Apple II +
| Apple II + | |
|---|---|
|
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| Manufacturer | Apple computer |
| Type | Home computers |
| publication | 1979 |
| End of production | 1982 |
| processor | 6502 @ 1.020 MHz |
| random access memory | 48 kB expandable to 64 kB RAM |
| graphic | 40 × 48 pixels 15 colors 280 × 192 pixels 6 colors |
| Sound | nv |
| Disk | 5¼ inch floppy disks , compact cassettes |
| operating system | Applesoft BASIC , Apple DOS , ProDOS , Apple CP / M , Apple Pascal |
| predecessor | Apple II |
| successor | Apple IIe |
The Apple II + was a slightly expanded Apple II that appeared in 1979. He had up to 48 kB RAM and offered the first Apple computer - instead of the older Integer BASIC by Steve Wozniak - the Apple Soft BASIC , a floating -enabled BASIC made by Microsoft , permanently installed on. The "Autostart ROM ", which could boot a connected floppy disk drive without user intervention and independently differentiate between warm and cold starts, was now available as standard. On the other hand, some more “hacker-friendly” than “user-friendly” components of the ROM have been omitted, including the built-in mini assembler , the “step” and “trace” commands of the monitor, and the Sweet 16 interpreter. Except for the Sweet 16, these came back later on the Apple IIc and the expanded Apple IIe .
The Apple II + was the first computer that Apple specifically marketed in Europe; the local model was called Apple II Europlus . The Europlus was identical to the American Apple II + except for the switch from 110 to 220 volts of mains voltage and the refresh rate from 60 to 50 Hertz. While the hardware for color display on the American NTSC video system was already on the motherboard, a plug-in card had to be purchased and retrofitted for color display on the more complicated European PAL system, but many of these PAL cards produced a relatively poor picture quality (picture tremors, ongoing Moiré pattern ), a notable exception was the PAL card from IBS (no longer in existence). Without such a card, European televisions and video monitors only saw black and white images.
The electronics of the Apple II + were repeatedly updated slightly over the course of the following years, mostly without this having a noticeable effect on operation. Motherboard revisions 7 and higher could also display lowercase letters, umlauts, and other non-American characters when the user swapped a ROM chip for an appropriately programmed EPROM . Entering them was still not easily possible because the keyboard only generated capital letters. The chip to be used for this was not offered by Apple itself, but had to be obtained elsewhere.
The Apple II + was used very successfully and very often as a school computer and was often cloned . It was easy to clone as only standard ICs were used in it. However, almost all of the clones were illegal because they simply copied the Apple's copyright-protected firmware and did not reprogram it with the same functionality as the IBM PC clones later did . The Apple firmware did not yet contain a clean entry table, but used fixed entry points somewhere “in the middle”. At the same time, the firmware code had to be unusually compact in order not to break the tightly dimensioned address space of 2 kB reserved for it . Both together made the functionally identical reprogramming much more difficult than with the IBM PC. When the “Wild West times” in the microcomputer area gradually ended, the Apple clones quickly disappeared from the market.
Apple II Europlus with Disk II drives
Power supply unit, next to it the expansion cards: 16 kB memory expansion (“ Apple II Language Card ”), card with a Z80 processor, 80-character card and card for floppy disk drives
Disk II interface
Parallel printer interface
In 1982 the Apple II + was replaced by the Apple IIe .