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apf m1000 ownership and appreciation thread


APF 1000 ownership survey  

68 members have voted

  1. 1. Do you own an APF m1000?

    • Yes
      32
    • no
      24
    • what's an apf m1000?
      12

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Regarding the APF Imagination Machine, a couple of weeks ago I learned about a company called Rola specialized in selling tractors for 40+ years. At the end of the owner's career, he shifted to importing computers under the company names Rola Dator and Halvprisdator and had someone write bookkeeping software specifically for farmers. It ran on the APF Imagination Machine which he sold very cheap. I didn't get the exact dating but it should be early 80's. The same bookkeeping software was later ported to a couple entirely different computers including Amstad PC 1512/1640 running DOS.

 

post-5454-0-59216400-1531778261_thumb.jpg

 

I found this rather spectacular, but then again I know next to nothing about the Imagination Machine. Perhaps it was marketed for business purposes by APF as well?

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It's noteworthy whenever an old home computer was used in business or industrial applications.

 

The APF mp1000 was a games machine and the computer expansion was designed as an entertainment computer that balances your cheque book and bring Videotex in to the home.

 

Edit:

In the early days most home video game manufacturers wanted to make computers. For various reasons video game consoles was the way to sell their computers.

Edited by mr_me
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Ok, I just read on Wikipedia:

The Imagination Machine has the distinction of being one of the first, if not the first, affordable home PCs to connect to the television, and is still one of the most expandable consoles ever marketed. The full APF Imagination Machine, including the APF-M1000 console and the IM-1 computer component originally sold for around $700.


Usually I get the feeling that computer expansions either turn video games into rather inferior home computers, even by low end measures, or end up with decent specs but in total has cost far more than a comparable home computer would've cost from the start. Perhaps the APF is the striking exception to this, a competent computer for a fraction of the price which also explains why a company getting into computers would import it specifically, develop tailor made software and sell to small businesses.

 

In 1979, $700 had equalled about 3000 SEK which fairly well matches the advertisement though I'm not sure it was imported so early on.

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For video game console computer expansions there's the APF, Bally/Astrocade, Intellivision* Keyboard Component, Coleco Adam. Is there anything else? I think all would have been competent computers for their time, all were commercial failures. Of course computers are only as good as their software. And the economics of computer technology rapidly changed in the early 1980s.

 

 

*Not counting Intellivision ECS. It was only created to appease the ftc after the keyboard component became commercially not viable.

 

 

The APF was really just a stock motorola computer. The Astrocade and Intellivision were designed more with games in mind. In the 1970s computers in general were expensive. In the 1980s it was hard to compete with Commodore in NA.

Edited by mr_me
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I would count the Compumate for the Atari 2600, and of course the hybrid console/computer VTech Creativision. There also was a BASIC extension late in life for the Videopac G7400, plus a Hobby Module for the 1292 APVS. Recently a newspaper clip was found about a kit to convert your RCA Studio II to a programmable computer, prior to the Cosmac ELF. I may have missed some system, but I think the majority are covered here.

 

Obviously the degree of usability varies greatly between these systems. In particular the ADAM was intended as a professional system, not sure how the Intellivision KCS was intended to be positioned.

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The Intellivision KC was intended for home productivity. Do your banking, shopping, reading the news, exercise, learn to dance. BASIC programming was intentionally optional as the objective was to provide application programs that made it useable. They were not targeting business, schools, or computer hobbyists. Mattel was slow to get this thing out, they started in 1977, and only had application software by 1981. Videotex never caught on in NA.

 

In those days you really have to look at NA, europe, and japanese markets seperately. They were so different. Sega had a keyboard add-on for their early game systems as well.

 

-------

In 1982, I went to the UK and they had this on demand interactive text service right on the TV. I could get sports scores, weather, news, play games, all on-demand with a remote control. I was amazed. This stuff was available in NA but very few people had a computer, modem or new about it.

Edited by mr_me
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So was APF really the 4th largest electronics industry in the USA, and which brands does one count? I'm having trouble to make it fit in, if we consider IBM, Apple, Commodore, Atari, Texas Instruments to be electronics industries and then we have lots of other brands wanting a share of the cake. Of course stating "this is a computer from the 11th largest company in the USA" really doesn't have the same ring to it as 4th.

 

Philip Lipper in an interview from 1999 mentions Atari and Coleco as the two strongest competitors in the video game business (by late 1979, I presume). The company filed for bankruptcy in 1983, at a time he references to the TV game business ceased to exist, and it basically took 10 years before it was going again. He says Nintendo was years later, which is funny because they did release the Famicom in Japan the very same year (though it took a year or so before it really started to get going).

http://www.nausicaa.net/~lgreenf/apfpage.htm

Edited by carlsson
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In north america the NES didn't make an impact until 1986/87. That's several years after apf went under. From the interview it sounds like apf was the third largest pong manufacturer in the 1970s. Where's the fourth largest coming from? They did sell lots of calculators in the 1970s and employed 300 people. Myself, I've never heard of them.

