Apple II family

The Apple II, one of the very first personal computers, is widely seen as the founding pioneer and literal grandfather of the personal computer industry of today. As the direct descendant of the Apple I, it evolved from a meager hand-built computer kit intended for hobbyist, to a fully factory assembled machine ready-to-use out of the box most anyone could use. With its elegant case styling and simplicity (requiring just a television set as a display) it represented a computer that for the first time c ...

Including:

• Apple II family - History
• Apple II family - The original Apple II
• Apple II family - The family grows
• Apple II family - Apple II Plus
• Apple II family - Apple IIe
• Apple II family - Apple IIc
• Apple II family - Apple IIGS
• Apple II family - Apple IIc Plus
• Apple II family - Apple IIe Card
• Apple II family - The Final Years
• Apple II family - Clones
• Apple II family - General
• Apple II family - Apple II media
• Apple II family - Different style renditions of the II name
• Apple II family - Life after death
• Apple II family - Industry impact

Read more here: » Apple II family: Encyclopedia - Apple II family

Apple II family - Apple II Plus. The Apple II was eventually superseded by the Apple II Plus, which included the Applesoft BASIC programming language in ROM. This Microsoft-authored dialect of BASIC, which was previously available as an upgrade, supported floating-point arithmetic (albeit at a slower speed than Steve Wozniak's Integer BASIC) and became the standard BASIC dialect on the Apple. The Apple II Plus had a total of 48 kilobytes of RAM, expandable to 64 KB by means of the language card,< ...

See also:

Apple II family, Apple II family - History, Apple II family - The original Apple II, Apple II family - The family grows, Apple II family - Apple II Plus, Apple II family - Apple IIe, Apple II family - Apple IIc, Apple II family - Apple IIGS, Apple II family - Apple IIc Plus, Apple II family - Apple IIe Card, Apple II family - The Final Years, Apple II family - Clones, Apple II family - General, Apple II family - Apple II media, Apple II family - Different style renditions of the II name, Apple II family - Life after death, Apple II family - Industry impact

Read more here: » Apple II family: Encyclopedia II - Apple II family - The family grows

The Apple IIGS was an innovative computer with many improvements over the older Apple IIe and Apple IIc. It used the new Western Design Center 65816 16-bit microprocessor running at 2.8 MHz, which was faster than the 8-bit 6502 and 65C02 processors used in earlier Apple IIs and also allowed the IIGS to use more RAM. It also included enhanced graphics and sound, which led to its name. The graphics of the IIGS were the best of the Apple II series, with new Super High Resolution (SHR) video modes. Th ...

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Apple IIGS, Apple IIGS - Background, Apple IIGS - Hardware features, Apple IIGS - Hardware revisions, Apple IIGS - Graphics modes, Apple IIGS - Audio features, Apple IIGS - Expansion capabilities, Apple IIGS - Development and codenames, Apple IIGS - Influence on later computers, Apple IIGS - Software features, Apple IIGS - 8-bit Apple II compatibility, Apple IIGS - Apple IIGS System Software, Apple IIGS - Multitasking Capability, Apple IIGS - Trivia

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The Macintosh, or Mac, is a line of personal computers designed, developed, manufactured and marketed by Apple Computer that run the Macintosh operating system ("Mac OS"). Named after the McIntosh apple, the original Macintosh was released on January 24, 1984. It was the first commercially successful personal computer to use a graphical user interface (“GUI”) and mouse instead of the then-standard command line interface. Following the Macintosh's introduction, Apple continued production and development of its Apple I ...

Including:

• Apple Macintosh - Current product line
• Apple Macintosh - History
• Apple Macintosh - 1979–84: Development and introduction
• Apple Macintosh - 1985–89: The desktop publishing era
• Apple Macintosh - 1990–98: Growth and decline
• Apple Macintosh - 1999 to the present: new beginnings
• Apple Macintosh - Timeline of Macintosh models
• Apple Macintosh - Hardware
• Apple Macintosh - Processor Architecture
• Apple Macintosh - Expandability and connectivity
• Apple Macintosh - Software
• Apple Macintosh - Operating system
• Apple Macintosh - Software history
• Apple Macintosh - Advertising
• Apple Macintosh - Effects on the technology industry
• Apple Macintosh - Market share and demographics
• Apple Macintosh - Advantages disadvantages and criticisms
• Apple Macintosh - Notable litigation

Read more here: » Apple Macintosh: Encyclopedia - Apple Macintosh

The BBC Micro, affectionately known as the Beeb, was an early home computer. It was designed and built by Acorn Computers Ltd for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). In the early 1980s, the BBC started what became known as the BBC Computer Literacy Project. The project was initiated largely in response to an extremely influential BBC documentary The Mighty Micro, in which Dr. Christopher Evans from the National Physical Laboratory predicted the coming (micro)computer revolution and its impact on the ...

