75-841: Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress , released on August 24, 1982, for the Apple II ( USCO # PA-317-502), is the second role-playing video game in the Ultima series, and the second installment in Ultima's "Age of Darkness" trilogy. It is also the only official Ultima game published by Sierra On-Line . Conflict with Sierra over royalties for the IBM port of this game led the series creator Richard Garriott to start his own company, Origin Systems . The plot of Ultima II revolves around
150-544: A "fascinating" world. It concluded that the game was "unique and its storyline is original". PC Magazine gave Ultima II 15.5 points out of 18, also praising the game's "great big wonderful world". Computer Games magazine reviewed the IBM PC conversion, calling it "engrossing and enjoyable." Patricia Fitzgibbons reviewed the Macintosh version of the game for Computer Gaming World , and stated that "Although Ultima II
225-757: A 16-bit processor, the Apple II GS , was added in 1986. It remained compatible with earlier Apple II models, but the II GS has more in common with mid-1980s systems like the Atari ST , Amiga , and Acorn Archimedes . Despite the introduction of the Motorola 68000 -based Macintosh in 1984, the Apple II series still reportedly accounted for 85% of the company's hardware sales in the first quarter of fiscal 1985. Apple continued to sell Apple II systems alongside
300-555: A DOS, and with Wozniak inexperienced in operating system design, Jobs approached Shepardson Microsystems with the project. On April 10, 1978, Apple signed a contract for $ 13,000 with Shepardson to develop the DOS. Even after disk drives made the cassette tape interfaces obsolete they were still used by enthusiasts as simple one-bit audio input-output ports. Ham radio operators used the cassette input to receive slow scan TV (single frame images). A commercial speech recognition Blackjack program
375-517: A breakout cable which connected to the back of the card, the user could attach up to two UniDisk or Apple 5.25 Drives , up to one UniDisk 3.5 drive , and a DE-9 Apple II joystick. Many of the LC's built-in Macintosh peripherals could also be "borrowed" by the card when in Apple II mode, including extra RAM, the Mac's internal 3.5-inch floppy drives, AppleTalk networking, any ProDOS-formatted hard disk partitions,
450-501: A built-in BASIC programming language. The motherboard holds eight expansion slots and an array of random access memory (RAM) sockets that can hold up to 48 kilobytes . Over the course of the Apple II series' life, an enormous amount of first- and third-party hardware was made available to extend the capabilities of the machine. The IIc was designed as a compact, portable unit, not intended to be disassembled, and cannot use most of
525-563: A built-in disk controller that could control external drives, composite video (NTSC or PAL), serial interfaces for modem and printer, and a port usable by either a joystick or mouse. Unlike previous Apple II models, the IIc had no internal expansion slots at all. Two different monochrome LC displays were sold for use with the IIc's video expansion port, although both were short-lived due to high cost and poor legibility. The IIc had an external power supply that converted AC power to 15 V DC, though
600-446: A built-in music synthesizer that far exceeded any other home computer. The Apple II GS evolved the platform while still maintaining near-complete backward compatibility. Its Mega II chip contains the functional equivalent of an entire Apple IIe computer (sans processor). This, combined with the 65816's ability to execute 65C02 code directly, provides full support for legacy software, while also supporting 16-bit software running under
675-412: A much smaller box and a lighter weight map. Despite reservations of Richard Garriott and Chuck Bueche , the original Apple II version of the game was copy-protected using Sierra's new Spiradisc system. The original Apple Ultima II received an audiovisual upgrade in 1989, bringing its graphics up to date with more recent games in the series much as was done with Ultima I . This "enhanced" version
750-532: A multitude of programs developed under the CP/M operating system, including the dBase II database and the WordStar word processor. There was also a third-party 6809 card that would allow OS-9 Level One to be run. Third-party sound cards greatly improved audio capabilities, allowing simple music synthesis and text-to-speech functions. Eventually, Apple II accelerator cards were created to double or quadruple
