In 1980 as a math grad student, I took out my bank's first student loan for a computer, $3000 ($9000 now) for an Apple II. My annual stipend was not much more. My branch of math at that time was a foot race with no rule against bicycles (they hardly knew what one was) and I saw computerizing my field as an alternative to dropping out. The Apple II didn't really help here; later we managed to bit-squeeze a viable computer algebra system [1] onto the first 128K Macintosh, leading to colleague adoption. Other friends got their start in computing, learning how to program the Apple II in my apartment.
One could learn the Apple II inside-out. I've never had that experience again. My first week I took a soldering iron to it to provide lower case support; I've been the surgeon for friends' computers ever since. There was a book (it must be somewhere on this archive) that explained the purpose of every byte in low memory.
For perspective, I was avidly learning Go as I started grad school, till I read on the back cover of one of James Davies' books that he had dropped out of math grad school to pursue Go. Ouch! The Apple II was a completely different, more approachable scale. I could master it and stay in grad school.
Yeah, I think that the 8-bit computers were the last ones that a single person could understand completely at every level. I can just about decipher modern assembly language to be able to compare outputs of godbolt when considering whether an optimization does what I think it does, but beyond that, I’ve not actually written any assembly code for over 30 years (the last I did was 370 Assembler on an IBM minicomputer).
I remember reading computer magazines back in the 80s where they were discussing approaches to getting upper and lower case on the Apple ][. I had made the mistake of using the ctrl key which meant that return and backspace no longer worked and an article suggested using esc instead. The shift to the paddle button option wasn’t an option for me since I never owned my own computer and relied on being able to stay after school to use the school's computers to learn with.
I think the 16-bit computers could be understood as well---the original Mac, Atari ST, Amiga and IBM PC [1]. I have the IBM technical manuals for the IBM PC (XT I think? Maybe AT?) and the IBM PCjr and they are complete, with BIOS listings and schematics. I also have Amiga Reference manuals (three volumes, includes how to use, what to use, and hardware information).
I do agree however, that once you got past 1990 or so, things started getting way more complex.
[1] Even though the 8088 had an 8-bit bus, internally it was still 16 bits.
> My first week I took a soldering iron to it to provide lower case support
I had (still have actually...) an Apple ][ thus modified but I don't recall soldering anything inside the computer being necessary. It required running a jumper from the shift key to the paddle input.
This didn't actually display lowercase though, just allowed you to input it. To display it required replacing the character set generator chip which I think was on the keyboard PBC, but I'm not sure about as mine had an entirely swapped out keyboard PCB with one that had macro support.
Woah. I've spent the last year-or-so messing with coding the C64 and hoovering up any information I could find... and I never found this site/ftp. So much good stuff - there goes my evening!
Excited to see one of my first programming books there: A Touch of Applesoft BASIC [1]. The book is very limited but it's what I had. I would have been so excited to have all these other books available. What an amazing time we live in.
consider adding it the internet archive list of manuals. Its not complete, but they have some good ones. I wonder if sometimes stuff gets lost because of apple 2 labeling ][+ vs //e vs //c....
Manuals had a lot more info back then. What were the handwritten changes?
Yeah I plan on doing exactly this with my tiny collection of Pravetz literature. Already added the 8M ROM dump, including the character generator ROM that is missing from the original link: https://archive.org/details/pravetz8m-eproms/
apple2.org.za has hosted a ton of useful Apple II content for a long time. I believe the owner of the site is in Joburg. (He is providing hosting for this project, but isn't one of the main contributors, AFAIK.) I've always thought it was interesting that one of the most valuable Apple II sites is in ZA, because I'm not aware of South Africa being a hotbed for Apple II users in general.
There were quite a few Apple 2's in SA. I'm part of a Vintage Computing club and a lot of the members have them, including everything else like Commodore 64's, Amiga, PC, Macintosh, etc.
I remember when I first saw the .za TLD, I thought that it was South Africans using cross-border connections to Zambia (my knowledge of African geography and ISO country codes being both limited) since this was the waning days of Apartheid and it seemed natural that other countries might not be willing to extend internet access to South Africa. I still think of that every time I see the .za TLD.
I am young (zoomer) retro computing hobbyist and it’s great to have these saved for future generations. A lot of stuff I read on the internet assumes prior knowledge of terminology at the time. Decoding what they meant by different types of signals, cables and connectors can be challenging at times if your first computer had PCIe :)
The Kansasfest Apple II convention is coming up later this month, both on-line and in-person, if you like the Apple II this is the place for you! https://kansasfest.org
Readit News
One could learn the Apple II inside-out. I've never had that experience again. My first week I took a soldering iron to it to provide lower case support; I've been the surgeon for friends' computers ever since. There was a book (it must be somewhere on this archive) that explained the purpose of every byte in low memory.
For perspective, I was avidly learning Go as I started grad school, till I read on the back cover of one of James Davies' books that he had dropped out of math grad school to pursue Go. Ouch! The Apple II was a completely different, more approachable scale. I could master it and stay in grad school.
[1] https://www.math.columbia.edu/~bayer/Macaulay/
I remember reading computer magazines back in the 80s where they were discussing approaches to getting upper and lower case on the Apple ][. I had made the mistake of using the ctrl key which meant that return and backspace no longer worked and an article suggested using esc instead. The shift to the paddle button option wasn’t an option for me since I never owned my own computer and relied on being able to stay after school to use the school's computers to learn with.
I do agree however, that once you got past 1990 or so, things started getting way more complex.
[1] Even though the 8088 had an 8-bit bus, internally it was still 16 bits.
I had (still have actually...) an Apple ][ thus modified but I don't recall soldering anything inside the computer being necessary. It required running a jumper from the shift key to the paddle input.
https://archive.org/details/II_II-Shift-Key_Modification
This didn't actually display lowercase though, just allowed you to input it. To display it required replacing the character set generator chip which I think was on the keyboard PBC, but I'm not sure about as mine had an entirely swapped out keyboard PCB with one that had macro support.
I also had that experience and credit the deep understanding of an early system with intuition in rapidly understanding modern systems.
[1] http://mirrors.apple2.org.za/Apple%20II%20Documentation%20Pr...
Manuals had a lot more info back then. What were the handwritten changes?
internet archive: https://archive.org/search.php?query=apple+2+manuals&page=1
https://archive.org/details/apple2_manual_a2rb/mode/thumb
Here's a 19879 manual. This is closer to the manual that came with my Apple ][
https://archive.org/details/apple2_manual_a2rm/mode/thumb
I vaguely recall mine having some hand-written corrections to the assembly listings but I don't see any.
The Apple ][ Documentation project has the same manual but w/o an altered title page:
http://mirrors.apple2.org.za/Apple%20II%20Documentation%20Pr...