Classic Systems Emulated: The Apple I
The Beginning Of A Saga
The story of Apple is much more straightforward compared to the evolution of the PC compatibles. The company was founded by an ex-hippie in his parents garage in Cupertino, California and their computers are now used by millions of Starbucks-drinking hipsters that nobody likes. The End!
I think that series explaining Apple’s hardware evolution went very well! That was the shortest article I’ve ever typed. I wonder what the response will be?
ROBERT. GET TO WORK AND DO AN ACTUAL EXAMINATION OF THE APPLE’S EVOLVING PLATFORM THROUGH EMULATION YOU LAZY TURD!
Pre-Apple Examination Context
Now granted, their
sounds like there is a lot of animosity directed at Apple. That's a
product of when one encounters a history written by fanboys who
portraying Steve Jobs as an Christ-like figure with elements of Greek
Mythology thrown in too. However, it's known that Jobs was very
determined, intelligent, and creative (much more so than most other
people, me included, and especially those empty-headed fanboys).
However, Jobs was still human though. This series is intended to examine
the evolution of Apple, it's hardware, and it's software over the
decades. Both the positive and the negative is going to be covered.
As we go through this series of articles, one will discover the awesome and pioneering work of Apple. There is a lot of deserving praise, from the Apple II (there will always be a soft spot for this computer in my heart) to the original Macintosh, the PowerPC Macs and then the G3/G4 desktops (I've enjoyed working on those computers). There are also the PowerBooks, which were the only series of notebooks that rivaled the IBM Thinkpads in elegance. One is greeted to the powerful capabilities of MacOS and the applications that ran under it. A lot of thought went into designing the user interface behind this ground-breaking environment. Apple took the work that Xerox created and ran with it much farther than they, or any company for that matter, could. There is a lot about Apple that deserves praise.
However, as we descend through this series, we will discover that there was a lot of drama that unfolded as well. Apple is a very divisive company. Steve Jobs had a defining attribute that greatly worked against him : arrogance. This attribute was what got him kicked out of the company that he founded. He would have to go on a journey and continue growing as a person before coming back the second time, learning a lot along the way.
Also, while Apple has done pioneering work and greatly advanced computing; at times, they have also held back technological advancement as well. This has been especially true with Apple under Tim Cook. Jobs demanded elegance. However, he still wanted products to be just as much usable and functional as elegant. Tim Cook has traded in functionality for form. Apple has become a fashion company, plain-and-simple. Form-over-function has prevailed as people were forced to forfeited USB, HDMI, and headphone jacks while the inconveniences of losing these common features were rebranded as "progress".
The Apple I
Jobs is essential to the history of Apple. He did found the company after all! In fact, he is vital to the success of Apple. He possessed a lot of strong individual traits that greatly worked in his advantage. While very capable in his own right, his success still wouldn't have materialized without those around him as well. Jobs was a great visionary. At the same time, behind every great visionary is a genius to make that vision a reality.
This is where Steve Wozniak enters the picture. He was the yen to Job's yang. The yen yang symbolizes dualism. Dualism is a theme where two opposite are interconnected and complement the other to make the entity complete. Dualism is a common theme of Taoism. The symbol is very appropriate here as the success of Apple wouldn't occurred without one or the other. If Jobs was removed from the equation, there wouldn't have been no Apple, and removing Wozniak from that equation would result in the same consequence.
It's also a complementary symbol because Jobs was always on a spiritual quest that have been documented throughout his life. This quest for spirituality helped enhanced Jobs' strong qualities. Jobs was very determined and he walked with purpose. Many of his friends and others around him quickly realized that he wasn't like everyone else.
One student from Homestead High School, which Jobs attended, stated that "kind of a brain and kind of a hippie ... but he never fit into either group. He was smart enough to be a nerd, but wasn't nerdy. And he was too intellectual for the hippies, who just wanted to get wasted all the time. He was kind of an outsider. In high school everything revolved around what group you were in, and if you weren't in a carefully defined group, you weren't anybody. He was an individual, in a world where individuality was suspect."
It was this loneliness that reinforced the belief that he one of a kind. Given Job's persona, one would have questioned why he became friends with Wozniak. Jobs was a philosopher while Wozniak was a nerd. However, Wozniak wasn't an elitist. He was humble, easy-going person who loved to tell jokes. From this perspective, it actually made a lot of sense of why Jobs and Wozniak became good friends. They both had a strong interest in electronics. The 70's would not disappoint as their was rapidity changes within consumer electronics. The two originally made "blue boxes" which was an electronic device that mimicked the sound frequencies made by AT&T long distance equipment. They allowed users to make free phone calls by tricking the equipment into thinking the call has already been made. This was an early form of phreaking. From their, the two got into computers, with Wozniak getting a part-time job at HP while Jobs started working at Atari.