825-791: A new OS. The OS eventually included a Macintosh-like graphical Finder for managing disks and files and opening documents and applications, along with desk accessories . Later, the II GS gained the ability to read and write Macintosh disks and, through third-party software, a multitasking Unix-like shell and TrueType font support. The GS includes a 32-voice Ensoniq 5503 DOC sample-based sound synthesizer chip with 64 KB dedicated RAM, 256 KB (or later 1.125 MB) of standard RAM, built-in peripheral ports (switchable between IIe-style card slots and IIc-style onboard controllers for disk drives, mouse, RGB video, and serial devices) and, built-in AppleTalk networking. The final Apple II model
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#1732798761849900-453: A time, by turning them over and notching a hole for the write protect sensor. The first disk operating systems for the Apple II were DOS 3.1 and DOS 3.2, which stored 113.75 KB on each disk, organized into 35 tracks of 13 256-byte sectors each. After about two years, DOS 3.3 was introduced, storing 140 KB thanks to a minor firmware change on the disk controller that allowed it to store 16 sectors per track. (This upgrade
975-518: Is a series of microcomputers manufactured by Apple Computer, Inc. from 1977 to 1993. The first Apple II model , that gave the series its name, was designed by Steve Wozniak , and was first sold on June 10, 1977. Its success led to it being followed by the Apple II Plus , Apple IIe , Apple IIc , and Apple IIc Plus , with the 1983 IIe being the most popular. The name is trademarked with square brackets as Apple ][ , then, beginning with
1050-468: Is an exciting – even indispensable – addition to any Mac owner's game library, this version unfortunately contains a number of atrocious misspellings ("paralized," "caugh") and bugs". Ultima II sold over 50,000 copies by November 1985, and nearly 100,000 copies by 1990. It was nominated for "Best Adventure Game for Home Computer" at the 1983 Origins Game Fair , losing to Wizardry II: The Knight of Diamonds . Apple II Apple II ("apple two ")
1125-425: Is necessary to complete the game, suggesting that additional scenarios would be added leading up to an "Ultimate" quest. In 1991 and 1993 the magazine's Scorpia called it "a good sequel to the original game". K-Power gave the game 7 points out of 10. The magazine described it as "an animated graphic adventure game " and stated that Ultima II "is more sophisticated and has a quicker pace" than its predecessor, with
1200-466: Is set on the fictional land of Sosaria, Ultima II borrowed characters and the story of Ultima I , but relocated them to Earth. Garriott explained from a narrative perspective, Earth needed to be used as a basis for comparison due to the time travel element. Later games in the Ultima series ret-conned this, and assumed that Ultima II actually happened on Sosaria, not Earth, to create a continuity among
1275-607: The Apple II J-Plus (Japan). In these models, Apple made the necessary hardware, software and firmware changes in order to comply to standards outside of the US. The Apple II Plus was followed in 1983 by the Apple IIe, a cost-reduced yet more powerful machine that used newer chips to reduce the component count and add new features, such as the display of upper and lowercase letters and a standard 64 KB of RAM. The IIe RAM
1350-528: The Color Graphics Adapter and PC speaker sound. It uses the CPU for timing, and it will run too fast on anything except an 8088 . It is prone to generating divide by zero errors and crashing . The original contract between Garriott and Sierra On-Line didn't include an IBM PC edition, because Garriott considered this system "cumbersome, expensive and underpowered"; he later was disappointed by
1425-541: The Apple II could boot into the CP/M operating system and run WordStar , dBase II , and other CP/M software. With the release of MousePaint in 1984 and the Apple II GS in 1986, the platform took on the look of the Macintosh user interface, including a mouse. Much commercial Apple II software shipped on self-booting disks and does not use standard DOS disk formats. This discouraged the copying or modifying of
1500-690: The Apple II series looked similar, featuring much clean white space and showing the Apple rainbow logo prominently. For several years up until the late 1980s, Apple used the Motter Tektura font for packaging, until changing to the Apple Garamond font. Apple ran the first advertisement for the Apple II, a two-page spread ad titled "Introducing Apple II", in BYTE in July 1977. The first brochure,
1575-642: The Apple logo on the casing was represented using rainbow stripes, which remained a part of Apple's corporate logo until early 1998. The earliest Apple IIs were assembled in Silicon Valley , and later in Texas; printed circuit boards were manufactured in Ireland and Singapore . An external 5 + 1 ⁄ 4 -inch floppy disk drive, the Disk II , attached via a controller card that plugged into one of
