The easiest and fastest way to get software onto your new beloved:
Search the internet for the FTP Apple Asimov server (there are http mirrors if you don’t want you use ftp). This is an archive of many thousands of Apple diskette images and software.
Download stuff from the archive onto an SD card. Then purchase an SD to Apple disk emulator card (plugs into one of those 7 slots and emulates an Apple disk drive). You can load software from the sd card onto the Apple just as if each file from Asimov were a real 5.25” diskette.
You can connect your Apple to WiFi and then essentially telnet to one off the many BBS servers that are still running. Actually you can telnet to anything on the Internet at that point. You just need to load terminal emulation software, like Ascii Express (often abbreviated as AE or AE Express), onto the Apple first.
Wow, I'll definitely be picking up both of those cards. Thanks for the tips. I had a feeling the serial card would be my ticket to the Internet, rather than the impressive-looking, but clearly past-its-prime modem card.
Thank you for this!! I’ve got a IIe and Classic in my parents basement (where I used to spend a lot of time as a kid...) that I’ve been meaning to have shipped to me. This would be a fun project.
A cheaper way for him to get started is to use his Super Serial Card with ADTPro (https://adtpro.com). ADTPro can be bootstrapped onto the Apple using just a null modem cable ($5-10) connected to his PC and a couple of console commands. ADTPro can then transfer disk images from the PC and write them to floppy disks. Even if he also has to buy a USB serial adapter ($10) and floppy disks, it will be cheaper than buying a SD floppy emulator like the BMOW FloppyEMU ($109+).
Does anyone have a source for a Super Serial Card, or similar that would work with this? I have had my //e since '83 and deeply regret that I never picked one of those up.
Came here to mention Beagle Bros. In particular, for this:
> Other than AppleSoft BASIC (which was written by Microsoft! For Apple!!), which is burned into a ROM chip on the Apple II, there's also some sort of built-in assembler that you can access by typing this into the BASIC prompt:
CALL-151
> I believe this is where I'll be able to do some of the more Commodore 64-like peeking and poking directly at memory. I have a feeling there's a lot of exploring (and fun) to be done here. I need to read up more on this.
Unfortunately, I can never find the big compendium they produced, vaguely recalled as a brown legal sized paperback with their logo on the front and chock full of everything.
This is available and good tho:
Assembly Lines
"... designed for students of all ages: the nostalgic programmer enjoying the retro revolution, the newcomer interested in learning low-level assembly coding, or the embedded systems developer using the latest 65C02 chips...
These all look great (esp. Pinball Construction Set!).
Regarding 6502 programming, I've been planning to follow along with Ben Eater's new course and kit on "Building a 6502 Computer": https://eater.net/6502 (once I finish up his previous kit for building an 8 bit computer with breadboards). Amazing that you still have those books in your library!
I once was walking in my neighborhood in Brooklyn when a couple doors down from my apartment I saw some beige boxes in the trash in front of a brownstone. Just laying there in the trash was a Macintosh SE, a Macintosh Plus, and a Macintosh (512k). No keyboards, but I still couldn't believe it. I totally forgot about what I was going to do and immediately grabbed them and brought them up to my apartment. They all booted fine. I ended up giving the Plus and SE away to friends, but I still have the 512k in my office and play around with it from time to time. What a great machine!
Some of the software for early Macs is astonishing by modern standards. Clarisworks is an office suite that provides a word processor, spreadsheet, database, paint, illustration, and program that should run on an 8 MHz 68000 based Macintosh Plus. A full installation was about 4 MB, but it could be trimmed down to 600 kB and retain its core functionality.
That office suite was based upon Appleworks for the Apple II. While the latter was much more limited (e.g. no graphics), it had to deal with much tighter constraints.
The accomplishments of those early programmers was astounding, particularly when you consider that many of those early programs had many of the features that we take for granted today. For example, both Appleworks and Clarisworks allowed you to share data between modules. I almost lust for the days when we could do so much with so little. Granted, that's not going to happen when a modern display requires pushing and storing three to four orders of magnitudes more bits to represent a square inch of graphics.
