How the Apple ][ Works! 

I just wanted to let everyone know the Commander X16 is now available for pre-order! texelec.com/product/cx16-preorder/

The year I graduated high school they were replacing all the IIe systems in the computer "lab". My computer teacher was AWESOME, and she called me into her office on the last day. They were apparently just going to junk most of them, so she saved me one and gave it to me. I still have it, too, and it still works just fine. Thanks Mrs. L.

Just what I needed, a new 8 bit guy video

My first 'real' job in college back in the 80s was programming Apple II educational software. The program I was writing was for teaching geometry, and I needed to have theta, sigma, and other greek letters. We generated all the text and graphics in hi-res monochrome mode using a little assembly language subroutine and character map, and I remember designing my own characters and overwriting the bitmaps of characters I didn't need for geometry, like the $. This video doesn't mention the use of graphics sprites on the Apple II, which I needed to use in that job as well. They were truly weird little data structures useful for moving a little graphic item around on the screen. Designing a sprite was definitely a black art, involving graph paper, a lot of binary to hex fiddling, and so forth. If any of you used a program called "Perimeter, Area, and Volume" on an Apple II, I wrote it!

I remember when my dad brought home our family's first computer, at Apple IIe. I think I was 6 or 7 years old. Looking back, and thinking about it, I realize it is THAT moment that had the biggest influence on my life. Its hard to imagine, butI wouldnt be who I am today, if that moment didnt happen.

It's been said many times before, but Woz's "annus mirabilis" from March 1975 to April 1977 when at just 26yo, he designed, implemented and launched the hardware, kernel, sound and color output as well as a BASIC interpreter (and much more) for the Apple I and II is one of history's greatest technological achievements. It was a tour de force of talent which is astounding to this day.

These systems really did last longer than anyone would have thought in public schools. I can remember in 2002 I was in second grade and we had two Apple ][e systems in class for educational games still. Heck even through third grade, 2003, I regularly saw LC II and III systems in labs along with iMacs

These documentary episodes are some of my favorite things on RU-vid. They’re so well done!

Thanks for taking us down memory lane. Facinating as always. I remember that we used some model of the Apple II in the middle school I attended in the mid 1980's, where we would use "Sprite Logo" to teach us some programming.

PR#5 (or more commonly PR#6) really does mean, printer in slot 5/6. The PR# command DOES NOT "just run the ROM" code in the specified slot, as you said. Rather it directs print output to the card in the specified slot, using the code on that card to run whatever printer the card was intended to support. However, because the very next thing that the computer does is output a newline and prompt, the redirected output is sent to whatever ROM code is in the relevant slot, which happens to be the disk book code if that slot holds a disk controller card rather than a printer. Furthermore, the exact same thing happens for IN#6 which is "input from slot 6". The next thing the BASIC does after printing the newline and prompt is go look for keyboard input - in this case, from whatever input device is in slot 6, using the ROM on that card. Once again, this will be intercepted by the disk controller card and thus both character input and output requests for a disk controller result in running the disk boot code.

Always a great day when The 8-Bit Guy uploads! Keep up the great work, David!

I can't believe anyone had the patience to deal with all this! I remember learning to program the VGA card at a low level and thinking - this is insane. Little did I know! :)

As a young adult, I bought an Apple //e in 1983. I used it primarily for my own programming projects, and I bought AppleWorks, which I used for word processing. Computer games were never my thing. I came within an inch of buying a Commodore 64, but the crisp 80 column text I could get on the Apple //e carried the day. I quickly migrated to assembly language for almost all my programming, so I retain great affection for the 6502 to this day. You can make more music than you might think on that Apple 2 speaker. I wrote a program that could play 3 part harmony, e.g., one of Bach's three part inventions. Of course, the computer is completely occupied while it plays - no spare cycles whatsoever. :)

My mom bought an Apple //e with a speeddemon card, which fit in the special slot, raised the system memory to 512K and doubled the system speed. She used it for bookkeeping but I got to use it at other times. Forgetting to disable the speeddemon card when playing games was a real trip. I think I still have that thing stored somewhere. I'm sure it needs recapping by now...