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Yeah, but 1983 - 1986 is a span of 3-4 years, not 10 years. The reference to the 4th largest electronics manufacturer came from my Swedish speaking advertisement for the APF Imagination Machine posted above, the reseller using it as a marketing argument that APF would be the 4th largest electronics industry in the USA, subconsciously understood to include all forms of electronics.

 

Now that I've read more about the APF2, it seems to mostly have been vaporware, a computer that never was released? Yet this reseller had prices in large print and even descriptions what it could do. One would assume you have shot the bear before you sell the hide, which makes it interesting if they really marketed the APF2 based on promises, without having the product in their hands.

 

Also the guy who used to work for the reseller and posted the advertisement is a "sleeper" owner of an APF2, to which extent those are rare. At least none of the other collectors in the FB group paid any attention that it was an APF2. I understand a number of so-called prototype machines exist, or perhaps they managed one short production run before they had to pull the plug, something otherwise not documented in the history of the computer?

Edited by carlsson
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Mostly verbatim translation for your enjoyment:

post-5454-0-84559300-1532006932_thumb.jpg

 

By the way, the guy who originally posted the ad wrote that he owns disk drives and controller cards fitting the APF2, so perhaps isn't as out of this worldly as it first might look. Of course I don't know how common or uncommon these bits are, perhaps there are closer to 50 or 100 known APF2 in the world than the 5-10 I first imagined.

Edited by carlsson
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How did you do the translation?

 

The im-2 was shown at ces 1981. It may have gone into production, briefly. As far as I know the differences are superficial, e.g. integrated m-1000. It might have more base ram. Not sure if the disk drive peripherals and other expansions are compatible with the original. I don't see why they wouldn't.

 

Even if the im-2 didn't go into production I wouldn't be surprised if retailers advertised it with pricing. That practice was common in the 1980s.

 

Edit:

The im-2 might be rare like the Intellivision KC. There were only 4000 KC manufactured, very limited retail availability and ultimately recalled.

 

Regarding the apf-im integrated tape drive, apparantly the engineer didn't want to include it but in 1979 marketing insisted.

 

http://hcvgm.org/APF_Imagination_Machine.html

https://www.fastcompany.com/3063298/breaking-the-status-quo/ed-smith-and-the-imagination-machine-the-untold-story-of-a-black-vid

Edited by mr_me
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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...

Question to MP1000 owners who know how to open the thing up or might otherwise know - can someone check the rating on capacitor C45 for me? The one on my unit has kind of exploded so all that can be made out on it is the text "Z5V"; the diagram schematics say it's ".05" but doesn't list the rating (uf, pf, etc.) if anyone has that information let me know ASAP so I can get that swapped out.

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I just picked up an MP1000! Kevtris, I'd love it if you could post the materials you mentioned regarding an A/V mod.

 

I found it again. The datasheet for the video chip (a MC6847) has the schematic for getting composite video out. It's here:

 

http://bitsavers.org/components/motorola/_dataBooks/1983_8-Bit_Microprocessor_and_Peripheral_Data.pdf

 

It is on page 524 of the PDF (3-480 in the databook). The video chip is an MC6847. They use the video modulator chip to generate the composite. Fortunately, that chip is right on the pcb (MC1372) so you do not need to buy it. I removed all the parts connected to pins 8, 10, 12, 13, and 14 of that chip, and then used the holes from the removed parts to build the circuit they show. They use a 1N3064 diode, but you can use a 1N4148 or similar signal diode instead. They show a 2N4401/4403 which is pretty common (and the two transistors I tend to use for NPN/PNP respectively), but any small signal transistors should work, such as the 2N3904/3906 or other similar TO-92 transistors.

 

What they are doing is disabling the RF portion of the MC1372, so that you get baseband video out of it, instead of the usual channel 3/4 stuff. The datasheet for the MC1372 is here for reference:

 

https://console5.com/techwiki/images/f/f8/MC1372.pdf

 

If you still have issues I can take pictures of my mod, but I just followed the schematic they list in the datasheet for the MC6847 video chip.

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  • 4 months later...

I came across one of these at a Doc's used game store like 7 years ago for maybe $120 or $130 and the owner told me about some cool games where you could squares that are rotating in circles and somehow made it seem very interesting. I spent the last week or so going through Youtube videos on all manner of retro consoles like Channel F, Astrocade, Arcadia 2001, Coleco Telstar, Coleco Gemini, etc. I thought APF sounded familiar when I saw that on Wikipedia but was only led to APF TV Fun which didn't have that game. Finally came across John Hancock's video on APF MP1000 and found it from there.

 

Anyway, who wants to sell or trade or do a combination for one? I have a Vectrex homebrew called Sundance that is worth over $100, Diner for Intellivision, bunch of boxed Intellivision commons, Tempest 3000 for Nuon, and some other cool stuff.

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  • 6 months later...
  • 1 month later...
24 minutes ago, ubersaurus said:

Finally popped open my MP1000 controller to fix up the bad buttons, but I also discovered that, for whatever reason, the joystick is missing the little silver contact pads. Anyone know where I can source replacements?

are you sure they didn't slip somewhere in the  controller, they are tricky little things.

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