Including:

• BBC Micro - Background
• BBC Micro - Market impact
• BBC Micro - Description
• BBC Micro - Hardware features Models A and B
• BBC Micro - Software and expandability
• BBC Micro - Successor machines and the retro scene
• BBC Micro - Specifications
• BBC Micro - Trivia

Read more here: » BBC Micro: Encyclopedia - BBC Micro

Ultima is a series of fantasy computer role-playing games from Origin Systems, Inc.. Ultima was created by Richard Garriott, a.k.a. Lord British. Several games of the series are considered seminal games of their genre. Today, Electronic Arts holds the brand. Ultima - Overview. Ultima tells the story of a hero who would be summoned by the ruler of a different world known first as Sosaria, later as Britannia, whenever troubles would arise and put in danger the peace of the land. The ruler ...

Including:

• Ultima - Overview
• Ultima - The games
• Ultima - The original series
• Ultima - Other Ultima games
• Ultima - Unreleased Ultima games
• Ultima - Ultima Online series 1997
• Ultima - Console games
• Ultima - Related projects
• Ultima - Engine rewrite projects
• Ultima - Remakes and new games
• Ultima - Major and recurring characters
• Ultima - References to Ultima in Other Games

Read more here: » Ultima: Encyclopedia - Ultima

Broadly speaking, software that runs on the Apple IIGS can be divided into two major categories: 8-bit software compatible with earlier Apple II systems such as the IIe and IIc, and 16-bit IIGS-specific software, most of which runs under the Apple IIGS System Software and takes advantage of its advanced features, including a Macintosh-like graphical user interface. A ...

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Apple IIGS, Apple IIGS - Background, Apple IIGS - Hardware features, Apple IIGS - Hardware revisions, Apple IIGS - Graphics modes, Apple IIGS - Audio features, Apple IIGS - Expansion capabilities, Apple IIGS - Development and codenames, Apple IIGS - Influence on later computers, Apple IIGS - Software features, Apple IIGS - 8-bit Apple II compatibility, Apple IIGS - Apple IIGS System Software, Apple IIGS - Multitasking Capability, Apple IIGS - Trivia

Read more here: » Apple IIGS: Encyclopedia II - Apple IIGS - Software features

Ultima tells the story of a hero who would be summoned by the ruler of a different world known first as Sosaria, later as Britannia, whenever troubles would arise and put in danger the peace of the land. The ruler of that world is called Lord British, and his pleas would be answered by a stranger coming from another world known only as Earth through a magical portal. As time passed, that hero would overcome several obstacles and fight several entities (both in Britannia and in other planes), and gain the title of Avatar, ...

See also:

Ultima, Ultima - Overview, Ultima - The games, Ultima - The original series, Ultima - Other Ultima games, Ultima - Unreleased Ultima games, Ultima - Ultima Online series 1997, Ultima - Console games, Ultima - Related projects, Ultima - Engine rewrite projects, Ultima - Remakes and new games, Ultima - Major and recurring characters, Ultima - References to Ultima in Other Games

Read more here: » Ultima: Encyclopedia II - Ultima - Overview

List of BASIC dialects - A. ABasiC (Amiga) — Relatively limited. Initially provided with Amigas by MetaComCo. ABC BASIC (ABC80/800) BASIC for Luxors ABC line of computers. ACE (Amiga) — A Compiler for Everyone — A freeware BASIC compiler that is AmigaBASIC compatible and contains extra features, some of which exploit the Amiga's hardware and operating system. [1] [2] Advanced BASIC: See 'BASICA' Altair BASIC (aka MITS 4K BASIC, ...

See also:

List of BASIC dialects, List of BASIC dialects - Dialects, List of BASIC dialects - A, List of BASIC dialects - B, List of BASIC dialects - C, List of BASIC dialects - D, List of BASIC dialects - E, List of BASIC dialects - F, List of BASIC dialects - G, List of BASIC dialects - H, List of BASIC dialects - I, List of BASIC dialects - J, List of BASIC dialects - K, List of BASIC dialects - L, List of BASIC dialects - M, List of BASIC dialects - N, List of BASIC dialects - O, List of BASIC dialects - P, List of BASIC dialects - Q, List of BASIC dialects - R, List of BASIC dialects - S, List of BASIC dialects - T, List of BASIC dialects - U, List of BASIC dialects - V, List of BASIC dialects - W, List of BASIC dialects - X, List of BASIC dialects - Y, List of BASIC dialects - Z, List of BASIC dialects - BASIC extensions, List of BASIC dialects - Related languages

Read more here: » List of BASIC dialects: Encyclopedia II - List of BASIC dialects - Dialects

Infocom - The beginning. Inspired by Colossal Cave, Marc Blank and Dave Lebling created what was to become the first Infocom game, Zork, in 1977 at MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science. Despite the development of a revolutionary virtual memory system that allowed games to be much larger than the average personal computer's normal capacity, the enormous mainframe-developed game had to be split into three roughly equal parts. Zork I was released originally for the TRS-80 in 1980 and eventually ...