As a fellow Commodore evangelist, I appreciate this series to finally get the deets on the other side. Would love to see one on the Tandy lines.

The Apple was the high end computer. This video explains a lot. Thanks.

The Apple II was my first exposure to computing at school (or to be more accurate, it was initially a clone of the Apple II, the ITT 2020, with accompanying cassette deck that we could only 'look at' at the end of my 3rd year in secondary school here in the UK!). The real Apple IIs were then purchased (we had 2), with 9" monochrome Hitachi monitors, and 2 disk drives. This was my first real introduction to BASIC, which I instinctively loved.

Can't express how excited I was to see one of your history documentaries drop in my subscriptions! Thanks for all your hard work making computing history accessible

I recall having an Apple II in 1998 in my classroom, there was also a windows 95 pc but the apple II still got plenty of use thanks to its educational software

Our school had Apple IIe computers. In 1982, as a freshman, I took my first computer course and got the programming "bug" quite bad. BASIC was easy - simplistic, actually. I mastered BASIC in about a week. My teacher, seeing this, gave me a 6502 Assembly Language book to keep me busy. My eyes were opened, and I was hooked! It was the most exciting time of my life. I spent a couple of weeks mastering Assembly Language, but my real education was reverse-engineering Bank Street Writer, a disk-copying program, Apple Works and a couple more "big" programs of the day. That was the start of my 40 year programming career and one of the most exciting times of my life. Thank you Woz!!!!

This channel is something I look forward to watching every week, so I hope the next episode won't be delayed. When many people in Comments talk about the episode content that makes me feel I'm with my community and that connects me to the beautiful past, which gives me a beautiful feeling that the community still exists, remembers those days well. Proud to have lived during that time.

Such fond memories of using IIe's and IIGS's back in elementary school in the 90s. Playing old school Oregon Trail, making signs in Print Shop, learning how to type off of some typing program on floppy disk, and so much more. We also had several Mac's some of which even had the IIe card. This video took me right back. Thanks, David!

The Apple IIe was my first computer. My mom and dad bought it at a flea market for 20$ in the mid to late 90s. I would spend hours soon hours tinkering with that thing. FYI man this is my favorite content of yours. I love history and Tech history absolutely hits the sweet spot.

I was in grade school in the mid 90s and we were still using Apple IIe machines at the time. I had a windows 95 machine at home and we still had mostly Apple IIe boxes at school.

I was about 14 when the family bought a ][ plus with 32k RAM. The plus meant it came with Applesoft ROM instead of Integer BASIC. Used a cassette tape recorder for program storage and output to the family TV with RF modulator. Over time, and spending a gradual fortune to bring the RAM to 48k, and then later on adding a 16k RAM card to slot 0 to run PASCAL (or load Integer BASIC to that space). Had a Paper Tiger dot matrix printer. Later getting a floppy disc drive was a luxury. With PASCAL also needed an 80 columns card which made word processing much easier. An entire thesis was typed using Apple ][. Having a CP/M card made it into a different beast running CP/M. Also used to program in 6502 machine language using assembler. If you ever come across a program which drew a Honda Accord (early 80 with the 4 round headlights)sideway with the letter Accord on top, that was my brother and myself's work. Drawing in the HGR2 graphics page using some maths formula plus some brute force plotting.

My elementary school was doing the same thing in the early 2000s with their old fleet of 68k Mac lcs, computer labs all had imacs while the teachers could use the Mac LCs in their classrooms

I remember being in 4th grade in 2004, one of our classrooms STILL had a couple of Apple IIs to that day and we played Oregon Trail on them when all of our work was done.

Much of your content is from before my time, my family didn't get a family computer until Windows 95 was released, but I still really enjoy this. It's well done and interesting to see how far we've come.

