Text content (OCR)
August 1985
Vol. 1, No. 7
AppleWorks makes plain and clear the computer's potential as a personal
tool. And it elucidates the potential hidden within the “aged technology’ of
the Apple Il. AppleWorks isalso today’s best-selling Apple II program. It sells
so well, in fact, thatithas become as important a characteristic of the Apple II
as DOS, Applesoft, or the Monitor. It doesn’t need to be italicized anymore.
I suspect that AppleWorks has snuck up on many of you old-timers; |
suspect many of you aren't ready to accept it as one of the defining
characteristics of the Apple Il. But look at today's first-time Apple buyers.
They are investing their leaming time in AppleWorks rather than in Applesoft
and DOS. Look at user group newsletters — there has been a subtle shift in
their content during the last 18 months away from material on Basic
programming and toward material on AppleWorks programming.
Releasing the full potential of the Apple II in 1985 requires expertise in
both areas. Just as Applesoft allows you to do things that you'd never
accomplish in assembly language, AppleWorks allows you to do things that
you'd never accomplish in Basic—writing the program would simply take
too long, On the other hand, just as assembly language routines can add
speed and flexiblity to Applesoft programs, Applesoft routines can add
speed and flexibility to the manipulation of data stored in AppleWorks files.
This month we're going to start examining AppleWorks in detail.
AppleWorks on the Il-Plus. Before all you II-Plus and Franklin users get
mad and fire off angry letters to me, here's some good news for you. If you
already have an 80-column card and 64K, you can get a program that will
modify AppleWorks to run on your machine for as little as $19.95. The
program is called Plus-Works and it’s available from Norwich Data Services,
P.O. Box 356, East Norwich, N.Y. 11732 (516-922-9584).
The program comes in three versions. The basic $19.95 version allows a
10K desktop. It provides for using escape as the open-apple key, for using
control keys for the up and down arrows and delete key, and works with
Videx-compatible 80-column cards (essentially all major cards except the
‘Smarterm, Wizard, and Super-R-Term).
The other two versions are Plus-Works XM and Plus-Works XM-P These
versions cost $49.95 and provide all the features of the basic version, plus
have the ability to increase the AppleWorks desktop size with standard-
peripheral-slot memory boards (Legend and Saturn cards and the equivalent
—but not Applied Engineering's RAMworks, which is an auxiliary slot
memory board). Even Ile owners may be interested in Plus-Works if they
already have one of these boards. Unlike the RAMworks expansion software,
Plus-Works puts the entire available memory into the desktop — there is no
loss due to overhead. Like RAMworks, (and unlike a similar program Videx is
selling) Plus-Works modifies an image of AppleWorks, which can then be
copied onto backup floppies or to a hard disk. However, Plus-Works does not
yet provide any of the extra features of the RAMworks expander, such as file
segmentation or increasing the maximum number of data base records,
‘The difference between the XM and XM-Pversionsis that the latter can also
use the 64K of memory on aPCPI CP/M card. Franklin 1200 computers came
with these cards as standard equipment, so this version was developed
primarily for Franklins, but it works on Apples with the PCPI card as well.
Thave not tested Plus-Works myself, but was made aware of it bya call from
an enthusiastic Open-Apple subscriber who has. I've talked to the people at
Norwich Data Systems on the phone, and | think they potentially have a hot
product here. It makes AppleWorks available on the entire Apple II family.
At the top of the next page is a set of six AppleWorks screen images. The
two on the left are from the word processor, the two in the center from the
data base program, and the two on the right from the spreadsheet. These are
the three major programs within AppleWorks.
The word processor. The AppleWorks word processor provides standard
full-screen editing. You move the cursor around the screen with the Apple’s
arrow keys. All of AppleWorks, including the word processor, supports two
cursors. One, the “insert cursor,” always pushes any existing text ahead of it
as new characters are entered. It looks like a blinking undertine. The second
cursor is called the “overstrike cursor.” It is a blinking box. With it, whatever
you type replaces the character at that position. However, existing carriage
retums are not overwritten but pushed to the right, so even this cursor will
insert text in the right situation. At any point within AppleWorks you can
switch between the two cursors by pressing open-apple-E.
Print formatting—adjusting margins, choosing type size and style,
choosing line spacing and justification—is done throughout AppleWorks
with the open-apple-O command. In the word processor, this command
overlays a menu on the lower half of the screen, which shows all the
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formatting options. Boldface and underlining can be tumed on and off
either by means of this menu, or directly with control-B and control. (For
example, the first use of control-B within a paragraph turns bold on, the
second turns it off. AppleWorks automatically tums off bold and underlining
at the end of each paragraph.) The only other control-code supported by
AppleWorks is control-Y, which deletes all material from the cursor position
to the end of the line.
Some print formatting instructions, such as margin adjustments and
centering, affect the screen display as well as printed output. One nice
feature is that the open-apple-K command will calculate and display the
position of all page breaks (in the spreadsheet open-apple-K forces
recalculation).
Each of the three AppleWorks programs has two display formats. The
standard formats are shown in the three images on the top of this page. The
secondary formats are shown in the three images just under the top three.
When using AppleWorks, you can toggle or switch between the two available
display formats by pressing open-apple-Z(oom).
In the word processor, the second display shows embedded formatting
information. At the top of this page, the second word processor display
shows formatting information relating to the number of characters per inch.
AppleWorks supports the multiple character widths available on today’s dot
matrix printers, including both double-wide and proportional characters.
The data base program. The data base program in AppleWorks, like the
other AppleWorks modules, insists on having the entire data file being
manipulated available in memory. This is not unusual in programs for the
Apple Il, but many CP/M users find it odd indeed. They are used to programs
such as Wordstar and dBase I that work with disk-based files. These
programs load only the actual part of the file being manipulated into
memory. CP/M fans complain a lot about programs such as AppleWorks that
can't deal with large, disk-based files. The difference, of course, Is that disk-
based programs must access the disk constantly. They tend to operate witha
deliberate slowness, while programs that deal with memory-resident data
are lightning fast. Both have their place in the world. Speed and memory-
resident files, used by such early Apple II best-sellers as VisiCalcand Apple
Writer, are the Apple II tradition.
By limiting itself to memory-resident data, the AppleWorks data base
program is able to provide some outstanding features not usually found in
data base programs. One is the standard data base display, shown in the
middle of the top row above. This is called the multiple-record layout. It
allows you to see 80 columns worth of information per record from the fields
you select. Since each record is displayed on one line, you can see the same.
fields from 15 records at once on the screen. The arrow keys allow you to
scroll forward and backward through the file. As in all AppleWorks programs,
the open-apple key in conjunction with the number keys will move the
display to any part of the file (open-apple-1 takes you to the beginning, open-
apple-9 to the end, other digits to points in between).