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#17327987618491650-451: The Atari's advanced features. The C64 port was apparently released before the programmer (credited only as "Bobbit") could finish. As a consequence, it is missing some gameplay elements and also has a simplified title screen with text characters instead of the dragon graphic on other versions. The IBM PC version of Ultima II runs under MS-DOS compatible operating systems and supports only
1725-524: The Disk II became available in 1978, tape-based Apple II software essentially disappeared from the market. The initial price of the Disk II drive and controller was US$ 595, although a $ 100 off coupon was available through the Apple newsletter "Contact". The controller could handle two drives and a second drive (without controller) retailed for $ 495. The Disk II single-sided floppy drive used 5.25-inch floppy disks ; double-sided disks could be used, one side at
1800-658: The IIc itself will accept between 12 V and 17 V DC, allowing third parties to offer battery packs and automobile power adapters that connected in place of the supplied AC adapter. The Apple II GS , released on September 15, 1986, is the penultimate and most advanced model in the Apple II series, and a radical departure from prior models. It uses a 16-bit microprocessor, the 65C816 operating at 2.8 MHz with 24-bit addressing, allowing expansion up to 8 MB of RAM. The graphics are significantly improved, with 4096 colors and new modes with resolutions of 320×200 and 640×400. The audio capabilities are vastly improved, with
1875-529: The IIe, as Apple // . The Apple II was a major advancement over its predecessor, the Apple I , in terms of ease of use, features, and expandability. It became one of several recognizable and successful computers during the 1980s and early 1990s, although this was mainly limited to the US. It was aggressively marketed through volume discounts and manufacturing arrangements to educational institutions, which made it
1950-608: The Macintosh until terminating the II GS in December 1992 and the IIe in November 1993. The last II-series Apple in production, the IIe card for Macintoshes , was discontinued on October 15, 1993; having been one of the longest running mass-produced home computer series, the total Apple II sales of all of its models during its 16-year production run were about 6 million units (including about 1.25 million Apple II GS models) with
2025-710: The Platinum IIe and II GS . Unlike the IIe IIc and II GS , the IIc Plus came only in one version (American) and was not officially sold anywhere outside the US. The Apple IIc Plus ceased production in 1990, with its two-year production run being the shortest of all the Apple II computers. Although not an extension of the Apple II line, in 1990 the Apple IIe Card, an expansion card for the Macintosh LC ,
2100-589: The Solar System to defeat her evil plot. The young Minax survived her mentor's and lover's death at the hands of the Stranger (in Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness ) and went into hiding. Several years later, Minax got older and very powerful, more so than Mondain once was. Minax wanted to avenge the death of her lover, so she used the time doors created by Mondain's defeat to travel to
2175-544: The Stranger starting his quest to defeat Minax. Minax's castle, named Shadow Guard, can only be reached through time doors (similar to moongates in the later games); even then an enchanted ring is required to pass unhurt through the force fields inside. The hero hunts down the sorceress to the Time of Legends, pursues her as she teleports throughout the castle, and destroys her with the quicksword Enilno. Even though Ultima I
2250-426: The Time of Legends, a place located at the origin of times. From there, she sent her evil minions to all the different time eras; she also used her dark powers to disturb the fabric of time and influence men, who ultimately destroyed each other in the far future, nearly wiping out humanity. Lord British called for a hero to crush Minax's evil plans. The Stranger once again answered British's call. The game begins with
2325-550: The author of the popular Apple II arcade game Apple-Oids . Ultima II was the first game in the series to include a cloth map inside the box, which would become a staple of the franchise. This map, which illustrated how the time doors were linked, was inspired by the one seen in the film Time Bandits , as were the time doors themselves. California Pacific Computer , which published Garriott's first two games, had financial difficulties and did not pay full royalties; when other publishers approached him Garriott insisted on including
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2400-568: The computer's expansion slots (usually slot 6), was used for data storage and retrieval to replace cassettes. The Disk II interface, created by Steve Wozniak , was regarded as an engineering masterpiece for its economy of electronic components. Rather than having a dedicated sound-synthesis chip, the Apple II had a toggle circuit that could only emit a click through a built-in speaker; all other sounds (including two, three and, eventually, four-voice music and playback of audio samples and speech synthesis) were generated entirely by software that clicked