Thank you for putting a lot of work in preserving all this important historic information in one great video! I really enjoyed watching it, the balance between completeness and in-depth ness of the topics to cover is perfect in my opinion.

PR# does stand for print, not peripheral, because there is also the IN# command for getting input from a peripheral card. For 80-column cards and disk controllers they both happen to do the same thing, but for parallel and serial cards they redirect the output or the input to the card, respectively.

3:00 I myself had never personally known anyone with an Apple in my early teens, not til my later teens did I touch an Apple and Mac in a science museum. They were considered expensive, high end machines displayed and sold in business and computer stores not typically accessible by youngsters my age at the time. Radio Shack stores were everywhere with TRS80s and stocked with lots of other interesting stuff for me, but Commodore home computers prolifiated in department, toy, and hardware stores (Canadian Tire here), and the schools were equipped with PETs.

Great video as always! Just preordered the Commander X-16 with all the bells and whistles. Thank you for everything you’ve done David! I’ve been a long time fan now and appreciate the hard work! Also a fan of your brother’s work and would love to see more of his content as well. In fact, would love to see more Geek Bits some day when you’re all up for it. Cheers!

Can’t wait to see the Apple //c and Apple IIGS videos!!!! 🎉🎉🎉🎉

I was in school exactly 20 years after that yearbook. Brought back some memories for me too. I was on the yearbook team and theres a picture of me from the exact same angle as that kid looking back at the camera while sitting at a terminal.

I was born in 1987 and there were Apple ii's in all my schools up through middle school. I saw them well into the late 90s. MacIntoshes were around too but I distinctly remember taking a typing class on an Apple ii from a cat named Paws!

I didn't realise how long this was until you mentioned it! Very well put together and a surprising amount covered in 40 minutes.

Those where the days when you could easily update your 🍏.

PR# is indeed for print, its pendant is IN# for input. They become important to redirect the console to a terminal card.

The PR# command was intended for output…while it does cause a call to the ROM on the peripheral card, a printer card for instance would change the output “hook” to point to a small subroutine in the card’s ROM, which would then talk to the printer. The standard Apple ROM subroutine for outputting to the text display would thus be redirected to the printer. For the disk controller card, however, its ROM would initiate the boot process instead.

My dad bought a IIe to write his dissertation around the time I was born. I remember messing with those buttons on the upscale monitor. I’m told I also experimented with adding paper clips to innards. I’m sure dad had fun with that surgery. The machine is still around and plays a mean game of Hardball. Can’t wait to show my own kids what computing was like at the onset of pcs.

This episode really was a treat! Extremely interesting. I hope you go through Apple's history like you did Commodore (and as I understand, it just might be the case). These are episodes I watch over and over again.

My elementary school had a bunch of IIGS machines in its computer lab. I hope you make a whole episode on that machine.

The Apple II brings back such great gaming memories. That green monochrome is so memorable. Really great to see you covering these computers!

Excellent retrospective on these astounding and fun machines, sir! Always look forward to seeing your newest videos when they appear. I also look forward to your future installments on others of the Apple line.

This is great stuff! I look forward to the other dedicated videos you mentioned you'd like to make. This information is wildly fascinating and really shows how things evolved from early home computers to what we use today.

I was literally just discussing this computer with a friend of mine in a voice chat less than an hour ago! What excellent timing!

Apple II was the first computer I used in elementary school, we used them as our primary computers until the Macintosh SE in 1989! Our school’s computer lab replaced them with Macs! And we still had the Apple IIGS in certain classrooms until 1996! Because there were programs like the Oregon Trail and some Sierra educational games. They had the longest computer generation support for educational industry!

My friend got an Apple II and our parents never saw us that summer. Ultima II, Wizardry, and remember " The Voice by Muse" great memories. I wish we I kept that computer after he gave it to my about 10 years later. Love this video.