Pressing open-apple-Z in the data base switches to the single-record
layout. Whatever record the cursor was on in the multiple-record layout is
shown in full in the single-record layout. A single record can hold no more
information than will fit on this page. The information can be divided into as
many as 30 categories or fields. No single field will hold more information
than will fit on a single line—76 characters if you use a one-character
category name. As supplied by the factory, AppleWorks allows 1,350 records
perfile, but Applied Engineering's RAMworks software increases this to over
4,000.
The spreadsheet. The AppleWorks spreadsheet has several impressive
features. The first is its size—999 rows by 127 columns. An undocumented
feature of the spreadsheet, however, is that only 60 of the cells ina singlerow
can hold formulas. Usually you can get around this limitation, however, once
you understand what's going on, by continuing a series of formulas down
one row, All 999 cells in a single column, on the other hand, can hold
formulas; all 127 cells in a single row can hold values or labels. How many
cellsyou can actually fill, of course, depends on how much memory you have.
Apple's documentation says a 128K computer can handle a spreadsheet
with about 6,000 filled cells.
Another interesting feature of the spreadsheet is its ability to sort a block
of rows according to the data shown in one of the spreadsheet’s columns.
For example, ifyou used the AppleWorks spreadsheet to create a grade book
and entered student's names in the first column and their scores on the first
test in column two, you could easily rank the students by order of test score
—from lowest to highest or from highest to lowest. After that, you could put
them back in alphabetical order by sorting the same rows on the data in the
name column.
Inthe spreadsheet, zooming with open-apple-Z switches between standard
spreadsheet format and a format that causes the formulas within the cells to
appear. Only the portion ofthe formula that fits within the cell width will show.
Ifyou print from this display, your hard copy will also show formulas rather
than the resulting data. This can be a very useful feature.
None of the three AppleWorks programs is the most powerful in its class. If
you have heavy-duty word processing to do, Apple Writer is better. Supercalc
5a, which can generate graphs and use textual values, among other features
not found in AppleWorks, is a more powerful spreadsheet (but why is its
maximum size limited to 254 rows by 63 columns?). Disk-based data base
Programs such as General Manager and DB Master are more suitable for
data bases with large records than the data base program in AppleWorks.
AppleWorks more than makes up for its relative lack of power ona one-on-
one basis, however, with its tight integration. All three AppleWorks programs
use similar, if not the same, commands. But more importantly, the three
programs are closely knit by the AppleWorks Desktop.
The AppleWorks Desktop. The desktop metaphor is something
AppleWorks shares with the Macintosh. Having worked with both, | find the
Macintosh desktop to be far more glamorous. However, the AppleWorks
Desktop is far more useful. It's fast—both in execution speed and in the
speed at which you can give commands. Yet it's easy — the Desktopis entirely
menu-driven,
Like many other Apple II programs, the AppleWorks Desktop uses what
Apple calls the "magic menu” interface. At the bottom of the next page is a
set of Desktop menu screens. The screen spown in the upper center is the
Desktop’s main menu. When you see this menu live on-screen, one of the six
menu items is highlighted with an inverse bar. You can move the bar byeither
Downloaded from www-AppleaOnline.com
August 1985
pressing the number ofa different item or by pressing the up or down arrow
keys. When you press Retum, the highlighted choice is executed.
‘The “magic menu’ interface works beautifully in AppleWorks. Unfortunately,
this interface is out of favor at Apple Inc. Nowadays Apple encourages
software developers to use a mouse/pull-down menu interface based on
MouseText characters. This system is similar to that found on the Macintosh.
Both interfaces have a place in the world, but more people than the
computer magazines and marketers seem to realize prefer magic menus
(including me). Unlike a mouse-based interface, magic menus don’t require
aflat empty space near the computer for the mouse to frolic in and they don’t
require removing one’s.hands from the keyboard every time a command
must be given. Let's hope the strength of AppleWorks is enough to keep the
magic menu interface alive and healthy.
The first three choices in the Desktop’s main menu add files to the
Desktop, allow you to work with a file already on the Desktop, and save files
on the Desktop to disk. Unlike the Macintosh desktop, which is really just a
fancy disk directory, you can actually load files onto the AppleWorks Desktop.
Up to 12 AppleWorks files can be on the Desktop at once.
Ifyou catalog a data disk holding AppleWorks data files from Basic.system
(AppleWorks is ProDOS based), you'll find the files have unique file types.
AppleWorks word processor files are identified with the three letters AWP,
data base files with ADB, and spreadsheet files with ASP. Thus, when you load
an AppleWorks file onto the Desktop, AppleWorks knows what kind offile itis
and executes the appropriate program when you decide to “work with” that
file. There is no way within the context of AppleWorks to “run” the word
processor or to “run” the spreadsheet. What you do is add a word processor
file or a spreadsheet file to the Desktop and begin to work with it.
‘The second screen in the center below shows what happens when you
choose the second item on the main menu, "Work with one of the files on the
Desktop.” A Desktop Index appears on the screen. It, too, holds a magic
menu bar. You use the bar to select which ofthe files currently on the desktop
you want to work with next.
An important feature of AppleWorks is that open-apple-Q(uick change)
can be used to call up the Desktop Index from anywhere within AppleWorks
(whether you are deep within desktop menus or in any one of the three main
programs). Open-apple-Q allows you to immediately choose a new file to
work with. This means you can have several word processor or spreadsheet
files on the desktop at once and quickly switch between them. Or you can
switch between a data base or spreadsheet file holding your data and a word
processor file holding a report you are writing. Or you can instantly switch
between the budget you are working on in a spreadsheet file to your personal
phone directory in a data base file or to your personal calendar in a word
processor file. This is where AppleWorks gives you real power compared to
Open-Apple 59
stand-alone programs. (Open-apple-Q is also a handy command to use
when you simply want to see how much space is left on the desktop —the
amount appears in the lower right comer of the screen whenever the
Desktop Index is present, as well as at some other times.)
The clipboard. AppleWorks provides a “clipboard you can use to move
data between any two files of the same type. Spreadsheet rows, including
formulas, can be moved from one spreadsheet file to another. Text can be
quickly cut from one word processor file and moved to another. Data base
records can be moved from one file into any other (if the two files have
different numbers of fields some data may be lost, but as much of the data as
can be moved will be moved). You access the clipboard with the open-apple-
C(opy) or open-apple-M(ove) commands. (Copy creates a duplicate of the
selected material and moves it to or from the clipboard. Move deletes the
selected material from the source while moving it.)
In addition to using the clipboard for moving data between files of the
same type, data base and spreadsheet reports can be printed to the
clipboard. They appear there just as they would if they had been printed on
your printer. Once these reports are on the clipboard, they are word
processor material, so you can move them into word processor files for
futher editing or to combine them with other information.
Placing something on the clipboard deletes what was already there. There
is no other way the clipboard can be cleared except by quitting AppleWorks.
This is basically good, but can cause problems when a large amount of no-
longer-needed material is on the clipboard and taking up precious Desktop
space. There is noway to see what's on the clipboard except by copying it into
afile of the appropriate type. We'll examine some of the tricks you can dowith
the clipboard further in future issues,
Adding files to the Desktop. The two screen images on the left side of
this page show the menus for adding files to the Desktop. AppleWorks
mercifully allows floppy drives to be specified by drive number rather than by
ProDOS volume name. However, it also allows files to be specified with a
ProDOS prefix, which works great for users with high-capacity disk drives. You
can specify a prefix or a different drive by choosing item 2, "Get files from a
different disk” on the Add Files menu.
When you choose to Add Files from the current disk, a catalog of that disk
appears on your screen showing all of the AppleWorks files available. This is
shown in the lower-left screen image on this page. Note that only AppleWorks
files appear in the catalog, There are ways to load other types of files (for
example, standard ASCII, DIF, and VisiCalc-format files) into AppleWorks, but
this isn‘tit. We'll get to that ina moment
Once the disk catalog is on your screen, you can scroll through it with the.
up and down arrows, You can select and deselect files for loading with the
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right and left arrows. Ifyou select several files, AppleWorks will load them all
to the desktop at once.
If the file you want to work with doesn't exist yet, or if it's in a non-
AppleWorks file, rather than choosing to "Get files from the current disk” on
the Add Files menu, you should select "Make a new file.”
The three screen images across the top of this page show the next menu
that will appear, depending on whether you choose to make anew file for the
word processor, the data base, or the spreadsheet.
Ifyou are making a new AppleWorks file for the word processor, you can
either make it from scratch (that is, you'll start with a new, empty file), or you
can make it from an existing text file on disk, as shown in the upper-left
screen image.
Data base files can be made from scratch or can come from text files,
Quick File files, or DIF files. (Text files for the data base should have a Return
after each field or category. Each record must have the same number of
fields, Records need no separators — AppleWorks figures it is at the end of a
record when the proper number of fields has been read. You have to specify
how many this will be before loading the file.)
Spreadsheet files can be made from scratch or can come from VisiCalc-
format files or from DIF files. (For a complete description of VisiCalc-format
files, see the January 1984 DOStalk in Softalk, page 237. For more
information on DIF files, see the February 1984 DOStalk in Softalk, page
65.)
Be forewarned, however, that if you decide to make a new AppleWorks file
from some other type of file there are two problems. First of all, the old file
must be on a ProDOS disk. Ifit's on a DOS 3.3 disk, you'll have to convert itto
ProDOS first. Even then, AppleWorks won't allow you to select the file from a
catalog as before. Instead you'll have to type in the file's complete ProDOS
pathname. If you don’t know its name, you have to escape to the Main Menu,
choose “Other Activities”, choose “List all files on the current disk drive,”
memorize or write down the filename, and follow your breadcrumbs back
again.
This is quite painful, especially if birds eat your breadcrumbs. A definite
improvement for AppleWorks would be to allow any kind of file to be selected
froma menu. A further improvement would be to show ProDOS subdirectories
in these menus, and to list their contents when they are selected. This would
greatly ease the process of selecting files by pathname,
Saving files. The two right-most screens on the previous page show the
menus you get when you select “Save Desktop files to disk” on the Main
Menu. The first screen that appears allows you to select the files currently on
the desktop that you want to save. All files on the desktop, along with their
status (new/unchanged/changed/saved), type, and size will be displayed.
‘You select the files you want to save as before, and press Retum,
Another menu then appears that allows you to save the files on the current
disk, or to first switch to a different disk. AppleWorks does not delete original
files until a save has been successfully completed. This means the biggest
file you can resave on a floppy is half the capacity of the floppy. (Ifyou have a
bigger file, save it on a different disk or delete the original before attempting
toresave it)
You cannot lock or unlock files from within AppleWorks, though this may
be a good idea for special empty templates of various types you don’t want
spoiled by mistake. You can lock AppleWorks files from Basicorwith the Filer
or IIc Utilities. This prevents AppleWorks from overwriting the file, even ifyou
mistakenly tell it to.
When you use the "Save desktop files to disk” option from the main menu,
the only types of file that information can be stored in are the three
AppleWorks file types. However, just as AppleWorks can load information
from other file types, itcan also save information into other types offiles. The
only problem is that how you do it isn’t at all obvious.
The bottom three screen images on this page show the menus you use for
saving files in non-AppleWorks formats. To get to these menus you must
be"working with” the file you want to save. Then choose open-apple-P(rint).
Before we can say much intelligent about these menus, you have to know
that AppleWorks lets you define up to three printers for its use. One of these
three can be a “custom” printer, the other two have to appear on a menu
inside AppleWorks that has various Apple, Epson, and Qume printers listed.
In the screen images shown, two printers have been defined. One is an
Apple Dot Matrix Printer, the second isn’t really a printer at all, but a print-
formatted text file. If you haven‘t used up your custom printer definition
already, you can have one of these by defining one and selecting “Print onto
disk” when AppleWorks asks which slot to access the printer with.
Defining such a printer gives you an extra way to save files to disk.
Important: unless you have done this (and named such a custom printer
“formatted text’), the second option in the three screen images shown here
will not appear in your own print menus,
In the word processor print menu, note that files can be saved into text
files in two different ways. The formatted text file will contain all the control
codes that would normally be sent to your printer—such as the control
codes for underline and boldface. More importantly, a formatted file will have.
Returns at the end of each line. The “text file on disk” choice, on the other
hand, will eliminate all control codes except for Returns you have entered
yourself. Normally this would be only at the end of paragraphs, notat the end
Oflines. The formatted file is more appropriate for preparing files for transfer
by modem. The unformatted file is more appropriate for moving files to
other programs such as Apple Writer. You do have a choice.
‘The data base print menu shows you can print reports to the screen and
dipboard as well as to formatted, unformatted, and DIF files. The standard
“text file on disk” choice gives you a file with a Retum after each field. This
Kind of file is not suitable for entry into a word processor. Use the formatted
file option for this, or better yet. print the report to the clipboard. The “textfile
on disk” choice, however, issuitable for dumping information into a file that
can be accessed with an Applesoft program. Make up a report format that
simply contains all the fields in your data base. You can dump the whole data
base or selected (and sorted) portions of it into a standard sequential text
file for further processing with Applesoft. The Open-Apple subscription
system is based on this trick.
