Games - Apple IIe

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	Games - Apple IIe

The Apple IIe was the third model in the Apple II line of personal computers, produced by Apple Computer. The "e" in the name stood for "enhanced", referring to the fact that several popular features were now built-in that were previously only available as third party upgrades and add-ons in earlier models. It also improved upon expandability and added a few new features, which all combined, made it very attractive to first-time computer shoppers as a general purpose machine. The Apple IIe has the distinction of being the longest-lived computer in Apple's history, having been manufactured and sold for nearly 11 years with relatively few changes. For this reason, it is the most commonly recognized model in the Apple II line.

History

The beginning

Apple had planned to retire the Apple II series after the introduction of the Apple III in 1980, however, after that machine turned out to be a disastrous failure, management decided the further continuation of the Apple II was in the company's best interest. So, after three and a half years at a stand-still, came the introduction of a new Apple II model--the Apple IIe (codenamed: Diana and Super II). The Apple IIe was released in January 1983, the successor to the Apple II Plus that came before it. Some of the hardware and software features of the Apple III were borrowed in the design of the Apple IIe.

Overview of new features

One of the most notable improvements of the Apple IIe was the addition of a full ASCII character set and keyboard. The most important addition was the ability to input and display lower-case letters. Other keyboard improvmenets included four-way directional cursor control and standard editing keys (Delete and Tab), two special Apple modifier keys (Open and Solid Apple), a safe off-to-side relocation of the "Reset" key, as well as upper and lowercase support. The auto-repeat function (any key held down to repeat same character continuously) was now automatic, no longer requiring the "REPT" key (now gone) found on the previous model's keyboard.

The machine came standard with 64K RAM, with the equivalent of a built-in Apple Language Card in its circuitry, and had a new special "Auxiliary slot" (replacing slot-0, though electronically mapped to slot-3 for compatibility with earlier third-party 80 column cards) for adding more memory via bank-switching RAM cards. Through this slot it also included built-in support for an 80 columns text display on monitors (with the addition of a plug-in 1K memory card, via bank-switching of 40 columns) and could be easily doubled to 128K RAM by alternatively plugging in an Apple's Extended 80 Columns Card. As time progressed even more memory could be added through third party cards using the same bank-switching slot, or alternatively general purpose slot cards that addressed memory 1 byte at a time (i.e. Slinky RAM cards). A new ROM diagnostic routine could be invoked to test the motherboard for faults and its main bank of memory.

The Apple IIe lowered production costs and improved reliability by merging the function of several off-the-shelf IC's into single custom chips, reducing total chip count to 31 (previous models used 120 chips). For this reason the motherboard design was much cleaner and ran cooler too, with enough room to add a pin-connector for an (optional) external numeric keypad. Also added was a backport accessible DE-9 joystick connector, making it far easier for users to add and remove game and input devices (previous models requiring plugging the joystick/paddles directly into a 16-pin DIP socket on the motherboard; the IIe retained this connector for backwards compatibility). Also improved were port openings for expansion cards. Rather than cutout V-shaped slot openings as in the Apple II and II Plus, the IIe had a variety of different sized openings, with thumb-screw holes, to accommodate mounting interface cards with DB-xx and DE-xx connectors (removable plastic covers filled the cutouts if not used). The Apple IIe maintained full backwards compatibility with the previous two Apple II models, allowing most hardware and software from those system to be used.

Technical specifications

Microprocessor

6502 or 65C02 running at 1.023 MHz
8-bit data bus

Memory

64 KB RAM built-in
16 KB ROM built-in
Expandable from 64 KB up to 1 MB RAM or more

Video modes

40 and 80 columns text, with 24 lines¹
Low-Resolution: 40x48 (16 colors)
High-Resolution: 280x192 (6 colors)*
Double-Low-Resolution: 80x48 (16 colors)
Double-High-Resolution: 560x192 (16 colors)*

*effectively 140x192 in color, due to pixel placement restrictions

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Apple IIe ]

Games - Apple IIe

History

The beginning

Overview of new features

Technical specifications

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