In 1986 the primary school i was at got an Apple 2E with a monitor. It was on a cart and got wheeled around to each classroom on a schedule. The idea was to teach us kids about computers but most of us ended up playing the games on it like Carmen Sandiego. I guess that was somewhat educational.

I love these deep dives into the history of the 8-bits I grew up with! Thanks David!

The IIe keyboard has alps switches (same ones used on the original M0110 macintosh keyboard) so the quality difference makes sense over the original's proprietary leaf spring design. The IIe enhanced has alps clone switches by mitsumi which are also quite good. The 2c+ and 2gs have either orange or salmon alps which is absolutely godly, really great keyboard. Those switches are still very sought after now in the keyboard enthusiast circles.

It warmed my heart to see the shot of Word Munchies. sigh

I really enjoy your documentaries. As well as being highly education, and well explained, they're also very relaxing to watch - thanks!

My first pc (after the KIM-1) was a Rev.0 Apple ][; I think I was among the first customers for it. I used Integer Basic and cassette tape storage and quickly brought the ram up to 48k. (I was working for IBM at the time and my older co-workers couldn't imagine what that large amount of ram was for! Of course when they started years earlier 4k was large and was built with little magnetic donuts and storage used punch cards.) I soon had the disk drives and my monitor was a B/W TV set driven with a 'Supr-Mod' RF adapter that the TV could receive at channel 3 or 4. Being an IBMer I switched to the IBM Pc and PCDOS but I look back fondly at my Apple ][.

Thank you for making these documentaries. It really puts into perspective the technology and limitations of the time. I, as a young software engineer, appreciate this inmemsely

Thank you... Always love seeing these retrospectives. The Apple IIe in my Kindergarten class in 1989 was what started my love affair with computers. Definitely a cornerstone of the Personal Computer era and one of the most quintessential computers of the modern era. Love these historical retrospectives. It is so cool to look back at the systems that built the foundation for what would become (in essence) the basis for my continued existence with the level of detail that you provide. Please keep fighting the good fight!

Grew up with a IIe and IIc thanks so much for the in-depth analysis and commentary!

It was used quite well into the late 90s. I had a teacher during my middle school years that kept 2 Apple II computers in their classroom. Last time I saw them being used was in 2000, before I left for middle school.

We had Apple IIe in my high school in the 80's for computer class. We also had Apple 3, which was rare, but we had few for a class, which might've been for word processing class, and I saw 80 column for the first time, and it was mind blowing. I had C64 at home, and while C64 was far more capable, the Apple had more prestige, and it felt more high quality, and I really liked the beeping sound (while terribly limited), even though C64 had superior SID. Teachers all loved using Print Shop to print posters and banners on the printer. Before getting my C64, I really wanted an Apple, but it was so expensive, and we couldn't afford it. I still fondly remember programming in that low res color mode for my programming class. I wish I still had the code that I had written. Anyway, thanks for reminding me of my fond memory with Apple 2.

Hi David! Thanks for the (very informative) content, as usual! As for the kid of 1980's that's fully into computers - I'k very pleased to get to know another part of my favourite job's history. I'm looking forward for another episodes on Apple III/III, Commodore and PC as well. Many thanks and best regards from Poland!

My grade 6 teacher still used an Apple II in 2005, so cool to see the context of why they used these so long. Love these history videos!

Brings back the memories for sure. I started with IIe in about 8th grade and then moved to IIc sometime in high school with the LCD panel and 800K 3.5" floppy. I made a battery system so I could run portable as well. I can remember a number of road trips in the car using the computer playing games. Then moved over to the 286 PC clone in the late 80's. 🤠👍 Sure wish I still had all that old Apple equipment, but sold it each time to be able to upgrade.

Excellent as always. Thanks for teaching us youngster computer nerds about all this stuff David!

Fascinating walk down memory lane. Thanks!

Much of your content is before my time, my family didn't get a computer until the early 90's with a Commodore 64 and Atari ST, and I was only born many years later, after my family had gotten a Windows XP PC, but I still really enjoy this. It's well done and interesting to see how far we've come.