‘The spreadsheet print menu shows you can print spreadsheet data to the
myst 1985
ipboard, or to formatted, unformatted, or DIF files, Again, just as with data,
base files, the “text file on disk” option will puta Retum after each cell. Thisis
unhandy if your intention is to use the file with a word processor (print to a
formatted text file or the clipboard instead), but works quite well if your
intention is to access the information from an Applesoft program.
Help! I'm rapidly running out of room here, and we've talked about
nothing but AppleWorks so far this month. (Note to new subscribers —this
isn't typical.) However, there are a couple of sources of AppleWorks help I'd
like to mention.
Robert Ericson (P.0. Box 16064, Rumford, RI 02916) has prepared a set of
materials he calls Notes for AppleWorks, which he sells for $10. These printed
notes consist of the equivalent of more than 50 single-spaced AppleWorks
pages and are chock full of tips and tricks for using AppleWorks.
The AppleWorks Users Group (c/o Jim Willis, 1300 Hinton St, West
Monroe, La., 71291) collects and publishes notes, templates, reviews, and
similar material about AppleWorks. The group had eight disk sides of
information in May and probably has more by now. You can purchase this
information from the group for $4 per double-sided disk, or you can send in
a disk and retum postage and get their stuff at no additional cost. You are
encouraged, of course, to put your own ideas, findings, and other material on
the disk you send in so your stuff can be added to the club library.
The possibilities here are endless. Rather than simply having a library
stuffed full of Basic programs, as most users groups do, this library can have
reports and reviews in word processor files; useful, searchable data in data
base files; and programs in spreadsheet files. One of the things on the first
disk, for example, is a data base file on the group’s own membership. Other
possiblities would include a data base of software for the Apple, of
AppleWorks-related magazine articles, of Apple users groups, and so on.
(The sample data base file shown on page 58 comes from one of these
disks.)
There's lots more to talk about when it comes to AppleWorks. More next
month.
Apparently the only program ever written that used MouseText's running
man was our Humantext Demo in the April issue (page 27). Apple has
announced that those characters will not appear in future versions of
MouseText and now warns software developers not to use them. Apple hasn't
revealed what kind of character will replace the running man.
The MouseText character set was designed by Bruce Tognazzini, an
Apple II wizard who has been around since the early days of Apple. He
recently wrote a very funny letter to Call -A.PPLLE. (July 1985, page 41), in
which he explains why the MouseText characters ended up where they did (a
hardware problem, he says). I'll reprint the letter if | can get the required
permissions.
The internal structure of AppleWorks files is completely documented
in a paper available for the asking from Debra Hara, Mail Stop-22D, Apple
Computer, 20525 Mariani Ave, Cupertino, CA 95014. | wish it used the Apple-
compatible dollar sign for hexadecimal numbers. Instead it uses the CP/M—
IBM method of following hex numbers with an “H”. | keep thinking H is the
last digit, but can never find that key on my hexadecimal calculator.
The AppleTalk network's Apple II documentation is available in a
preliminary form, though the combination hasn’t yet been officially
announced. This stuffis expensive, but necessary ifyou're interested in low-
cost networks. First you need Inside AppleTalk, which is $75 plus your state's
sale’s tax from Apple Computer, 467 Saratoga Ave, Suite 621, San Jose, CA
95129. Then you'll need AppleTalk Developer's Notes for the Apple Ile, which
is $25 plus your state's sales tax from Apple Software Group, Mail Stop 4T,
20525 Mariani Ave, Cupertino, CA 95014.
The old reliable Disk I has been discontinued by Apple, though
equivalent units are still available from other vendors. The Disk I has been
replaced bya new half-height single drive called the UniDisk. The UniDisk is
aesthetically nicer, but the catch is that the controller card that the UniDisk
requires is not compatible with older Disk I! controllers. Either controller
can accomodate two drives, but Apple says the new UniDisk and old Disk II
can’t share a common controller card. Of course, Apple also says the Apple
Iiccan’t use either of these drives either, but companies are selling adaptor
plugs that allow a Disk II to work with a IIc. (For example, WGE International,
Rt 202N, Peterborough NH 03458, 800-227-1560, advertises a Disk II/Apple
OpenApple 61
\cadaptor plug for $19.95) | don Uknow what the obstacles are in this case,
but Open-Applewill pay hard cash for a publishable article on the Disk II/IIc
connection and why or why not the Disk II and UniDisk can't share a
controller card. Inquire within.
This month's cartoon is by Rich Tennant. Rich used to be a mainframe
programmer; he says the experience left him with a gusher of malice that will
last the rest of his life. He is coauthor of the | Hate Computers Book (Hayden
Book Co., ISBN 0-8104-8000-X, $4.95). In a related development, the August
inCider (page 36) includes a worthwhile article by Jack McCornack that
shows how to hook a lic to your car’s dashboard or any other 12 volt power
source with a few dollars worth of parts. You'll still need a monitor, but if 40-
column mode is adequate, McComack says 5inch battery-powered televisions
are available for about one-fifth the cost of Apple's flat panel display.
Reviewer's
Corner
Hackers, Heros of the Computer Revolution. by Steven Levy.
Fire in the Valley, The Making of the Personal Computer. By Paul
Freiberger and Michael Swaine.
The Little Kingdom, The Private Story of Apple Computer. By Michael
Moritz.
When the president of the Apple user group here in Kansas City goes on
vacation, she takes her Apple lic with her. She drives around the country
calling up local bulletin boards to add to her collection. After lastyear's trip,
she suggested that the software, tourism, and hostelry industries get
together and “puta sticker on all motel office windows depicting a computer
with either an M for modular or an A for acoustic (and for the one motel
owner I ran into, a computer with a slashed red circle around it)”
It’s possible, I'm told, to go on vacation and leave the world of computers
totally behind, but | have a hard time imagining it. Instead of lugging a
computer with you, though, how about a book? Here are three of them—
none need electrical outlets— that will keep you from straying too far from
the warmth generated by ROMs and RAMs,
Allthree are historical looks at personal computing with emphasis on the
Apple Il.
Hackers has the broadest scope. It begins in the late 1950s with the
adventures of some students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
who used one of the world’sfirst transistor-run computers as ifit had been an
Apple. It ends with an extensive look at the people behind the large, Apple Il-
centered software company, Sierra On-Line. In between we find Wozniak and
the Homebrew Computer Club. Hackers focuses on the hardware and
software wizards of the computer age and what they stood for.