2475-716: The computer's speed. Rod Holt designed the Apple II's power supply. He employed a switched-mode power supply design, which was far smaller and generated less unwanted heat than the linear power supply some other home computers used. The original Apple II was discontinued at the start of 1981, superseded by the Apple II+ . The Apple II Plus, introduced in June 1979, included the Applesoft BASIC programming language in ROM. This Microsoft -authored dialect of BASIC, which
2550-405: The contract terms for this port and started thinking about starting his own company. In May 1985, Sierra released a port of Ultima II for the Macintosh 128K / 512K . Along with Ultima III , this would be the only of the classic Ultima games available for the Macintosh family. The game is compatible with Mac OS versions up to System 6 and will run on System 7.5 with a patch. The Atari ST port
2625-465: The dawn of civilization"), A.D. (1990), and the Aftermath (after 2112). The player also has to travel to space, where all the planets in the Solar System can be visited. From the game's story, the player learns that the lover of the dark wizard Mondain , the enchantress Minax , is threatening Earth through disturbances in the space-time continuum. The player must guide a hero through time and
2700-504: The end of the rail – and read and execute code from sector 0. The code contained in there would then pull in the rest of the operating system. DOS stored the disk's directory on track 17, smack in the middle of the 35-track disks, in order to reduce the average seek time to the frequently used directory track. The directory was fixed in size and could hold a maximum of 105 files. Subdirectories were not supported. Most game publishers did not include DOS on their floppy disks, since they needed
2775-461: The evil enchantress Minax, taking over the world and exacting revenge on the player for the player's defeat of Mondain in Ultima . The player travels through time to acquire the means to defeat Minax and restore the world to peace. Ultima II has a larger game world than Ultima I , and hosts advances in graphics and in gameplay. The gameplay is very similar to the previous game in the series, Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness . The scope of
2850-419: The expansion hardware sold for the other machines in the series. The original Apple II has the operating system in ROM along with a BASIC variant called Integer BASIC . Apple eventually released Applesoft BASIC , a more advanced variant of the language which users can run instead of Integer BASIC. The Apple II series eventually supported over 1,500 software programs. When the Disk II floppy disk drive
2925-675: The features of the later model Apple IIc ) and the Apple IIe Platinum (a modernized case color to match other Apple products of the era, along with the addition of a numeric keypad ). Some of the feature of the IIe were carried over from the less successful Apple III , among them the ProDOS operating system. The Apple IIc was released in April 1984, billed as a portable Apple II because it could be easily carried due to its size and carrying handle, which could be flipped down to prop
3000-639: The first computer in widespread use in American secondary schools, displacing the early leader Commodore PET . The effort to develop educational and business software for the Apple II, including the 1979 release of the popular VisiCalc spreadsheet , made the computer especially popular with business users and families. The Apple II computers are based on the 6502 8-bit processor and can display text and two resolutions of color graphics. A software-controlled speaker provides one channel of low-fidelity audio. A model with more advanced graphics and sound and
3075-493: The game is bigger, in that there are several more places to explore, even though some of them (like most of the Solar System planets and the dungeons and towers) are not required to complete the game. In the game, the player has to travel to several different time periods of Earth, using time doors. The periods are the Time of Legends (a mythological period), Pangea (about 300 to 250 million years ago), B.C. (1423, "before
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3150-462: The games. Ultima II was Garriott's first program that he wrote completely in assembly language instead of interpreted BASIC . Playing speed and reaction time were vastly improved over the original release of Ultima I . Since Garriott was attending the University of Texas at the time it took him almost two years to create Ultima II , including learning assembly in one month from Tom Luhrs,