Great video, thanks a lot. While I was not an Apple fan (what I am today), my life with computers started with the Apple II; the stuff of an ecologist association running a business near my home (near Pont-Aven, France), it was probably the most advance computer a man could get, since us, were only playing with dinosaurs like the first Thomson computers... I have to say, the sound of the drive you show here, I haven't heared it since these days, 1983 or something like that, I was around 10. Great thanks for remember me this, I'm chilling... And thanks too for Explorers, 2 or 3 years later, this movie was my all time favourite (not today of course), along with the Whiz Kids serie. Great episode 8Bit guy ! Greetings from France. Salutations.

The GS is what my elementary school had in the mid 90s in the computer lab that was mainly focused on typing. While I was there, the district started switching over to Windows, first putting a setup on a cart (with a TV on top) in every classroom. I assume the GSes were handed down from the high schools. Interestingly, the gifted program was located at a high school and as such we had our own lab of different Macs from what I used when I was at my elementary school, and the classrooms had a wall of Macs along with multiple Windows stations.

Really enjoy the history episodes, glad to see another installation and look forward to the next one!

I remember the big "features" of the Apple IIe over the Apple II+ was the addition of lower case, plus they had both the ] and [ keys. The Apple II+ had just one of these keys (I forget which one), requiring the use of the CHR$() command to use the other. Oh, and I think they got rid of the Rept key, providing auto key repeat, though this was not as big a deal to us kids, nor was 80 columns.

Man, I love your videos. They got me through the madness of COVID.

That was a GREAT overview of the Apple ][ . Thank you! I'd LOVE to see the other videos you said you could make for the other models mentioned.

Fantastic video sir. Very detailed and I loved seeing and hearing all the junior high school stories

hey i just wanted to say your videos inspired me to buy and restore old computers like the vic 20 and i just wanted to say thanks for the amazing videos and i wish you a happy life

excellent video as always. I didn't have an Apple IIx computer and it's interesting to know the details about those historical machines

Congratulations! I am very excited. Mines preordered and I can’t wait.

Outstanding and thorough history lesson. I enjoyed every minute of it.

I’d love to see a dedicated IIc video. Still my favourite of the Apple II machines.

My school was definitely one of those ones that wound up getting a bunch of the Apple IIs so that was the platform I got my start on as far as PCs go. So neat to see this video explaining how it all worked, I remember seeing the text always had the little bits of purple and green in there, and now I know why! fascinating stuff, for sure. also never knew about the apple keys as joystick buttons, that's a new one on me! Very excited for the eventual IIGS episode as well that computer definitely blew me away when I saw it in school.

Thank you for this!!! Fascinating stuff. Eagerly awaiting your dive into the 2gs, the first computer i ever used and made me fall in love with computers 🥰

What was also amazing is how much functionality could be packed into that tiny 256 byte prom on the cards. Even though you could use up to 2k for the card most used a 256 byte prom because of cost. Also if you study the code on them (some were published in the manuals like the first serial cards) it's interesting to see how the software determined what slot it was in. It would call a subroutine in the monitor rom which just did a RTS. Then it would examine the return address bytes that where pushed onto the processor stack for the JSR to determine what slot it was in so that the code could properly access the correct i/o space. Not only that, the code had to be address independent, branches only no JMP etc... And in some of them if you entered the code in an offset position it was new code that would do different things. Totally amazing. BTW I just opened my Apple II plus time capsule! Super video 8-Bit guy especially the illustrations!

Thank you David for this part of computer history ! The Apple II and the AMIGA are for me the most important computers in this industry and are my favorite ! I had a Apple iic after my Oric Atmos and then I went to the AMIGA. So many great moments !!!!! I still have all of them with a lot of other old 8-bits computers !!!

Thank you David for this very in deep episode, I had learn quite unknown details as always.

