mountain Music System. It could play 16 notes at the same time, and could have even more capabilities depending on the type of keyboard that was attached. The software was written in a combination of assembly language and BASIC, which made it possible to customize some functions.

The Drum-Key made by PVI was specifically a percussion synthesizer. It required an external amplifier and used included software to produce a wide variety of drum and other percussion sounds. Beginning in the late s there were several speech synthesizers available for the Apple and other home computers. In the s two other popular brands were the Echo II slot-based and Cricket for the modem port on the IIc synthesizers, made by Street Electronics.

These latter also included the ability to produce a robotic voice, a female voice, sound effects, and stereo dividends stock repurchases and payout policy. Some games released at the time had enhanced sound output when one of these two devices were detected. Sweet Micro Systems produced one of the most popular sound cards for the Apple II. These cards utilized music and sound microchips that were significantly advanced over the one-bit sound sharp stock options calculator had been designed into the Apple II.

These cards came in four different versions: There were initially three versions, models A through C. This card also had two empty sockets that made it possible to add speech synthesis to either or both outputs.

With these chips and the right programming, it was possible for the card to sing in two voices, in harmony. InSweet Micro Systems released a version of their sound board for the Apple IIc. It offered the capability of doing stereo music, speech synthesis, and sound effects. A software company, Mindscape, released a music program called Bank Street Music Writer in It was released for the Commodore 64 and Atari using the sound capabilities built into those computerswhile the IBM PC and Apple II versions required add-on sound hardware.

They contracted with Sweet Micro Systems and another version of ther sound card, called the Mockingboard M, was bundled with Bank Street Music Writer on the Apple II version.

This card had two music generator chips and had an open spot for the speech chip to be installed as an option.

Sound could be played through a headphone jack, and a modification to the board allowed sound to be played through the Apple II speaker. InHenry Courbis of ReactiveMicro. Since he was not equipped for larger scale production and had delays in meeting demand for it, another enterprising hacker, Tom Arnold, produced a clone of this clone inand sold it through the ReactiveMIcro web site as the Mockingboard v1a. A number of games were produced to offer additional sound capabilities when a Mockingboard was detected.

In the s, Applied Engineering also began to offer an audio card, called the Phasor. It worked on the Apple II Plus and IIe, offered 12 music and sound effect channels, as well as speech synthesis. It was compatible with software for the ALF and Mockingboard. Applied Engineering made an enhanced audio output card for the Apple IIGS that they released in ECON Technologies offered the SoundMeister and SoundMeister Pro cards, which offered stereo sound, line and amplified outputs, and microphone and line level input for recording and digitizing sound.

Although used primarily for education purposes, there were at least two robotic devices made to work with the Apple II. TOPO made by Androbot, Inc.

Both used the Logo language to control movement of the robot on the floor. Education was not the only place where robotics was used in an Apple II. It was also possible for a computer program to take this information and send a command signal back to another device for example, to activate a motor that raises and lowers a cloth deck cover, depending on how windy it is. This protocol for controlling electric devices in a home had been available for years, and programs existed for the Apple II series including the IIc that allowed easier programming of the X devices, ranging from security systems to light timers to lawn sprinkler systems.

Here follows a short list of some other items that could be found for sale in a typical issue of an Apple computer magazine in the early s:. This was necessary because the RESET key, on the upper right of the keyboard, was easy to press because it had the same spring action as the other keys on the keyboard.

Various methods like this product were used to stiffen that key, and make it harder to press. A clock made it possible to time and date stamp files, and identify which version of a file was the most recent.

The Thunderclock, created by Thunderware inwas such a popular clock card that ProDOS actually included drivers for it when it was first released. Nearly all cards released after this had to emulate at least the major functions of the Thunderclock. Later, a popular hardware add-on was the No-Slot Clock, made by Dallas Semiconductor. To do the installation, it was necessary to remove a chip from the motherboard on an Apple II motherboard or IIe, IIc, or IIc Plusplugging in the No-Slot Clock, and then re-installing that chip into the No-Slot Clock.

This external box plugged into a serial port on the IIc, and with appropriate software patched into ProDOS would read time from that clock for date and time stamping files. The serial port would not be permanently tied up, as a serial device could still plug into this box and be used as usual.