The Super Serial Card is a nice and you don't need any software to use it. Typing "PR#2" followed by "IN#2" (replace the "2" with the slot number the card is installed in) will give you access to a very simple serial communications terminal. Granted, it does take some configuration for both computers to understand each other.
You can also search for scans of books and magazines online. People have been working on preserving these materials since the mid-1990's, so there are many excellent resources.
In 1983 I bought an Apple ][e with a monitor, dual floppy drives (but not the fancy duodisk verson), and an 80 column card. A friend and his father had bought several as a speculative investment, and when his parents left town he needed cash for a party. I took advantage of this situation and got a smoking deal.
A very short time later I bought a Hayes Smartmodem 1200 from someone wanting to avoid advertising in the local paper. Again, a smoking deal. At one point I dialed 60 BBSes a week.
A very short time later I bought a Z80 card so that I could also run CP/M.
It was glorious. I regret selling it.
I learned to type so that I could be more productive on that machine. That, and my handwriting was already atrocious.
I programmed Apple Basic, Apple Pascal, 6502 assembly, and C on that machine.
I used Apple Writer to transcribe and print a literary magazine for my school.
I typeset calculus notes on the machine.
I plotted star charts.
So much fun, and, yes, such a wonderfully expandable machine.
Modern phone lines are usually VOIP somewhere, and if the codec sucks, it might not be good enough for a modem. OTOH, that's probably a pretty low bitrate modem, so it might work out ok.
If running your own VOIP gateway, g.711 codec is probably the most likely to work for running a modem, but I haven't tried it.
Doubtful, some quick googling seems to indicate that the micromodem iie is a 300bps modem (vs the micromodem II, for which the manual pops up right away). Even if its 1200 or 2400bps, its still likely way to slow to be affected by the codec issues/etc that others have pointed out. You have to remember people are still running fax and home security systems with modems in 2020, so the vast majority of VOIP codecs handle that just fine.
About 10 years ago, I went on a modem kick and wrote a software modem, as well as setting one up at work on a real POTs line to dial in from my house using an old external 56k modem I had lying about. IIRC it linked up at 33.6 without a problem even with a VOIP box on my side (I did tweak the codec at one point, but the default with my provider was already reasonable for modems).
So, its true your not going to get "modern" (56k+) modem speeds on a lot of lines, but even when modems were popular not getting full speed was a continual problem due to line quality issues. So most modems would fall back until they got a reasonable lock. I'm not sure but in the early 2000's there was a state regulatory mandate that POTs lines needed to be capable of 19.2 (IIRC). It wouldn't surprise me if that still exists, even over digital lines to assure that said fax, home security, etc systems continue to work.
Anyway, the point being that at 300bps, your more likely to have problems with the endpoint refusing such a slow connection than having line quality issues.
I have an Apple ][+ that stopped working a few years ago, and I don’t have the time to fix it up. I don’t want to throw it out, as it seems a piece of history (and it’s the computer I grew up using so there’s some nostalgia...). I have all the original manuals and some floppies with it.
Anyone know of good places to find it a home? Any groups of vintage Apple users to post it to, or something like that?
Try your local university cs department. They'd love a piece of history like that. Mine has a few of those pieces in a display case for everyone to come and see.
Regarding the games you can type out in BASIC, there's a book called "BASIC Computer Games" I got at the library once, and there's an online page that has a decent collection of them:
They are in MS Basic, but it might be a fun exercise to try to port them.
I recently rescued a IBM PS/1 and a Macintosh Plus from my grandpa's basement, got a similar response from family/friends... "Well what do you DO with it?". I think my wife thought I was crazy when I was trying to explain how powerful and primal a BASIC prompt is.
Because there were no websites, blogs, podcasts, or other sources of information about these devices, the manuals had to be thorough.
You should see how amazing the manual for my Amdek monitor is, or the Grappler + graphics card for the Apple // (allows you to print graphics from your Apple // to a dot matrix printer):
If you were lucky, other authors may have published books of various quality and you MIGHT be able to but a copy at your book store if you even knew to ask about it.