3225-571: The lines of the Commodore Datasette was never produced; Apple recommended using the Panasonic RQ309 in some of its early printed documentation. The uses of common consumer cassette recorders and a standard video monitor or television set (with a third-party RF modulator ) made the total cost of owning an Apple II less expensive and helped contribute to the Apple II's success. Cassette storage may have been inexpensive, but it
3300-490: The machine up into a typing position. Unlike modern portables , it lacked a built-in display and battery. It was the first of three Apple II models to be made in the Snow White design language , and the only one that used its unique creamy off-white color. The Apple IIc was the first Apple II to use the 65C02 low-power variant of the 6502 processor, and featured a built-in 5.25-inch floppy drive and 128 KB RAM, with
3375-417: The map for "Planet X" is intact and the game is still winnable. Modern (too fast) computers also generate a divide by zero error when attempting to run the game. These issues are addressed with fan patches created by Voyager Dragon, a fan of the series, and are available on his website The Exodus Project . The game is known to run without errors and at an acceptable speed in a DOSBox environment, provided
3450-410: The map. Sierra On-Line agreed and provided Garriott, who had left the university, with technical assistance as he developed his first major assembly language project. Two versions of this map were produced. The first version is of a heavier and thicker material. This map can be found in the large boxed (8"x11") Apple II and Atari 8-bit versions of the game. Later production runs of the game featured
3525-437: The memory it occupied more than its capabilities; instead, they often wrote their own boot loaders and read-only file systems. This also served to discourage "crackers" from snooping around in the game's copy-protection code, since the data on the disk was not in files that could be accessed easily. Apple-Oids Apple-Oids (also written as Apple-oids ) is a clone of Atari, Inc. 's Asteroids arcade video game. It
3600-430: The missing map files are present. Ultima II was the first game in the series officially ported to platforms other than the Apple II. The Atari 8-bit version was released in late 1983, several months after the Apple original. The game is mostly a direct port from the Apple II using the computer's high resolution graphics (which works in a similar manner to the Apple II's HGR mode) but does not otherwise take advantage of
3675-629: The original II in terms of electronic functionality. There were small differences in the physical appearance and keyboard. RAM prices fell during 1980–81 and all II+ machines came from the factory with a full 48 KB of memory already installed. After the success of the first Apple II in the United States, Apple expanded its market to include Europe, Australia and the Far East in 1979, with the Apple II Europlus (Europe, Australia) and
3750-404: The peak occurring in 1983 when 1 million were sold. Unlike preceding home microcomputers, the Apple II was sold as a finished consumer appliance rather than as a kit (unassembled or preassembled). Apple marketed the Apple II as a durable product, including a 1981 ad in which an Apple II survived a fire started when a cat belonging to one early user knocked over a lamp. All the machines in
3825-464: The rounded "a" of the logotype echoed the "bite" in the logo. This logo was developed simultaneously with an advertisement and a brochure; the latter being produced for distribution initially at the first West Coast Computer Faire . Since the original Apple II, Apple has paid high attention to its quality of packaging, partly because of Steve Jobs ' personal preferences and opinions on packaging and final product appearance. All of Apple's packaging for
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#17327987618493900-434: The scope of most fantasy or adventure games". The magazine concluded that "Lord British has another, greater hit on his hands ... the ultimate in real-time D&D type fantasy games for the micro". Computer Gaming World in 1983 gave Ultima II a positive review, noting many improvements over its predecessor, particularly in the amount of detail. The magazine praised the large size of the game world, even though little of it
3975-407: The screen, with NTSC composite video output suitable for display on a TV monitor, or on a regular TV set by way of a separate RF modulator . The original retail price of the computer was US$ 1,298 (equivalent to $ 6,500 in 2023) (with 4 KB of RAM) and US$ 2,638 (equivalent to $ 13,300 in 2023) (with the maximum 48 KB of RAM). To reflect the computer's color graphics capability,
4050-526: The serial ports, mouse, and real-time clock. The IIe card could not, however, run software intended for the 16-bit Apple II GS . Mike Markkula , a retired Intel marketing manager, provided the early critical funding for Apple Computer. From 1977 to 1981, Apple used the Regis McKenna agency for its advertisements and marketing. In 1981, Chiat-Day acquired Regis McKenna's advertising operations and Apple used Chiat-Day. At Regis McKenna Advertising,
4125-437: The series, except the IIc, share similar overall design elements. The plastic case was designed to look more like a home appliance than a piece of electronic equipment, and the case can be opened without the use of tools. All models in the Apple II series have a built-in keyboard, with the exception of the II GS which has a separate keyboard. Apple IIs have color and high-resolution graphics modes , sound capabilities and
4200-641: The software on the disks, and improved loading speed. The first Apple II computers went on sale on June 10, 1977 with a MOS Technology 6502 (later Synertek ) microprocessor running at 1.023 MHz , 4 KB of RAM , an audio cassette interface for loading programs and storing data, and the Integer BASIC programming language built into the ROMs . The video controller displayed 40 columns by 24 lines of monochrome, upper-case-only (the original character set matches ASCII characters 0x20 to 0x5F) text on
4275-530: The speaker at just the right times. The Apple II's multiple expansion slots permitted a wide variety of third-party devices, including Apple II peripheral cards such as serial controllers , display controllers, memory boards, hard disks, networking components, and real-time clocks . There were plug-in expansion cards – such as the Z-80 SoftCard – that permitted the Apple to use the Z80 processor and run
4350-462: The team assigned to launch the Apple II consisted of Rob Janoff , art director, Chip Schafer, copywriter and Bill Kelley, account executive. Janoff came up with the Apple logo with a bite out of it. The design was originally an olive green with matching company logotype all in lowercase. Steve Jobs insisted on promoting the color capability of the Apple II by putting rainbow stripes on the Apple logo. In its letterhead and business card implementation,
4425-509: Was also slow and unreliable. The Apple II's lack of a disk drive was "a glaring weakness" in what was otherwise intended to be a polished, professional product. Recognizing that the II needed a disk drive to be taken seriously, Apple set out to develop a disk drive and a DOS to run it. Wozniak spent the 1977 Christmas holidays designing a disk controller that reduced the number of chips used by a factor of 10 compared to existing controllers. Still lacking
4500-508: Was available, after some user-specific voice training it would recognize simple commands (Hit, stand). Bob Bishop's "Music Kaleidoscope" was a simple program that monitored the cassette input port and based on zero-crossings created color patterns on the screen, a predecessor to current audio visualization plug-ins for media players. Music Kaleidoscope was especially popular on projection TV sets in dance halls. Apple and many third-party developers made software available on tape at first, but after
4575-431: Was configured as if it were a 48 KB Apple II Plus with a language card. The machine had no slot 0, but instead had an auxiliary slot that could accept a 1 KB memory card to enable the 80-column display. This card contained only RAM; the hardware and firmware for the 80-column display was built into the Apple IIe. An "extended 80-column card" with more memory increased the machine's RAM to 128 KB. The Apple IIe
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#17327987618494650-491: Was entitled "Simplicity" and the copy in both the ad and brochure pioneered "demystifying" language intended to make the new idea of a home computer more "personal." The Apple II introduction ad was later run in the September 1977 issue of Scientific American . Apple later aired eight television commercials for the Apple II GS , emphasizing its benefits to education and students, along with some print ads. The Apple II
4725-474: Was frequently cloned, both in the United States and abroad, in a similar way to the IBM PC. According to some sources (see below), more than 190 different models of Apple II clones were manufactured. Most could not be legally imported into the United States. Apple sued and sought criminal charges against clone makers in more than a dozen countries. Originally the Apple II used Compact Cassette tapes for program and data storage. A dedicated tape recorder along
4800-522: Was one of the earliest commercially released games for the system, coming out shortly after the computer's June 1985 launch. It uses mostly simple block graphics with little enhancement for the ST's hardware capabilities and runs from within TOS, not a self-booting disk as most Atari ST games do. Softline in 1983 stated that Ultima II "continues the interplanetary saga with a creative programming flair far beyond
4875-671: Was only available as part of the Ultima Trilogy I-II-III box set released that year and discontinued only months later. (The Commodore and IBM versions of the Ultima Trilogy include the original, unenhanced versions of the game for their respective platforms.) The game was re-released several times later in CD-ROM PC compilations, including 1998's Ultima Collection . All these re-releases are missing necessary map files for most planets other than Earth; however,
4950-473: Was possible for software developers to create a DOS 3.2 disk which would also boot on a system with DOS 3.3 firmware. Later, double-sided drives, with heads to read both sides of the disk, became available from third-party companies. (Apple only produced double-sided 5.25-inch disks for the Lisa 1 computer). On a DOS 3.x disk, tracks 0, 1, and most of track 2 were reserved to store the operating system. (It
5025-420: Was possible, with a special utility, to reclaim most of this space for data if a disk did not need to be bootable.) A short ROM program on the disk controller had the ability to seek to track zero – which it did without regard for the read/write head's current position, resulting in the characteristic "chattering" sound of a Disk II boot, which was the read/write head hitting the rubber stop block at
5100-502: Was previously available as an upgrade, supported floating-point arithmetic, and became the standard BASIC dialect on the Apple II series (though it ran at a noticeably slower speed than Steve Wozniak's Integer BASIC). Except for improved graphics and disk-booting support in the ROM, and the removal of the 2k 6502 assembler to make room for the floating point BASIC, the II+ was otherwise identical to
5175-417: Was released in 1978, a new operating system, Apple DOS , was commissioned from Shepardson Microsystems and developed by Paul Laughton, adding support for the disk drive. The final and most popular version of this software was Apple DOS 3.3. Apple DOS was superseded by ProDOS , which supported a hierarchical file-system and larger storage devices. With an optional third-party Z80 -based expansion card ,
5250-477: Was released. Essentially a miniaturized Apple IIe computer on a card (using the Mega II chip from the Apple II GS ), it allowed the Macintosh to run 8-bit Apple IIe software through hardware emulation , with an option to run at roughly double the speed of the original IIe (about 1.8 MHz). However, the video output was emulated in software, and, depending on how much of the screen the currently running program
5325-491: Was the Apple IIc Plus introduced in 1988. It was the same size and shape as the IIc that came before it, but the 5.25-inch floppy drive had been replaced with a 3 + 1 ⁄ 2 -inch drive, the power supply was moved inside the case, and the processor was a fast 4 MHz 65C02 processor that actually ran 8-bit Apple II software faster than the II GS . The IIc Plus also featured a new keyboard layout that matched
5400-486: Was the most popular machine in the Apple II series. It has the distinction of being the longest-lived Apple computer of all time—it was manufactured and sold with only minor changes for nearly 11 years. The IIe was the last Apple II model to be sold, and was discontinued in November 1993. During its lifespan two variations were introduced: the Apple IIe Enhanced (four replacement chips to give it some of
5475-524: Was trying to update in a single frame, performance could be much slower compared to a real IIe. This is due to the fact that writes from the 65C02 on the IIe Card to video memory were caught by the additional hardware on the card, so the video emulation software running on the Macintosh side could process that write and update the video display. But, while the Macintosh was processing video updates, execution of Apple II code would be temporarily halted. With
5550-470: Was user-installable as two PROMs on older controllers.) After the release of DOS 3.3, the user community discontinued use of DOS 3.2 except for running legacy software. Programs that required DOS 3.2 were fairly rare; however, as DOS 3.3 was not a major architectural change aside from the number of sectors per track, a program called MUFFIN was provided with DOS 3.3 to allow users to copy files from DOS 3.2 disks to DOS 3.3 disks. It
5625-658: Was written by Tom Luhrs for the Apple II and published by California Pacific Computer Company in 1980. The asteroids in Apple-oids are in the shape of apples. The ship is rotated with the paddle knob and propelled forward with the paddle button. Firing is done via the keyboard, with the asterisk key. Pressing any other key warps the ship to a random location—a.k.a. hyperspace. Forrest Johnson reviewed Apple-Oids in The Space Gamer No. 42. Johnson commented that "I have never figured out why anyone would send
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