They released this product in for both the Apple II and Macintosh. It replaced the ribbon cartridge on an ImageWriter printer with an optical scanner. It would very slowly scan a document threaded into the printer, one line at a time, moving back and forth just like the print head would move to print a page.

It could take as long as a half hour to scan an 8 by 10 piece of paper. In a hand scanner was released from a company in Japan. Two American companies promptly wrote software to control it, and sold it under their own names.

It worked by placing a document in the included plastic tray, and then the scanner was pulled down first the left side and then the right side of the document. The software could then reassemble it into a single image. That same year, Thunderware released the same scanner under the name LightningScan GS. It offered the same scanning options as did the Quickie. A comparison posted on comp. However, the software reputedly unstable and did not work well. In fact, some opinions on comp.

By the late s and early s many printers were available for use with home computers. Most printers offered 96 characters in the standard ASCII set, including both upper and lowercase characters. The cheaper printers could only print uppercase characters, while some of the more expensive ones were capable of accepting programmable characters or had built-in graphics characters. There were two main types of printers available.

One type operated like a typewriter by striking a piece of metal type against a ribbon and onto the paper. Businesses used this type of printer more commonly than the dot-matrix variety, because of the quality of output.

The other type of printer in common use was dot matrix. These less expensive printers formed characters with a series of pins in a vertical row that struck the ribbon and produced dots on the paper. As the print head moved across the paper, the dots were printed in patterns that resembled sometimes vaguely letters and numbers. The matrix used to form a character was usually referred to as the number of horizontal dots by the number of vertical dots. To print lowercase letters with descenders often required nine or more vertical pins.

It used a parallel cable whose pin layout went on to also become a standard for use with personal computers. The parallel cable pin layout on the plug was still in use by the s. It also had a one-line buffer which held up to charactersbut printed a limited 64 character ASCII set, all uppercase plus some special characters. The better printers made by Centronics had a larger matrix and could produce true descenders on lowercase characters.

A company named Trendcom made two printers that were significant in the history of the Apple II. They had two models, the and the Instead of using the mechanics solenoids that drove pins in a print head, these were thermal printers that needed a special heat-sensitive paper.

Their operation was very quiet, about as loud as sliding your finger across a piece of paper. Compared to the first printer offered by Radio Shack for their TRS computer which was also a thermal printer but used an ugly silver paperthe Trendcom printers were very nice.

The significance of the Trendcom printer was that Apple chose it as the first printer they released under the Apple name. It could be programmed to control printing of each dot in a column, and so was ideal as an inexpensive means of printing Apple II hi-res graphics. Epson was another company that began early in the business of supplying printers for personal computers, and is one of the few that survives to this day.

Popular with computer hobbyists of the time, it was capable of printing Apple II hi-res graphics with the optional Graphtrax ROMs. A later version of this printer, the Epson MX, became available in early The MX was a wide carriage model, and could print hi-res graphics without the need to add any special hardware.

This filled in some gaps between dots on individual letters, and made printouts more pleasing to the eye. Integral Data Systems was also an early manufacturer of printers. The IDS used a pressure feed method similar to the method used by typewriters to hold paper in placewhile the IDS used a tractor feed mechanism. The IDS printers had the flexibility of being useable with either parallel or serial interfaces with serial speeds up to baud. It could do plotting of dot graphics, and also had an optional graphics character set built-in.

By the late s Integral Data Systems upgraded their printers, giving them more capabilities and flashier names. Their Paper Tiger line of printers models and had an attractive typeface, and used two vertical rows of pins in the print head, slightly offset from each other. This produced overlapping dots to achieve a more solid appearance.

Some models could print up to cps, and of course upper and lowercase characters were supported. They were also capable of reproducing Apple II hi-res graphics with the appropriate software.

IDS also sold a printer called the Prism, which could print in color using a special multicolored ribbon.

Although Apple II users made use of many brands of printers during the years of its active use, it was hard to move forward to newer or better technology, as the increasing sophistication of printers made it difficult use without more complex drivers to allow the computer to communicate with the printer.

However, those drivers were being created for the PC and for the Macintosh, but very few were made available for older computers. One exception was the Hewlett-Packard DeskJet inkjet printer. It was possible to use this printer from AppleWorks, and with proper drivers, output from the Apple IIGS and its graphics-based software was also possible.