Fire in the Valley concentrates on the forces that gave us the personal
computer. Most of these forces seemed to converge just south of San
Francisco, in the Silicon Valley, during the late 1970s. Since Apple is one of
the major figures in the history of personal computing, it has a major role in
the book. What Fire in the Valley did for me was bring together hundreds of
loose ends and fragments of things I'd read about but never understood,
‘Things like what's an Altair, who is Dr. Dobbs, and why is CP/M.
The Little Kingdom is an historical look at Apple itself. Here's more than
you'd ever want to know about Jobs and Wozniak. But it also introduces
other important Apple-related people you've never heard of, such as Rod
Holt, Chris Espinosa, Randy Wigginton, Alan Baum, and many others. This
book would be better ifit gave more of the technological history of Apple, but
the stories of stock options and of programmers “calling one of their new
supervisors a Software Nazi because he was steadfastly opposed to revealing
cena ‘about the internal mechanisms of the machine’ are very interesting,
indeed.
Hackers, by Steven Levy (Anchor Press/ Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y; ISBN 0-385-
19195-2). $17.95
Fire in the Valley, by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine (Osborne/McGraw-Hill,
2600 Tenth St, Berkeley, Calif. 94710; ISBN 0-88134-121-5)
The Little Kingdom, by Michael Moritz (William Morrow & Co, Inc., 105 Madison
Ave, New York, N.Y. 10016; ISBN 0-688-03973-1) $16.95
Ask
(or tell)
Uncle
DOS
Avoiding hi-res memory
I have written a few Basic programs for my elemen-
tary school. The better | get at writing these programs
(offering more user options, combining tutorial and
drill, etc.), the larger the program gets so that it runs
into the graphics area. I've broken the last program |
wrote into discrete parts and access each part with
PRINT D$;"RUN” but this constant waiting for access
to the next part is boring and tiresome for the kids.
Any suggestions?
Doris M. Keppel
Kinnelon, NJ.
There are several ways around the problem you
are experiencing. They fall into two categories —
loading your whole program into the computer but
avoiding the graphics area or continuing to use
smaller program parts but speeding up the transfer
from one part to another.
The easiest way to speed transfer is to use a high-
speed DOS, such as DiversiDOS or ProntoDOS,
which are DOS 3.3 work-alikes, or Apple's newer
ProDOS, which is similar but different. If your
school has Apple Ics or 128K Apple Iles, you could
also use the extra available memory as a RAM disk to
speed things up. With DOS 3.5 this requires a special
‘software package such as Beagle Bros’ DiskQuik. A
RAM disk isinstalled automatically on 128K machines
if youare using ProDOS with Applesoft.
The other possibility — avoiding the graphics area
entirely—can be accomplished fairly easily by
simply tricking DOS into loading your program
above the graphics area. There are 22,016 bytes of
space available above hi-res page one. Below it,
where Applesoft programs and variables normally
live, there are only 6,144 bytes available, So just this
simple trick will allow your programe to be three-and-
a-half times longer.
What you have to do is poke.a zero at the program's
new starting location, reset the “start of program”
pointers (see figure 1 on page 4 of the January
‘Open-Apple), and immediately RUNanew program.
For example, if your program is called BIG PICTURE,
write a separate startup program that does this:
10 REM moves progran start to $4000
20 START=16384
30 POKE START,@
49 POKE 104,START/256
50 POKE 103,START-(PEEK(104)*256)
6® PRINT CHRS(4);“RUN BIG PICTURE”
‘Ifyou want to put your program above both hi-res
pages, change the value of START inline 20to 24576.
That will give you 13,824 bytes of program space —
still more than double what you had before. The new
program location will continue to be used if you RUN
more programs. To reset the location back to normal
under DOS 5.3, you can use the FP command. Under
ProDOS, rerun Basic.system.
A problem with this trick is that it leaves the
memory below the graphics area unused. Another
solution to your problem Is to split your program
into two pieces; one below the graphics area, one
above. The Beagle Bros disk Silicon Salad includes
program that will do this; so does CALL -A.P.P.L.E.
in Depth #1, All About Applesoft (page 81) and the
June and October 1980 issues of Call -A.P.P.L.E..
No thank you
I wrote a letter to Softalk’s IfThen-Maybe column
six weeks before they folded. Admittedly, itwas a trick
question, but I think they took it pretty hard.
Brad Walters
Boston, Mass.
Pleeese don't send that question to me.
HCOLOR, block reading
Michael Ching states (June issue, page 47) that on
power-up, the value of HCOLOR defaults to white ona
I-Plus, but black ona Ile. This may be generally true,
but not universally. It appears Applesoft itself does
not initialize HCOLOR, so the “default value” is
whatever happens to come up in the RAM chips. | was
once involved with a commercial product that con-
taineda dismembered Il-Plusand dida lot of graphics.
Dozens of units were installed with no apparent
graphics problem. One day we were surprised to hear
from the factory that a particular unit would not
display any graphics in program X until you had first
used program Y or Z. Investigation finally revealed
that program X never set HCOLOR and unwittingly
depended on having the II-Plus come up using white;
our “defective unit” was an oddball II-Plus that came
up using black.
A comment by Ken Kashmarek (July, page 56)
makes me think the following suggestion could save
afew people possible problems. Kashmarek is doing
machine-language routines to access ProFile blocks
directly by setting up a command table at $42-$47,
then calling $CsXX, where sis the slot number and XX
is the value at $CsFF. This may work fine for the
ProFile but not for other hard disks; | would recom-
mend instead that the ProDOS disk vector table at
$BF10-$BF2F be inspected to find the address of the
disk driver routine. I know of at least one hard disk
system (Genie) in which the routine at the $CsXX
address is a set-up routine; before performing the
operation requested in the command table it checks
all ProDOS volumes on all drives connected to the
card and sets them up appropriately in the disk
device tables at $BF10 and up;in particular it modifies
the stored vector that led to its being invoked so that
the next call to access the volume will go through a
normal access routine. In this case repeated calling
to $CsXX toaccess disk blocks wouldn't be particularly
harmful, just slow; but conceivably other hard disk
‘systems might tolerate it less benignly. In short, the
vector $CsKX only shows where the interface card
wants to be called the first time ProDOS uses it; if
calling it makes it change its address in the disk
vector table, it is good manners to call the latter
address.
Robin Ault
Newtonville, Mass.
