![]() ![]()
They were involved in distributing Integer BASIC programs on cassette to members of the group. Īnother of the earliest devices designed for the Apple II came from the Apple Pugetsound Program Library Exchange (A.P.P.L.E.). One part of being a hacker was improvising with what was available. ULTIMA III DOCS APPLE II DRIVERThis driver sent characters to the printer through a connection to the game paddle port. ULTIMA III DOCS APPLE II MANUALTo use these printers when there were yet no printer interface cards to make it easy to connect, hackers used a teletype driver written by Wozniak and distributed in the original Apple II Reference Manual (the “Red Book”). These noisy, massive clunkers often had no lowercase letters (not a big problem, since the Apple II didn’t have it either), and printed at the blazing speed of 10 characters per second. Those who could, obtained old used teletypes salvaged from mainframe computers. First, there were very few printers available. To get a printed copy of a program listing, for example, was no trivial matter. However, those early users who had a need usually found a way around these limits. Since there were no cards available to plug into the slots, you would imagine that the Apple II couldn’t make use of any other hardware. It had, of course, the slots for inserting expansion cards (none were available), a game port (for attaching the include game paddles), a pin that could be used to connect an RF modulator (so a standard television could be used instead of a computer monitor), and a cassette interface. ULTIMA III DOCS APPLE II TVTwo important “peripherals” were built-in: A keyboard, and the circuitry to allow easy connection of a TV monitor. With the release of the first Apple II, it offered an advantage over many of its competitors at the time. ULTIMA III DOCS APPLE II SOFTWAREExceptions 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. 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. For those computers, the first things that users added were keyboards and TV monitors to make it easier to use them. 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. Recall that the earliest computers came with almost nothing built-in. Quite probably, in time many devices that were once considered optional accessories will become so essential that they will always be built-in. An argument could be made that something built-in is not a peripheral, but as things have changed over time there are some devices still called “peripherals” from force of habit, though they are now built-in (hard disks come to mind). WHAT IS A PERIPHERAL?Ī basic definition of a peripheral would be, “Something attached to a computer that makes it possible to do more than it could previously do.” It is called a “peripheral” because it usually is connected to the computer after it leaves the factory. 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. 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 was due partly to gradually emerging standards that made it easier to design a single hardware device that would work on multiple computers, and in the case of the Macintosh, because of Apple’s decision to make peripherals somewhat compatible between the two computer lines. However, for a few years the Apple II still received the benefits from the “trickle-down” of some of the best new devices from other computers (SCSI disk devices and hand scanners, for example). ULTIMA III DOCS APPLE II PCBy 1991, the Apple II unfortunately no longer held the front position it had been supplanted by the Macintosh and IBM PC and its clones. 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. The more popular the computer, the more variety found in hardware add-ons. In fact, the success of a computer has inevitably led to hackers designing something to make it do things it couldn’t do before. 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. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |