Are Apple II series computers worthless?

[Lynxpro]

Part out the C64s instead of junk them. After all, the SID is a very popular sound chip. He'll, just eBay it all.

 

Every time I've gone to a Goodwill around Sac, Davis, West Sac, and Roseville, I've never found anything good. No Atari, Coleco, Nintendo, or Sega game systems and certainly no Atari, Commodore, or Apple // computers.

[cncfreak]

Gotta say the Apple II's might not look that great when compared to Commodore 64's but it's still a great system to have and play around with. I've got a CFFA card in my GS and use it quite regularly. I just wish the GS ran a little faster. Some games are almost unplayable because of the speed. Of course all original Apple II games run fine and sometimes the speed has to be bumped down for them to run right. Any one purchased the Mockingbird cards on Ebay from the Korean seller? I've been putting off buying one but really want one. Also anyone have experience replacing caps or refurbing Apple IIe power supplies? I can't use my Apple IIe's because they both are making the familiar power supply chirp when i have too many cards in them. I really want to see if my RGB card I have for my Apple IIe will work with my Sony PVM monitor and Apple IIgs RGB to Scart cable.

[S1500]

So I have a controller card(I think) that was meant for the dual Apple // drive setup. But I have an older model single floppy disk drive. The cable connections are different. Anyone want to do a trade?

[Jess Ragan]

I'd guess that there are a TON of Apple IIe systems out there, considering the fact that Apple was doing its damnedest to get them into as many schools as possible. EVERY school I attended as a child and teenager seemed to have at least one. It had gotten to the point where I thought the "e" stood for "education."

 

My mother bought a couple of Apple computers- actually a Franklin 1000 and an Apple IIe- some years ago for an insultingly low price; like three dollars each. I just let them go to waste, because I wasn't collecting Apple products at the time (aside from a PowerMac which frankly has received only marginally better treatment) and the two systems were unreasonably huge. I just didn't feel like they were worth the time or space. However, now that I'm on the precipice of middle age, I'm getting nostalgic, and having second thoughts.

 

If I were to get into Apple 8-bit collecting, I'd want to get something with a smaller footprint... the stylish IIc, or maybe the IIgs. The IIgs holds special appeal to me as it brought the line of computers into the 16-bit era, with awesome graphics to match. Finally, no more smeary four color visuals!

[potatohead]

Apples have 6 color visuals... Well, counting black and white. Apple //e computers have 16 color visuals. Just saying

 

That happened to me. I really explored the Atari computers for a long time, but Apple computers were first. I reached a point where I am into the Apple right now and I'm having a good time. They are great machines like many 8 bitters are.

 

I try not to ditch stuff out of hand. Like my CoCo 3. It was really fun for a bit, but now it's archived. I got a cart that works with SD cards, and it's all setup to do fun things. What comes around, goes around. There will come a day where I'm enjoying that again, and maybe I'll stuff the Apple in storage.

 

The Atari is setup under the bedroom TV for the occasional "Star Raiders" fix at present.

[Jess Ragan]

Well, the Apple IIe has a 16-color mode, but the pixels are like, huge-gantic. What was the resolution, 40 by 40? It was pretty chunky at any rate.

 

I'll admit, mistreating the Apples demonstrated an alarming lack of foresight on my part. I desperately wanted to archive a disc of games I'd written in high school, but without the Apples in working condition, I don't have the means to do it. Bad move on my part. I've been trying to archive some old VIC-20 cassettes for similar reasons, but all the software I've used that's supposed to turn sound files into data just wouldn't work. Loading the games on an actual VIC is not an appealing alternative... the tape recorder takes a little piece forever to load anything.

[potatohead]

They are the same size as Antic E pixels. Double-High Res on the //e. 140x192, but aligned on color clocks like Atari pixels are, just a few less of them per scan line.

 

The //e also did double low res, which is 80x48, same colors.

[Jess Ragan]

Was the double high res mode accessible from BASIC? If not, that's probably why I missed it.

[potatohead]

Not without some assembly routines that I know of.

 

Well, let me clarify that. It could be turned on from Applesoft, but Applesoft did not contain double high-res graphics primitives.

[Keatah]

DHR through Applesoft Basic? Not natively. IIRC beagle bros and others made patches and routines to use it.