Thanks for pointing this out. Kashmarek actually
wrote me that he accessed the ProFile with JSRs to
$CS5EA; I took the liberty of changing it to $CsXX so
Vol. 1, No.7
that the information would be useful to people with
other types of hard drives. As you point out, however,
$CSXX isnot necessarily the best entry point, just the
first one. For the record, the table you refer to at
$BF10 holds 16 two-byte disk device driver entry
Points in the following order; slots 0 to 7, drive 1;
slots 0 through 7, drive 2. The slot 0 entry points are
reserved. /RAM appears as slot 3, drive 2. Slot/drive
combinations with no device point to an error
handler. The ProDOS Technical Reference Manual
talks about this stuff in considerably less detail on
pages 92 and 110.
Integer Basic
How can you run Integer Basic programs under
ProDOS?
Robert C Platt
Amarillo, Texas
Compatibility of future machines from Apple is
essential, but must they run APPLEVISION as you
insist in the July issue (page 50)? For most of us,
Integer Basic has been dead for so long thatit doesn’t
even smell bad anymore.
William Cutrer
Dallas, Texas
To run an Integer Basic program under ProDOS
you would need a system program somewhat like
‘Applesoft's Basic.system. “Integer.system”, or what-
ever you might call it, however, would have to hold
the entire Integer Basic interpreter as well as the
DOS related stuff of Basicsystem. | don’t think
developing such a thing would be a massive under-
taking as long as Apple would license you to steal
code from Integer Basic and Basic.system.
I don’t think there would be much remuneration in
it, but writing “Integer.system” would make a nice
hobby for some assembly language hacker. To my
knowledge it hasn’t been done yet.
Insisting that future Apple Ils can run APPLEVISION
simply guarantees that a number of things stay the
same with Apple graphics, sound, disk, and memory
configurations. Though it hurts to say such a thing
about the first computer language | ever learned, I
agree that Integer Basics as dead as Latin.
ProDOS drive size
‘The ProDOS read/write block routines require a
unit number in the format DSSS0000, where Dis the
drive number and SSS is the slot. Is it logical to
assume the drive number ofa hard drive is 1?
I write a computer newsletter for my employer, a
county schools office. I'd like to occasionally pass on
information mentioned in Open-Apple, Do you have
any objections as long as | give Open-Apple as the
source?
Bob Crocker
Yuba City, Calif,
Ifahard drive supports just one volume, the read/
write block routines treat that volume as drive 1
(D=0). If the drive has two volumes, the second is
treated as drive 2 (D=1).
ProDOS allows a maximum of 14 volumes to be
accessible, or “on-line” at one time. Each of these
can have up to 65,536 blocks (33,554,432 bytes) of
storage space, foratotal of about 4.7 billion bytes. (A
shelf of Open-Apples with that much data would be
over 12 feet long.) By using “removable media”,
such as a floppy disk or a more automated type of
device, any amount of information could be handled
by ProDOS.
August 1985
Theoretically, all 14 volumes could be on one
physical device attached to a card in a single slot,
however, the ProDOS kernel would pretend they
were 14 separate devices in separate slots.
Here are the “unit” or “device” numbers that
DSSS0000 translates into:
ProD0S unit or device numbers
sit: 1 2 3 4 5 6 ?
drive 1 $10 $20 $30 $40 $50 $60 $70
drive 2 $50 SR@ $80 SCO 300 see sro
In some situations, ProDOS uses the lower four
bits to designate the type of device. For example, in
the “device list” (DEVLST) ProDOS keeps in the
system global page at $BF52-3F. 0 indicates a Disk Il-
like floppy, 4 an Apple Profile, and F indicates /RAM.
The Sider shows up as a5.
Ideas expressed in Open-Apple are open game
foranyone, just as they are in any written material. if
you cite Open-Apple as the source of such ideas,
however, your newsletters will fold easier and your
stamps will stick better.
‘The exact wording of the ideas expressed in Open-
Apples copyrighted. The legal doctrine of “fair use”
‘says you can use short portions of my wording if
‘you indicate that the material is a direct quote and
you cite the source. I do this to other people all the
time; look around Open-Apple for examples, | will
also allow Apple user groups and significant others
to quote whole articles from Open-Apple ona word-
for-word basis from time to time, but this is more
complicated and requires a specific written request.
Truly mixed
Is there any way to change the number of text lines
on a mixed text and graphics page? Can | use a
screen that is half and half?
Duncan Orr
Heber City, Utah
Indeed, you can, using assembly language on a
Ie or llc. It can also be done on a Il-Plus, but you
have to solder a 7-1/2 inch piece of wire between a
couple of pins. The details of all this would fill up a
whole issue of Open-Apple. Instead, Ill refer you to
the bible on this technique, Don Lancaster'sEmhanc-
ing Your Apple II, Second Edition (Howard W.
Sams & Co., 4300 West 62nd St, Indianapolis, IN
46268, $15.95). If you have an Apple Ile or lic, start
on page 232, where notes on using the techniques
with these machines are found, then go back and
examine chapters 4, 5, and 6.
‘Most people don't believe it, but with Lancaster's
technique you can mix any or all Apple Il graphics
modes on one screen—anyplace, even left-right
splits. The half-text/half-graphics you're interested
inisjust the beginning of the possibilities.
Gorilla-Grappler cross
Canyoutell me howto convince my Apple II-Plus to
have my Grappler-Plus tell my Gorilla printer to print
graphics? I've tried the controll, G command, but it
doesn't work.
Paul Low
Riverdale, Md.
If you don’t get anything at all on your Gorilla
when you print the control-l, G, you're probably not
doing it right. The following program has an example
of how to doit.
If you get garbage on your Gorilla in response to
controll, G, you need to reset the dip switches that
tell your Grappler-Plus what kind of printer you have.
The Grappler manual doesn’t specifically say it
supports the Gorilla, but the Gorilla probably prints
graphics in response to the same commands as one
of the supported printers. If you know something
about this, it may help to review the Grappler-Plus
manual,
Othenwise, proceed like this. Put the following
startup program on a disk that has a printable
graphiconit:
10 HER
20 PRINT CHRS(4);“BLOAD GRAPHIC, AS2000"
30 PRINT CHRS(4);“PRUL”
4@ PRINT CHRS(
‘50 PRINT CHRS(4);
60 TEXT : END
REM control-I, G
RHO”
Tum off your computer. Remove the lid and find
the dip switches on your Grappler. There are four of
them, so they can be set in 16 possible combinations.
Start trying the combinations one-by-one until you
find the one that works. Set the switches in your first
configuration and tum the computer on to start up
the above program. Check what appears on your
printer. if it's a graphic, you're done. If not, turn the
computer off, try another combination, and repeat.
This method can be used to discover the right
combination for any interface card and printer—if
there is one.