Or you might connect to knowledgeable people through a bbs or user group to learn some tricks. Magazines helped... a little.
But there simply was a dearth of information as compared to the resources of today.
It's not an Apple IIe without MECC software! Including that most famous of MECC titles, The Oregon Trail, which is about as synonymous with the Apple IIe in xennials' minds as Super Mario Bros. is with the NES.
I also recommend Terrapin Logo for more programming fun.
Definitely need to get a copy of The Oregon Trail. And, yes, I've been reading up on LOGO! I just read a great book called Mindstorms written by Seymour Papert (inventor of LOGO and the Turtle robot) about his educational theories behind LOGO and using computers to help children learn how to learn. I highly recommend checking it out - here are my book notes: https://www.charlieharrington.com/mindstorms
Awesome find. I grew up on the Apple IIe at school. I'm trying to do something like the author's rediscovery with a cheaply-found "luggable" 386 over here: https://justinmiller.io/posts/2020/04/26/project-386-part-1/ So far, it's proving much more difficult.
You mention that you don't have any games for your Apple II. If you go the used game route and want to get the full experience be sure to check out Wizardry and Zork!
Will do! Someone also just turned me onto this site: https://asciiexpress.net/diskserver/ where you can connect your laptop or phone's headphone jack with a 3.5mm audio cable to the Apple II cassette-in port, and just play the audio files to transfer over games and other software. This is the magic I was hoping for.
Hey this is a former coworker of yours from GU back in the day. Nice post! Hope you're doing well and congrats on the IIe. I grew up coding on one of these as well. :)
That was my exact kit growing up. My mom was a freelance translator for a time before working for data general, and she bought this for working. Like our school machines but more memory and less color..
When she wasn’t working my brothers and I could use it write papers / software and play games.
A joystick would be a helpful addition. Apple joysticks are really analog (basically two game paddles together) which make them interesting.
I still remember (I think) how to get the screen to cycle colors.
10 hgr
20 For I = 1 to 7
30 hcolor = i
40 hplot 0,0
50 call 62454
60 next I
The Apple II time warp podcasts is not often updated and kinda fun too
If you've got time and want to save a little money, there are several guides on how to turn an esp32 or esp8266 (either < $10) into an rs232 to wifi bridge.
Even simpler (though not necessarily a great interface, but it's sort of a Hayes AT command set) is the TCP232-T2, which can be had for about $10 off of eBay. I wrote up my experiences with it on my VIC-20[0]
Amazingly, this is exactly how I acquired my SE/30, sitting on the side of the road in a pile of other junk. Had the keyboard and trapezoid mouse! I was still at university at the time and took great joy in writing an essay about wiretapping on it, then spending nearly a week trying to get the floppy drive working to get said essay off the machine...
[+] [-] TedDoesntTalk|5 years ago|reply
Search the internet for the FTP Apple Asimov server (there are http mirrors if you don’t want you use ftp). This is an archive of many thousands of Apple diskette images and software.
Download stuff from the archive onto an SD card. Then purchase an SD to Apple disk emulator card (plugs into one of those 7 slots and emulates an Apple disk drive). You can load software from the sd card onto the Apple just as if each file from Asimov were a real 5.25” diskette.
Also pick up one of these:
https://www.cbmstuff.com/proddetail.php?prod=WiModem232OLED
You can connect your Apple to WiFi and then essentially telnet to one off the many BBS servers that are still running. Actually you can telnet to anything on the Internet at that point. You just need to load terminal emulation software, like Ascii Express (often abbreviated as AE or AE Express), onto the Apple first.
[+] [-] whatrocks|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theNJR|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TedDoesntTalk|5 years ago|reply
https://www.ebay.com/usr/ksd09?_trksid=p2047675.l2559
He doesn't have any left but is making another batch as I type this.
[+] [-] bdowling|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rbanffy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bobochan|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonahbenton|5 years ago|reply
Haven't seen Beagle Bros mentioned. Their awesome catalogs:
https://stevenf.com/beagle/contents.html
Also haven't seen mentioned Pinball Construction Set- an absolutely amazing piece of engineering, by Bill Budge:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinball_Construction_Set
Last I checked, Budge was still working- for Google- on the V8 runtime. Think he is on twitter.