[Osgeld]

you can poke a bunch of crap in and turn it on from basic, from there it uses the standard drawing commands, but its interleaved so you have a lot of work ahead of you, same with DGR

[The Usotsuki]

Yeah.

 

Beagle Graphics came with the hooks, DHGR and DGR. They grabbed the & vector and added a number of graphics commands for the 560x192 and 80x48 graphics modes similar to the firmware ones for 280x192 and 40x48.

 

560x192 mode was not used very much though.

[Keatah]

The Apple IIgs isn't really part of the Apple II lineup. It is 2 computers in one. 2 significantly different and separated busses tell you this. The "GS" mode is pretty much an experiment in color Mac engineering.

The Apple //e & //c don't really let you do DHGR from BASIC in the way one normally think about it. You can fool yourself into thinking that it does via peeks and pokes, but you're still just writing small assembly language programs. You just have to use a completely different and limited syntax. Much like one would program C-64 sound. Tedious.

[Tempest]

The Apple //e & //c don't really let you do DHGR from BASIC in the way one normally think about it. You can fool yourself into thinking that it does via peeks and pokes, but you're still just writing small assembly language programs. You just have to use a completely different and limited syntax. Much like one would program C-64 sound. Tedious.

Can you expand on this? I've never looked into this and I'm curious.

 

Speaking of DHRG (and regular HRG), I did some experimenting over the weekend with my IIgs and IIe. When running DHRG and some HRG games on the IIgs the pictures were just plain wrong. The colors were off (either the wrong shade or just too 'pure') and sometimes you'd get some odd colors where there shouldn't be (such as red pixels in Rampage). I knew the IIgs had issues with displaying DHRG, but I never knew it was so bad. Of course it all depends on the game, sometimes the purity of the colors is an improvement, but usually it's not. I setup my IIe again because of this.

 

Try running Rampage or one of the Hi-Res adventures and you'll see what I'm talking about. It's kind of annoying once you know what you're looking for.

[Osgeld]

its the RGB inside the system causing it to be off

[Tempest]

its the RGB inside the system causing it to be off

Yes. I've been told that it's the IIgs's composite to RGB conversion that's the issue. I guess it's serviceable, but not great. I tried hooking up a composite monitor to the IIgs, but that only helped the problem slightly (some dithering effects came through).

[JamesD]

The Apple IIgs isn't really part of the Apple II lineup. It is 2 computers in one. 2 significantly different and separated busses tell you this. The "GS" mode is pretty much an experiment in color Mac engineering.

By that logic you couldn't count an Atari with a 65816 board as part of the Atari 8 bit line.

The GSOS is just code... just like the new GUI being worked on for the Atari 8 bit is just code. ​

Besides, even the wiki says it's part of the Apple II line and we all know wiki is never wrong.

 

I have a hunch that Apple II fans will call the IIgs part of the Apple II line but Atari 8 bit or C64 fans will be the ones to say it's not.

 

Can you expand on this? I've never looked into this and I'm curious.

Essentially, he meant your BASIC program has to go through the same steps as you would in assembly to set up the hardware and draw on the screen.

That doesn't actually make it assembly.

 

You certainly could use assembly.

Using actual machine code through use of the Applesoft II CALL command to control hardware certainly wouldn't be unusual, that was common for sound or other functions on the Apple II.

Compute even published an HRG character generator in machine code so they could port programs between platforms more easily. Compute was big on using font based graphics in their games.

If you use Beagle Graphics (the name of the product) you don't have to do that though. You can just use existing graphics commands in Applesoft II.

http://beagle.applearchives.com/the_software/vintage_beagle_bros_softwar/beagle_graphics.html

 

FWIW, there are also GSoft BASIC and TML BASIC just for the IIgs.

I couldn't find TML BASIC but you can get GSoft here:

http://whatisthe2gs.apple2.org.za/gsoft-basic

 

Speaking of DHRG (and regular HRG), I did some experimenting over the weekend with my IIgs and IIe. When running DHRG and some HRG games on the IIgs the pictures were just plain wrong. The colors were off (either the wrong shade or just too 'pure') and sometimes you'd get some odd colors where there shouldn't be (such as red pixels in Rampage). I knew the IIgs had issues with displaying DHRG, but I never knew it was so bad. Of course it all depends on the game, sometimes the purity of the colors is an improvement, but usually it's not. I setup my IIe again because of this.