Later revisions of the DeskJet series, the and c, were also useable with these Apple II models. However, these newer HP printers did not come with serial connectors, and so a parallel interface card was necessary to connect them.

After the Silentype printer was released inApple looked for another printer that would produce better, more permanent output than could be achieved with a thermal printer. One of the main problems with thermal paper was that with time the printing could fade, especially if cellophane tape was used on the paper.

Made from a modified C. Apple needed it as a better quality printer than the Silentype to help promote the Apple III as a business computer. More importantly, it was chosen by Apple because it was capable of doing heavy-duty graphics reproduction such as output from the Apple Lisa computer, still in development at that time. Because Apple was looking for as many business solutions for its customers as it could find, they also announced at the same time as the DMP a daisy wheel printer called the Apple Letter Quality Printer.

It was released with the Lisa and IIe in January The Apple ImageWriter was released in December as the successor to the Apple DMP.

Also made by C. Itoh, the ImageWriter had a faster print speed cpsand could print in eight different pitches character widths.

Later, a wide carriage version whose abilities were otherwise identical was made available. The ImageWriter II replaced both in September While the original Apple DMP and the ImageWriter I came in the same beige color as the Apple II, II Plus, and IIe, the ImageWriter II was the same platinum color as the Apple II GS and the newer Macintosh computers. Styled a little differently, the ImageWriter II could do everything the original ImageWriter could do, plus it was capable of printing MouseText characters and could print in color using a special multicolored ribbon.

As part of its promotion of The Apple IIc, a new printer was released. It was a thermal printer, but was a significant advancement over the old Silentype. It could print on regular paper instead of special heat sensitive paperand could print in four colors. It did this using a unique heat-transfer method and a wax-impregnated ribbon.

Its major limitation, however, was a print quality that overall was often not as good as some dot-matrix printers, and a ribbon that was expensive and needed to be replaced too often. The Scribe was eventually discontinued due to these problems and low sales. In Hewlett-Packard introduced the LaserJet laser printer. This was a significant breakthrough in printer quality, and was capable of producing documents that looked professionally typeset.

Apple decided to develop its own laser printer, and in January of released the LaserWriter. It was only necessary to learn the PostScript language, create a file that gave the necessary commands, and send that file to the printer through a serial interface card.

Unfortunately, for many years there was a perception that it was not possible to use a laser printer with an Apple II, even the more advanced II GS. This was partly because there were few software packages for the Apple II that would produce output as PostScript files that could be properly interpreted on a laser printer. However, programs such as Publish-It! All that was necessary was to have the right cable to connect the two devices.

By the late s, a new kind of print technology became available for sale. Inkjet printers worked somewhat like a dot-matrix printer, but the print head sprayed ink through as many as 64 holes in patterns to form characters as it moved across the paper. The advantage over dot-matrix impact printers was the ability to form more solid characters. In fact, the quality of printout with an ink-jet printer could be almost as good as that obtained with a laser printer. The advantage over laser printers was cost.

The disadvantage for Apple II users was that although it was easy to get the printers to print text, printing graphics was difficult due to insufficient interest in producing print drivers for the Apple II. It was possible to use some of the printers in a mode that emulated older dot-matrix printers, and so for those printers it was more feasible to try on an Apple II.

These ink-jet printers could even produce graphics, as long as the emulated dot-matrix mode supported graphics.

Apple entered the ink-jet printer market in May when it released the Apple StyleWriter. Drivers for later versions of the StyleWriter were never made available for the IIGS. Unlike the inkjet printers sold by Hewlett Packard, the StyleWriter did not have a built-in set of fonts.

Instead, it was entirely graphics-driven, and required the computer to send all text as it appeared on the screen. This was appropriate for the Macintosh and for bit software on the IIGS, but would not have been of much use on 8-bit models of the Apple II.

With TrueType, a single font that could be resized over a large range under software control. Although not quite a printer, the Apple Color Plotter was released in June of It had an advantage over printers, in that it could draw smooth lines and curves. It could move the pen without drawing, plot points, draw lines, arcs, and circles, and print text at any location, tilt, rotation, or scale.