The hard disk life
I lost 16,000 sectors on a Sider when I foolishly
reset when printing from Apple Writer (ProDOS
version). It bad blocked them and | couldn't work
around it—had to reformat and lost many files I
should have backed up! Any hints?
Donald Beaty
San Mateo, Calif.
Boy that’s scary. I can think of no theoretical
reason why pressing reset while printing from
Apple Writer should harm the Sider, but I'm not
willing to try iton my system to make sure.
Reset trap bug
There is a bug in the Reset trap demonstration
program in the February issue (page 16). It prevents
a disk from booting correctly if the patch is made a
permanent part of DOS 3.3. Add this line to the
program to get rid of the problem:
57 POKE 40382,21
BSAVE, T, and CREATE
Your July issue (page 51) correctly states that
BSAVE, when used with the Type parameter, works
only with pre-existing files. However, there seems to
be no reason for this and | consider this inability a
bug in Basic.system,
I discovered the bug while implementing FIG-
FORTH in ProDOS, | wanted to save data blocks using
as little code as possible, however | wanted the data
blocks to use standard text files so they could be
edited with word processors. I recognized that BSAVE
could solve my space problem, but to use text files |
would have to CREATE new files first, thus decreasing
speed and increasing code length once again.
Therefore | looked for the BSAVE code to fix the bug
and, with the help of the disassembly in the supplement
to Beneath Apple ProDOS, found | could do it | was
able to accomplish this because the command
parser puts the file type code in VIYPE ($BE6A) and
OperApple 63
then BSAVE and CREATE both place it there again,
wasting code that I put to better use. Here ane may
patches:
bload relocated
adr
disassenbly
adr ‘and comments
Basic.systen 1.1 existing BSAVE code
5375
53777
33778
$9770
$3800
$3802
$3804
‘sAOFS
SsR0F7
‘SROFR
‘sAOFD
‘srE00
sp€02
Aces
99 06
60 6A BE
80 86 BE
AD S6 BE
23 04
00
20 45 90
LOR 1895 assume BIN
‘STA SBE6A put at VIYPE
STA $8E88 put at setinfo
{DA $BES6 type given?
AND 4504
BNE SAEL2 yes--error
JSR $AD4G goto CREATE
$3741
33743
sA041
A043
A046
a9 OF
60 6A BE
LDA SOF assume SYS
STA SBEGA put at VIYPE
CREATE file
modifications for 8SAVING neu files of any type
S37F5
$3778
378
S370
So7FF
53801
$3804
SADFS
‘SAOFE
SAFE
SAFO
SADFF
sACOL
Ace
AE 6A BE
AD $6 BE
29 04
Do e2
A2 06
8E 88 BE
20 43 AD
LOx $8E68 get parsed type
LOA $BESG type given?
PND 8804
BNE SREOL yes, branch
LOX #896 no, use BIN
SIX $BE88 put at setinfo
JSR $AD43 goto CREATE-3
9741
99743
ADL
$9043
‘sA046
2 oF
8E 6A BE
LOX SOF assume SYS
STX SBEGA put at VIVPE
CREATE file
Mark Jackson
Chicago, II
Your modifications look very good, particularly
since they require no additional space. In testing
them, however, | noticed that the record length for
text files created this way is set wrong. Directory
entries under ProDOS include a field called AUX_TYPE
that is used for different things depending on the
type of ile. Files of types BIN, BAS, SYS, and VAR use
it to store the default loading address of the file. This
is the number that BSAVE puts in the directory with
your technique.
TAT files, however, store the file's record length in
AUX_TYPE. Thus, TXT files created with BSAVE have
very strange record lengths. | suspect Basic.system
Prevents BSAVE from creating new non-binary files
to avoid problems with AUX_TYPE. However, your
modifications can be valuable if used with an under-
standing of the potential problems,
Incidentally, a subscriber recently tipped me off to
the most interesting use of AUX_TYPE to date. Apple-
Works files use AUX_TYPE as a bit mask that
remembers which characters of a file's name are
upper case and which are lower case. When you
catalog an AppleWorks file with Basic.system, it will
always appear in capitals, with periods instead of
‘spaces, just like all other ProDOS filenames. From
inside AppleWorks, however, file names can be upper
and lower case and can include spaces as well as
periods. The 16-bit AUX_TYPE value tells AppleWorks
how to display the 16 character filename. Lower-
case periods are displayed as spaces.
Nibble bytes tounge
‘Shocked by your expose (June, page 45) of our
alleged hoarding of available exclamation points, |
asked our controller to do an intemal audit of our
stocks! Much to my surprise, it divulged that there
was a large crate of said points sequestered in a back
stockroom, apparently an impulsive acquisition by a
former sales manager! Appalled, I contacted the MPA,
the ABA and the SMPA, who will independently oversee
a lottery for point distribution to needy publishers,
64 —Open-Apple
based on their immediate exclamatory needs! Hope-
fully, we will see a resultant softening of the point
market, although this may in tum affect the availability
of htypens—and ellipses...
David Szetela
Managing Editor, Nibble
PEEK(978) problems
This 57-year old has been struggling through
Open-Apple and, believe it or not, some of it seems
torub in, Fantastic stuff,
The program for testing the effects of the Garbage-
manin the January issue (page 4) gave mea problem.
Line 85 indicates that if PEEK(978)=190 then ProDOS-
isactive, but that's also whatyou get when using DOS
3.3and GPLE.DM (the version of GPLE that works with
DOS 3.3 moved to the language card).
I've noticed you are also using PEEK(978) in other
programs, and I thought I'd warn you you may have a
problem with GPLE users. I have never learned totype
in code without using GPLE.
Will Thompson:
Buffalo Grove, Ill.
Things transpire within Open-Apple at different
levels. I try to fixit so that anybody interested in the
Apple Il can pick up some worthwhile stuff — but less
experienced users will undergo more puzzlement
than others, But remember—the more you read, the
more you understand; the more you understand, the
more you understand.
PEEK(978) serves two different functions. In some
programs, such as the one you mention in the
January issue, it is used to determine whether DOS
3.3 or ProDOS is active. In others, it is used to
confirm that DOS 3.3 is at its standard 48K location.
PEEK(978) usually works for these tests because
standard Apple operating system protocol calls for a
DOS warmstart “vector” to be stored in bytes 976-
978 ($3D0-3D2). Byte 978 ends up holding the
“page” or high-byte address of a routine inside DOS.
Here's what the value inside byte 978 usually
indicates:
Situation indicated by value in byte 978 ($302)
<1s7
1s?
130
1h
DOS 3.3 active, conputer has < 49K
005 3.3 active at standard 48K position
ProDOS activa
DOS 3.9 active on language card
However, as you point out, not all programs that
move DOS 3.3 to the language card leave 191 in byte
978.1 think most do, but GPLE DOS MOVER doesn't.