 

Try running Rampage or one of the Hi-Res adventures and you'll see what I'm talking about. It's kind of annoying once you know what you're looking for.

I can see HRG colors being off because they depend on artifacting but I thought DHRG colors didn't vary as much.

 

Yes. I've been told that it's the IIgs's composite to RGB conversion that's the issue. I guess it's serviceable, but not great. I tried hooking up a composite monitor to the IIgs, but that only helped the problem slightly (some dithering effects came through).

Artifact colors even vary a bit from one composite monitor to another so it's not surprising. NTSC isn't exactly perfect when it comes to color.

 

Edited November 11, 2013 by JamesD

[potatohead]

It's all artifacting on the ][ through + and //e c machines.

[Tempest]

I can see HRG colors being off because they depend on artifacting but I thought DHRG colors didn't vary as much.

Actually the DHRG colors look worse in most cases, especially if it has to do with text (games like Zork Zero are almost unreadable). Fire up a few DHRG and take a look side by side, it's kind of amazing how I didnt notice this before.

[Hatta]

Damn, and I just sold my IIe in favor of my IIgs. Ah well, I didn't have any room for it anyway.

[Tempest]

Damn, and I just sold my IIe in favor of my IIgs. Ah well, I didn't have any room for it anyway.

Like I said, it all depends on the game. Many games actually look better on the IIgs, but those that really use artifacting and dithering will look 'off'. Then again, you might not even notice.

[Keatah]

Yes all of post 117.

[JamesD]

Damn, and I just sold my IIe in favor of my IIgs. Ah well, I didn't have any room for it anyway.

I'd guess fewer programs us DHRG than use the IIgs modes so I wouldn't worry about it too much.

 

DHRG was even worse to program for than HRG mode and since the II and II+ didn't support it, neither did most developers even though those machines came before Apple II sales really took off. Still, there are hundreds of thousands of those machines.

 

[Tempest]

Games that use Double Hi-Res (lots of good stuff in here)

 

Air Heart

Aliens
Arthur
Bad Dudes
Batman
Battle Chess
Black Cauldron
California Games
Card Sharks
Columns
Corruption (Text/Dhgr)
Crossbow
Death Sword
Destroyer
Dragon Wars
Empire
Global Commander
Gold Rush
Heavy Barrel
Hunt for Red October
Impossible Mission II
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Ikari Warriors II
Into the Eagle's Nest
Journey
King's Bounty
King's Quest (I, II, III, IV)
Labyrinth
Last Ninja
Legend of Blacksilver
Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the lounge Lizards
Los Angeles Crackdown
Manhunter
Maniac Mansion
Might & Magic II
Mixed-up Mother Goose
Neuromancer
Pipe Dream
Platoon
Police Quest
Press your Luck
Qix
Rad Warrior
Rampage
Robocop
Shogun
Space Quest
Space Quest II
Spiderbot
Spy vs Spy III
Star Trek: First Contact
Strategic Conquest
Street Sports Baseball
Street Sports Basketball
Street Sports Football
Street Sports Soccer
Temple of Apshai Trilogy (optional hires or double-hires)
Tetris (Hgr/Dhgr)
The Games : Summer & Winter Edition
Thexder
Transylvania (Dhgr version)
Victory Road
Universe II
World Games
Zork Zero

[JamesD]

FWIW, I do consider the IIgs to be part of the Apple II line but I can certainly understand the argument that it's not.
The old IIe buss architecture is glued on top of the 24 bit buss.
The reason I consider it part of the Apple II line is because it runs the same software, uses the same cards as the IIe (note that there were even slot timing differences in the buss between the II+ and IIe) and a modern PC that has multiple different buss slots and different graphics is still a PC.
Also keep in mind that there is a HUGE difference between the Apple II and Apple II+/IIe/IIc machines but the original Apple II is considered part of the Apple II line.
The software that only supports the IIgs would certainly get an asterisk with an annotation that it only works on the IIgs but I certainly consider the machine to be part of the Apple II line.

For that same reason I would consider an Atari 8 bit or a C64 with a 65816 board as part of those lines as well even if it wasn't offered by the original manufacturers.
Frankly, if Atari and Commodore had released enhanced 65816 machines, I don't think people would be making the same argument about the IIgs.