See also:

Infocom, Infocom - Overview, Infocom - History, Infocom - The beginning, Infocom - Standing out from the competition, Infocom - Serious mistakes..., Infocom - ...and the Activision takeover, Infocom - The end, Infocom - Titles & authors, Infocom - Interactive Fiction, Infocom - Other Titles, Infocom - Collections, Infocom - Legacy, Infocom - Notes

Read more here: » Infocom: Encyclopedia II - Infocom - History

Apple Macintosh - 1979–84: Development and introduction. The Macintosh project started in early 1979 with Jef Raskin, an Apple employee, who envisioned an easy-to-use, low-cost computer for the average consumer. In September 1979, Raskin was given permission to start hiring for the project, and he began to look for an engineer who could put together a prototype. Bill Atkinson, a member of the Lisa team—which was developing a similar but higher-end computer—introduced him to Burrell Smith, a service technici ...

See also:

Apple Macintosh, Apple Macintosh - Current product line, Apple Macintosh - History, Apple Macintosh - 1979–84: Development and introduction, Apple Macintosh - 1985–89: The desktop publishing era, Apple Macintosh - 1990–98: Growth and decline, Apple Macintosh - 1999 to the present: new beginnings, Apple Macintosh - Timeline of Macintosh models, Apple Macintosh - Hardware, Apple Macintosh - Processor Architecture, Apple Macintosh - Expandability and connectivity, Apple Macintosh - Software, Apple Macintosh - Operating system, Apple Macintosh - Software history, Apple Macintosh - Advertising, Apple Macintosh - Effects on the technology industry, Apple Macintosh - Market share and demographics, Apple Macintosh - Advantages disadvantages and criticisms, Apple Macintosh - Litigation, Apple Macintosh - Notes

Read more here: » Apple Macintosh: Encyclopedia II - Apple Macintosh - History

The 6502 was designed primarily by the same team that had designed the Motorola 6800. After quitting Motorola en-masse, they quickly designed the 6501, a completely new design that was nevertheless pin-compatible with the 6800. Motorola sued immediately, and although today the case would have been dismissed out of hand, the damage to MOS was enough for them to agree to stop producing the 6501. The result was the "lawsuit-compatible" 6502, differing only by a pinout re-arrangement unusable in a 6800 motherboard; now Motorola was appare ...

See also:

MOS Technology 6502, MOS Technology 6502 - History and use, MOS Technology 6502 - Description, MOS Technology 6502 - Dubious features, MOS Technology 6502 - Acceleration, MOS Technology 6502 - 6502 trivia

Read more here: » MOS Technology 6502: Encyclopedia II - MOS Technology 6502 - History and use

To facilitate creation of portable programs, programming languages provide some abstractions to deal with the different types of newline sequences used in different environments. The C programming language provides the escape sequences '\n' (newline) and '\r' (carriage return). However, contrary to popular belief, these are in fact not generally equivalent to the ASCII LF and CR control characters. The C standard only guarantees two things: Each of these escape sequences maps to a uniqu ...

See also:

Newline, Newline - Representations, Newline - Unicode, Newline - History, Newline - Newline in programming languages, Newline - Common problems, Newline - Conversion utilities

Read more here: » Newline: Encyclopedia II - Newline - Newline in programming languages

The 8910 silicon chip was sold in three different packages. The AY-3-8910 has two general-purpose 8-bit parallel I/O ports, A and B, and these are available in the 40-pin package of the same name. The AY-3-8912 is the same chip in a 28-pin package, with parallel port B simply not connected to any pins. Smaller packages save cost and board space. The 8912 was the most popular version by far. The AY-3-8913 is the same chip in a 24-pin package, with the both parallel ports not connected. The small ...

See also:

General Instrument AY-3-8910, General Instrument AY-3-8910 - Chip variants, General Instrument AY-3-8910 - Description, General Instrument AY-3-8910 - Creative uses

Read more here: » General Instrument AY-3-8910: Encyclopedia II - General Instrument AY-3-8910 - Chip variants

Before Steve Wozniak co-founded Apple, he was an electronics hacker. By 1975, he was working at Hewlett-Packard and helping his friend Steve Jobs design video games for Atari. Wozniak had been buying computer time on a variety of minicomputers hosted by Call Computer, a time-sharing firm run by Alex Kamradt. The computer terminals available at that time were primarily paper-based; thermal printers like the Texas Instruments Silent 700 were state of the art. Wozniak had seen a 1975 issue of Popular Electronics magazine on how to build your ow ...