Open-Apple
© Copyright 1985
by
Tom Weishaar
Published monthly.
World-wide price:
‘US$24/year
Send all
correspondence to:
Open-Appie
10026 Roe Ave.
Overand Park, Kans
66207 oa
Source Mail:
IGF 238
CompuServe:
Open-Apple isa trademark of Open-Apple newsletter, Apple
Computer and Open-Apple are two different, unrelated, inde-
pendent companies thal wish everyone inthe world had an
Apple
Consequently, the DOS 5.5 us ProDOS test fails. You
GPLE.DM addicts may find a different test more
appropriate — check byte 977 instead. ProDOS stores
a zero here; DOS 3.3, on the other hand, keeps
something greater than zero here in all situations I
know of.
When programs check to see whether DOS has
been moved, however, only the test of byte 978 will
work. You will have to discern yourself which pro-
grams need to have 978 changed to 977 and which
should be leftat 978. All programs that poke changes
into DOS 3.3 should check 978 to make sure DOS is
where it’s supposed to be. Ifitisn’t, the pokes go into.
thin air and have no effect, or worse, have a drastic
effect.
Converting CONVERT for MouseText
[have an enhanced Ile and also a lic. Using either
of these systems with the ProDOS CONVERT utility
causes the inverse bar that highlights filenames to
show the names in MouseTeat. | finally got tired of this,
and went looking for a solution to the problem.
The following Applesoft routine fixes the problem.
10 PRINT CHRS(4);“UNLOCK CONVERT”
20 PRINT CHRS(4);"BLOAD CONVERT, TSYS,982000"
30 POKE 26523,14
40 POKE 2671163
50 PRINT CHRS(4);"BSAVE CONVERT, TSYS,AS2000,L20481°
69 PRINT CHRS(4);"LOCK CONVERT”
For the technically curious, line 30 fixes an initiali-
zation problem. The author of the code enabled the
alternate character set instead of disabling it Without
line 40, the highlighted filename flashes. If one likes
that feature, don’t bother with line 40. Cocit Fretwell
Waterloo, lowa
Blazing the upgrade trail
Iread with great interest your comments in the July
Open-Apple (page 49) on compatibility between
future members of the Apple Il product family and
existing products. Having spent a great deal on
hardware and software for my system at home—so
much, in fact, that the majority of Apple II series
‘owners would probably consider it impossible, and a
‘smaller, but still significant amount of my employer's
money ona system at work, | have given the subject a
great deal of thought
‘One of the first things Apple had better realize is
that customers will make buying decisions based on
what they perceiveas best for them. While it may hurt
our pride to admit this, decisions on the purchase of
personal computers, peripherals, accessories, and
software are rarely rational, What is being purchased
is sizzle. Itis only after the purchase that one leams
whether the sizzle was accompanied by steak.
Ifpotential customers perceive that Apple's product
offerings are intended to address the companys
needs rather than customers’ needs, the products
will notbe well received. In the case of future products
in the Il family, the primary customer base has to be
the millions of owners of II series computers. If new
products sell well to this audience, the continued
vitality of the line is virtually assured, and it will sell to
awider audience,
There is litte doubt that 3-1/2 inch disks will
ultimately displace 5-1/4 inch disks in the personal
computer marketplace. There is also little doubt that
Apple would like to take advantage of the economies
of scale associated with the use of a single type of
disk drive in both of its product lines. There is
undoubtedly also a line of reasoning that says that if
Vol. 1, No. 7
new computers (eg, those based on the 65816
microprocessor) capable of running new and more
powerful software are compatible only with a new
diskette standard, users of the existing products will
upgrade. My response to this is thatwe will upgrade to
Apple products ifand only ifthe upgrade path offered
us allows us to preserve most of our existing
investment.
In my own case, I do not have room for a second
machine and all the slots in my II-Plus are filled.
(Actually, several cards are not in slots of their own,
eg, the Novation Apple CAT II 212 upgrade card is
mounted atop the power supply, Applied Engineering
780-Plus and Timemaster {1 1.0. cards share slot 7
thanks to a Legend Industries “Slot 8”, and a Videx
Enhancer Il replaces the original keyboard encoder.)
When software starts to become available, | would be
very interested in acquiring a 65816 co-processor, a
hard disk and 3-1/2 inch drives, but want these to be
in a form that does not cause me to choose between
my present equipment and a new set.
My proposal is that these items be offered in aform
similar to the ill-fated Rana 8086/2 co-processor,
which was supposed to provide MS-DOS compatibility
for the II-Plus and Ile. That product apparently failed
due to a combination of poor execution at the detail
level and under-capitalization of its manufacturer. (At
last report, Rania was attempting to reorganize under
Chapter 1L)
Ipropose a unit that mounts atop an Apple I-Plus
or Ile in the same manner as Apple’s Duo-Disk unit. It
would interface to the Apple bus viaa card that would
plug into slot 6 in place of the Disk II controller. The
unit would contain the co-processor, its ROM and
RAM (probably up to 1 megabyte) and sockets for
chips that could be inserted to add hard disk, floppy
disk, and RGB video interfaces. Itwould be capable of
containing (at the user's option) one or two 3-1/2
inch floppy drives and a hard disk of at least 10
megabyte capacity. There would be connectors at the
tear for a mouse, an external keyboard, and two Disk
II drives. Switches or jumpers would determine
whether on boot the system would search the 5-1/4
inch, 3-1/2 inch, or hard drive first. There would be
both input and output connectors for an NTSC
composite video signal. A video softswitch would
allow switching between composite video passed
through from the Apple II or video generated by the
65816, In all probability, at least part of the power
supply would have to be extemal, as in the lic, due to
dimensional constraints.
{fall this sounds suspiciously like a description ofa
self-contained microcomputer with limited expansion
capability, it is! The important thing about it is that it
would be designed to work with an Apple Il. Those
who wanted to use it as a stand-alone unit could
purchase a separate keyboard and an expansion
chassis to contain peripheral cards. These could be
Apple Il peripheral cards, or borrowing (andimproving
on, one would hope) an idea from the IBM PC/AT they
could be cards with two sets of edge fingers. The first
set would contain the same signals as the existing
bus, while the second would contain additional
signals. On the motherboard, these could be inserted
into a single connector of stepped height, with the
existing bus on the upper level. This would permit
use of existing peripheral cards, while also allowing
for more advanced equipment.
Mygoal for the selling price of the basicunit with no
disk drives or optional chips and 256K of RAM on
board would be $695.
Dan Strassberg
Arlington, Mass.