Lines could be drawn as solid or as patterns of dots. Presumably this product did not take off because of the limited need for this type of graphics, and the price. Because of the continuously improving quality of graphics and printers, plotters are no longer much in use. The right software can reproduce drawings with an inkjet or laser printer in as good or better detail than a plotter can.

Robert W Lucky Bell Labs and others calculated the capacity of a phone line at 23, bps in [1] but no one knew how to get there. Efficient digital communications systems use a somewhat larger set of symbols than just two and a more efficient way of representing these m symbols on the analog waves that the modem transmits over the wire. Perhaps we could get one of these advanced modem signals to go over an acoustic coupler at 56K with aggressive equalization, maybe not, but why bother!

Lucky, J Salz and E J Waldon, Principles of Data Communications Mg-Graw Hill pp. Charles, thanks for the comment! I have just — after over 30 years — restarted my Old Apple ][ Europlus and my A2MP Monitor. Anyone got one they would be willing to scan and email to me?

Your email address will not be published. Apple II History The story of "the MOST personal computer"! Menu About Book Files Spotlight Links History Subscribe.

Yuji Takahashi One of the first interface cards made for the Apple II was released, naturally, by Apple. Apple II Serial Interface Card — Photo credit: Apple II Super Serial Card — Photo credit: Mike Loewen The Apple Super Serial Card firmware was finished in January Synetix SuperSprite board — Photo credit: Softalk magazine, Sep One unique video product was made by Synetix, Inc.

Apple II Language Card — Photo Credit: InfoWorld, Aug 9,p. RAMWorks — Photo credit: Applied Engineering catalog When Applied Engineering came on the scene, they quickly became one of the most popular suppliers of RAM cards for the Apple II series. Z-RAM Ultra 3, — Photo credit: RAMWorks II — Applied Engineering catalog InAE was offering additional memory cards.

Tony Diaz After the arrival of the IBM Personal Computer and its wide acceptance by the business world, there was interest in a co-processor for the Apple II that would run IBM software. PC Transporter — Photo credit: Applied Engineering catalog The most successful device in this category was the PC Transporter, produced by Applied Engineering.

Saturns Systems Accelerator II — Photo credit: Advertisement, Softalk, April Accelerator IIe — Photo credit: Tony Diaz Although the Accelerator II worked on the Apple II and II Plus, it gave inconsistent results on an Apple IIe.

Applied Engineering catalog In Applied Engineering introduced the TransWarp accelerator board. Rocket Chip — Photo credit: TransWarp GS — Photo credit: Applied Engineering catalog The TransWarp GS was popular because it made the Apple IIGS more usable in its graphic desktop mode and of course it also accelerated text-based software.

MODEMS A modem is a unique peripheral device, because it makes use of two-way communication, sending and receiving data to and from the computer. Hayes Micromodem II, — Photo credit: Advertisement, Softalk, Novemberback cover D. Novation Apple-Cat II with telephone cradle — Photo credit: Product brochure Novation also advertised one important advantage of using the Apple-Cat II. Hayes Smartmodem — Photo credit: Apple Modembeige and white — Photo credit: INPUT DEVICES The primary input device for the Apple II was, of course, the built-in keyboard.

Apple Graphics Tablet — Photo credit: Gibson Light Pen — Photo credit: Computer History Museum, http: Vectronics Apple World One input device that perhaps made the most inroads in the Apple II world was the one that was unique and essential to the Macintosh: MousePaint on Apple IIe — Photo credit: Computer Eyes image — Photo credit: The Apple II Review, Springpp.

Some of those cards included the following: Advertisement, Softalk, Junep. Mockingboard C — Photo credit: ROBOTS AND DEVICE CONTROL Although used primarily for education purposes, there were at least two robotic devices made to work with the Apple II.

Quickie hand scanner — Photo credit: Apple Silentype Printer — Photo credit: HP Deskjet — Photo credit: Wikipedia Although Apple II users made use of many brands of printers during the years of its active use, it was hard to move forward to newer or better technology, as the increasing sophistication of printers made it difficult use without more complex drivers to allow the computer to communicate with the printer.

Apple III Information Analyst Brochure, Because Apple was looking for as many business solutions for its customers as it could find, they also announced at the same time as the DMP a daisy wheel printer called the Apple Letter Quality Printer. Twitter Facebook Google Email Print.

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