See also:

History of Apple Computer, History of Apple Computer - Pre-foundation, History of Apple Computer - Early years, History of Apple Computer - Apple III and Lisa, History of Apple Computer - The Macintosh, History of Apple Computer - 1984 to 1997, History of Apple Computer - 1998 to 2003, History of Apple Computer - 2003 to present, History of Apple Computer - The Future, History of Apple Computer - Apple and i Web services, History of Apple Computer - iPod and iTunes Music Store

Read more here: » History of Apple Computer: Encyclopedia II - History of Apple Computer - Pre-foundation

The pad was four inches square (i.e. roughly 10×10 cm) and mounted on a slightly inclined base with the back of the pad higher than the front. At the top, "behind" the pad, were two buttons. The pad hooked into the computer using the analog signals of the joystick ports (the so-called "paddle" inputs), which meant that it had a fairly low resolution and tended to jostle the cursor if moved during use. Instead of the drawing stylus, the pad could as easily be operated by the user's fingers for less precision-demanding work, such as selecting between menu items (i.e. usi ...

See also:

KoalaPad/Painter, KoalaPad/Painter - The KoalaPad, KoalaPad/Painter - KoalaPainter, KoalaPad/Painter - KoalaWare

Read more here: » KoalaPad/Painter: Encyclopedia II - KoalaPad/Painter - The KoalaPad

Epyx (then Automated Simulations) was founded in 1978 as a vehicle for publishing Freeman and Connelley's first game in BASIC, Starfleet Orion for the Commodore PET. Their company quickly started developing games for other popular home computer ranges of the era, such as the Apple II family, the TRS-80 series, the Atari 400/800 and the Commodore 64. In Europe, the British home computer game company U.S. Gold published Epyx' games for the C64, and also ported many of the games to other major European platforms such as the ZX ...

See also:

Epyx, Epyx - History, Epyx - List of games

Read more here: » Epyx: Encyclopedia II - Epyx - History

No mention of the Commodore 64 would be complete without game software. Due to the quality and quantity of games written for the computer (thanks in part to the advanced sound and graphic hardware), the Commodore 64 became well known primarily as a gaming platform moreso than a serious business computer. Perhaps the most striking aspect of the Commodore 64's gaming history is the sheer number of game titles written for the machine. Whilst many commercial software companies produced prepackaged game software, an abundant supply of type ...

See also:

Commodore 64 software, Commodore 64 software - BASIC, Commodore 64 software - Development tools, Commodore 64 software - Games, Commodore 64 software - Gaming History, Commodore 64 software - 1983, Commodore 64 software - 1984, Commodore 64 software - 1985, Commodore 64 software - 1987, Commodore 64 software - 1988-, Commodore 64 software - Applications Utility and Business software, Commodore 64 software - Type-ins bulletin boards and disk magazines, Commodore 64 software - Retrocomputing efforts

Read more here: » Commodore 64 software: Encyclopedia II - Commodore 64 software - Games

Four independent sound channels (one noise and 3 melodic) using the Texas Instruments SN76489 sound chip Built-in hardware support included: pluggable ROMs, directly or via "Sideways" daughterboard tape interface (with motor control), using a variation of the Kansas City standard data encoding scheme Centronics parallel printer (model B only) serial communication (using RS-423, a superset of RS-232) display output for TV, RGB or 1v p-p video monitor four analo ...

See also:

BBC Micro, BBC Micro - Background, BBC Micro - Market impact, BBC Micro - Description, BBC Micro - Hardware features Models A and B, BBC Micro - Software and expandability, BBC Micro - Successor machines and the retro scene, BBC Micro - Specifications, BBC Micro - Trivia

Read more here: » BBC Micro: Encyclopedia II - BBC Micro - Specifications

Commodore 64 peripherals - Floppy disk drives. Although not always supplied with the machine, floppy disk drives of the 5¼ inch (Commodore 1541 and 1571) and, later, 3½ inch (1581) variety were available. The 1541 was excruciatingly slow in loading programs because of a poorly-implemented serial bus, a legacy of the Commodore VIC-20. A common joke advised users to "go grab a cup of hot chocolate milk" afte ...

See also:

Commodore 64 peripherals, Commodore 64 peripherals - Storage, Commodore 64 peripherals - Floppy disk drives, Commodore 64 peripherals - Tape drives, Commodore 64 peripherals - Hard Drives and expansions, Commodore 64 peripherals - Input/Output, Commodore 64 peripherals - Serial communications, Commodore 64 peripherals - RAM expansions, Commodore 64 peripherals - Input devices, Commodore 64 peripherals - Other peripherals, Commodore 64 peripherals - Notes

Read more here: » Commodore 64 peripherals: Encyclopedia II - Commodore 64 peripherals - Storage