My school had Apples from the early 80's until I graduated in 95. By that time they were bringing Macs into the high school and the II's and IIe's were moved into the Kindergarten rooms and such. The thing about these units they were built like rigged beasts, and easy to use. Pop in your floppy disk and turn it on, and that was it. Another thing that made the II's appealing was they didn't change much. When the IIe came out labs could just order them, and existing software would continue to run without issue. I couldn't imagine the headache using a Commodore platform would have been like. The platform was changing from PET to VIC to C64, and I couldn't imagine trying to teach a classroom of children how to use the wonky disk commands, and slow load times. Great video, and even I learned a few things I didn't know.

The //c+ actually embraced the new hardware color palette before the IIe Enhanced. Hartmutt Eslinger's frogdesign developed the "Snow White" design guidelines for the Macintosh II and the //c+ was the first non-Mac to follow those guidelines. This also includes the phasing out of stamped plating with the rainbow Apple logo with Motter Tektura typeface to the embedded jewel logo with screenprinted Garamond typeface.

As a budding programmer, the Apple II line, with its available high-level languages (especially Pascal), was ideal. It certainly gave me a leg up for AP Computer Science in highschool. It was so instrumental to my education, that even when I replaced it with my first PC (a 386), I refused to get rid of it.

I went to elementary school in the early 1990’s and we had a computer lab back then that was pretty progressive looking back. They used Macintosh computers that had all the latest games and learning games, many I never got to own growing up as a Windows 3.1 and MSDOS user, but loved playing. They also taught us programs on the Mac that allowed us to make sprites and learn how to animate, as well as watched videos on how bits and bytes worked in a computer and how programming and animation worked on them. This was all pretty advanced stuff looking back as a 1-5th grade learning how to type every Wednesday in computer lab. I still remember it fondly and always wondered what kind of Macintosh’s they must have had back in those days. They seemed to be pretty new for the time since they were color monitors with a windows like OS. Edit also the school was Frank Allis Elementary in Madison, WI

Loving these history episodes. Still waiting for long overdue Amiga history series!

The disk controller card did have two PROM chips, but only one was used for the software (Woz thought that 256 bytes was all anyone would need). The other was part of the hardware, implementing a finite state machine to synchronize the incoming bits.

You know what I'd love to see in the future? How you made your Intro animations. Ever since the first one you did for the iBookGuy era, I've always been curious to how you made them, and if they actually play the audio or if you added it in post.

I love this video so much. 8-bit nostalgia always brings me a lot of joy!

That Oregon trail splash screen on an Apple IIe brings back elementary school memories for me! Excellent video.

My mind was blown when I learned that the Commodore 128 nearly outsold *the entire Apple II line-up*, all by itself! I understand why publishers favoured the C64 over the C128, but I’m nonetheless amazed that more C128-specific software didn’t come given that big a customer base!

Yaaaay! And with all due respect to Woz.. definitely one has to be careful with his rememberings. He's made some.. claims. Love him though.

Those Apples were also my childhood computers. I even had an exotic "Blaupunkt Intelligent Monitor" which was an Apple IIe built into a color monitor with 128k of RAM. They only built a couple of it and I got one. And one of my favourite appearances of an Apple II was in the hatch of the series LOST where the magic numbers had to be typed in every day ;-)

Nice video!!! I still have my II+... and the same shoe box full of 5 1/4 disks. I only missed mentioning of Visicalc in the video, considered by many the first "killer" application. Thank you very much for keeping this era alive.

Could this be the start of an Apple series from the 8-Bit Guy? Fingers crossed!

May sound wierd but Apple II have a soviet compatible line of computers

As usual, a fine piece of computer history in a reasonable time budget. Well done, and I'll watch the others hinted at when they are done cooking.

That was very interesting. Thank you for all the work that you put into this video.

You could see the pain in his face admitting that the Apple ][ was advanced for its day compared to the Commodore! Personal growth is a journey