And while there are a lot of 6502 assembly resources around online, fondly remembered books on 6502 assembly and graphics programming (still have em):
https://www.amazon.com/High-resolution-Graphics-Animation-As...
https://books.google.com/books/about/Hi_res_Graphics_for_the...
Super cool memories from my childhood.
[+] [-] Terretta|5 years ago|reply
> Other than AppleSoft BASIC (which was written by Microsoft! For Apple!!), which is burned into a ROM chip on the Apple II, there's also some sort of built-in assembler that you can access by typing this into the BASIC prompt:
> I believe this is where I'll be able to do some of the more Commodore 64-like peeking and poking directly at memory. I have a feeling there's a lot of exploring (and fun) to be done here. I need to read up more on this.Try the "Beagle Bros Peeks and Pokes Supplement":
https://apple2online.com/web_documents/Beagle%20Bros%20Peeks...
There were collections of cheat sheets, you want the Peeks and Pokes one:
https://blog.codinghorror.com/i-heart-cheatsheets/
Also multiple delightful "catalogs" and tips books:
https://apple2online.com/web_documents/Beagle%20Bros%20Catal...
Unfortunately, I can never find the big compendium they produced, vaguely recalled as a brown legal sized paperback with their logo on the front and chock full of everything.
This is available and good tho:
Assembly Lines
"... designed for students of all ages: the nostalgic programmer enjoying the retro revolution, the newcomer interested in learning low-level assembly coding, or the embedded systems developer using the latest 65C02 chips...
https://smile.amazon.com/Assembly-Lines-Complete-Roger-Wagne...
- - -
EDIT: I FOUND THE BIG TIP BOOK!!!!
https://archive.org/details/Beagle_Bros-The_Big_Tip_Book_OCR...
It's 250 pages, and previously couldn't find it because Beagle Bros wasn't in the name. Brown w/ the logo tho, heh.
[+] [-] whatrocks|5 years ago|reply
Regarding 6502 programming, I've been planning to follow along with Ben Eater's new course and kit on "Building a 6502 Computer": https://eater.net/6502 (once I finish up his previous kit for building an 8 bit computer with breadboards). Amazing that you still have those books in your library!
[+] [-] zwieback|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtalantikite|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] II2II|5 years ago|reply
That office suite was based upon Appleworks for the Apple II. While the latter was much more limited (e.g. no graphics), it had to deal with much tighter constraints.
The accomplishments of those early programmers was astounding, particularly when you consider that many of those early programs had many of the features that we take for granted today. For example, both Appleworks and Clarisworks allowed you to share data between modules. I almost lust for the days when we could do so much with so little. Granted, that's not going to happen when a modern display requires pushing and storing three to four orders of magnitudes more bits to represent a square inch of graphics.
[+] [-] kens|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whatrocks|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] II2II|5 years ago|reply
You can also search for scans of books and magazines online. People have been working on preserving these materials since the mid-1990's, so there are many excellent resources.
[+] [-] acomjean|5 years ago|reply
and the owners manual, very pracitcal nuts and bolts, but informative (150 pgs).
https://archive.org/details/apple-iie-owner-manual/mode/2up
The reference manual is low level but helps in understanding the machine.
https://archive.org/details/Apple_IIe_Reference_Manual_HiRes...
[+] [-] jbgreer|5 years ago|reply
A very short time later I bought a Hayes Smartmodem 1200 from someone wanting to avoid advertising in the local paper. Again, a smoking deal. At one point I dialed 60 BBSes a week.
A very short time later I bought a Z80 card so that I could also run CP/M.
It was glorious. I regret selling it.
I learned to type so that I could be more productive on that machine. That, and my handwriting was already atrocious. I programmed Apple Basic, Apple Pascal, 6502 assembly, and C on that machine. I used Apple Writer to transcribe and print a literary magazine for my school. I typeset calculus notes on the machine. I plotted star charts.