The two wanted to start their own computer company. Starting any company was going to be an very ambitious endeavor for the cash-strapped friends. Wozniak sold his HP scientific calculator for more funds. While by modern standards, this would seem trivial and irrelevant, one has to remember that scientific calculators were still very expensive in the late 70's. As such, Wozniak selling the calculator was a major sacrifice, as was Jobs selling his VW Van. That is total commitment right there! The company would be named after Job's favorite fruit.
Work on the prototype began. When it came, the Apple I generated a lot of interest. Microcomputing was still in its infancy at this point. The scene has been dominated by DIY hobbyist kits like the MITS Altair 8080, which was released in 1975. This open system allowed users to build their own computer and then customize it with various peripheral devices, like monitors. Yes, their was a time where a monitor was considered an optional peripheral device! The MITS Altair, along with the various S-100 clones, were not easy to use though. There was a need for a computer that would be simple enough to use (by hobbyist standards) while still being complicated enough to give a engineer with a soldering iron a run for their money (I suck at soldering). The Apple I would fulfill this role.
The Apple I booted straight into the ROM Monitor so programmers could start coding programs in 6502 machine code. The Apple I was equipped with a 6502 CPU running at 1MHz. The original system came with 4KB of RAM, which could be expanded up to 48KB. Programs were stored on cassette tape. It was a very simple, but yet, innovative system.
Getting revenue would be a very Herculean task as banks refused to loan money to the infant company. They saw Apple as a risky endeavor and didn't see the practicality of a home computer. One would question why a typical person would need a computer for. From their perspective, the only one who needed computers were those Fortune 500 companies that processed massive amounts of data on IBM mainframes. The idea of a home computer was foolish and nonsensical. However, Jobs knew the potential of the technology. Jobs and Wozniak wanted to put the power of the computer into the hands of the everyman. Their computers would be the Volkswagen of the computer industry. Jobs and Wozniak soldiered on.
Jobs worked is Atari connections. He got in contact with Atari's CEO, Nolan Bushnell, who in turned referred to him through a number of connections before getting the attention of Mark Markkula. The venture capitalist, who earned millions from stock options while working as a marketing manager for both Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel, was looking for a brand new opportunity. Apple would not disappoint.
While Apple would go on to very great success, the Apple I itself was a very short lived product. Markkula's $250,000 cash infusion quickly got the Apple II off the ground. Not only that, Mark recruited other venture capitalist who started to pump money into the fresh startup as well. Apple quickly outgrew that suburban garage. Markkula recruited an director from National Semiconductor, Mike Scott, as CEO as neither Jobs nor Wozniak had the experience to run a rapidly growing company. Neither had worked at a Fortune 500 company and both didn't want the CEO position either. The Apple II was released on June 1977.
The Apple I was still sold alongside the Apple II for a few months. However, Steve Wozniak fielded all technical calls as he was virtually the only engineer who understood the computer. The Apple I was officially discontinued on September 1977. However, it's legacy was just getting started.
Since then, the original units have become a very prized possession. Various replica kits have been made. Even new peripheral devices have been made, like a CFFA adapter. A CFFA adapter is a peripheral card that allows older computers to use modern compact flash or SD cards as storage mediums. The entire software library of the Apple I could be contained on a SD card now.
mess64 -window apple1 -exp cffa -hard1 ultimate.chd -ram 36k
Operating the Apple 1 is a bit complicated. The emulated Apple1 on MESS (I haven't updated to MAME64 for this configuration yet) has CFFA support, allowing for the use of large volumes with multiple programs loaded. Executing 900R loads the CFFA drive. The "C" command shows the directory, "P" changes the directory. while "L" loads the program. Press "Q" to quit CFFA and you will be dropped to the machine monitor. From there, the program can be executed by typing the memory location (listed in the directory output). An example would be: 6000R
The computer is accurately supported, along with emulation of the various peripheral devices, like expansion memory and the CFFA drive. Their is a image called "Ultimate Apple I Software Archive" floating around on the Internet that contains every title that was ever released for the Apple I. This includes various BASIC language interpreters, BASIC programs to run on them (or code your own), assembly language programs, along with games. It's a real historical gem for this groundbreaking system. And this is only the start!
History of Apple Inc. 1975–1985: Jobs and Wozniak (Wikipedia) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Apple_Inc.#1975%E2%80%931985:_Jobs_and_Wozniak
Steve Wozniak (Wikipedia) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Wozniak
Mark Markkula (Wikipedia) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Markkula
Mike Scott (Wikipedia) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Scott_(Apple)
Phreaking (Wikipedia) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phreaking
Apple I (Wikipedia) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_I
Yin Yang (Wikipedia) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yin_and_yang
Random Variations - APPLE 1 WITH CFFA1 EMULATION WITH MESS : http://randomvariations.com/2014/11/02/apple-1-with-cffa1-emulation-with-mess/
Ultimate Apple 1 Software Collection : https://web.archive.org/web/20140414173406/http://www.neoncluster.com/projects-apple1/apple1-ua1sc.h...
After a crap ton of web-surfing, I found the location of the Ultimate Apple 1 Software collection: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hPj4eliqi11UOqQPPvbbwsMqftc1ObRw/view
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