So much fun, and, yes, such a wonderfully expandable machine.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mjg59|5 years ago|reply
Is this true? I can't think of any immediate reason it would fail, but finding something to actually dial into seems like a harder problem.
[+] [-] toast0|5 years ago|reply
If running your own VOIP gateway, g.711 codec is probably the most likely to work for running a modem, but I haven't tried it.
[+] [-] StillBored|5 years ago|reply
About 10 years ago, I went on a modem kick and wrote a software modem, as well as setting one up at work on a real POTs line to dial in from my house using an old external 56k modem I had lying about. IIRC it linked up at 33.6 without a problem even with a VOIP box on my side (I did tweak the codec at one point, but the default with my provider was already reasonable for modems).
So, its true your not going to get "modern" (56k+) modem speeds on a lot of lines, but even when modems were popular not getting full speed was a continual problem due to line quality issues. So most modems would fall back until they got a reasonable lock. I'm not sure but in the early 2000's there was a state regulatory mandate that POTs lines needed to be capable of 19.2 (IIRC). It wouldn't surprise me if that still exists, even over digital lines to assure that said fax, home security, etc systems continue to work.
Anyway, the point being that at 300bps, your more likely to have problems with the endpoint refusing such a slow connection than having line quality issues.
[+] [-] C1sc0cat|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattlondon|5 years ago|reply
Is that a thing or did my brain just make it up? :/
[+] [-] pge|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TedDoesntTalk|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] the_af|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kcolford|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fuball63|5 years ago|reply
http://www.moorecad.com/classicbasic/index.html
They are in MS Basic, but it might be a fun exercise to try to port them.
I recently rescued a IBM PS/1 and a Macintosh Plus from my grandpa's basement, got a similar response from family/friends... "Well what do you DO with it?". I think my wife thought I was crazy when I was trying to explain how powerful and primal a BASIC prompt is.
EDIT: there's a link on the above link that has the original book contents: https://www.atariarchives.org/basicgames/
[+] [-] acomjean|5 years ago|reply
This one is a pretty good primer:
https://archive.org/details/ATouchOfApplesoftBASIC/mode/2up
there are others (archive.org is a good resource for these things.)
https://archive.org/details/applesoft-tutorial/page/n37/mode...
[+] [-] greendave|5 years ago|reply
[1] https://apple2history.org/history/ah19/
[+] [-] user_0x|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TedDoesntTalk|5 years ago|reply
You should see how amazing the manual for my Amdek monitor is, or the Grappler + graphics card for the Apple // (allows you to print graphics from your Apple // to a dot matrix printer):
https://apple2online.com/web_documents/Orange%20Micro%20Grap...
If you were lucky, other authors may have published books of various quality and you MIGHT be able to but a copy at your book store if you even knew to ask about it.
Or you might connect to knowledgeable people through a bbs or user group to learn some tricks. Magazines helped... a little.
But there simply was a dearth of information as compared to the resources of today.
[+] [-] bitwize|5 years ago|reply
I also recommend Terrapin Logo for more programming fun.
[+] [-] whatrocks|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] squnch|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] incanus77|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] StanislavPetrov|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whatrocks|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hnaa|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rbanffy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acomjean|5 years ago|reply
When she wasn’t working my brothers and I could use it write papers / software and play games.
A joystick would be a helpful addition. Apple joysticks are really analog (basically two game paddles together) which make them interesting.
I still remember (I think) how to get the screen to cycle colors.
10 hgr
20 For I = 1 to 7
30 hcolor = i
40 hplot 0,0
50 call 62454
60 next I
The Apple II time warp podcasts is not often updated and kinda fun too
https://appletimewarp.libsyn.com/apple-time-warp-podcast-epi...
[+] [-] dekhn|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tyingq|5 years ago|reply
http://www.retroadventures.net/apple-iic-and-the-d-i-wimodem...
https://github.com/bozimmerman/Zimodem
[+] [-] taborj|5 years ago|reply
[0] http://obsolete.site/?p=39
[+] [-] PebblesHD|5 years ago|reply