Apple IIe

1979 · Pre-Mac Pre-Macintosh

Introduced

1979

Original price

$ 1195

Processor

6502 (later models used 65C02)

Original OS

DOS 3.3 / ProDOS

1976

1984

1998

2001

2007

2020

2026

Pre-Mac

Mac era

iMac era

iPod era

iPhone era

Silicon

Processor

Processor6502 (later models used 65C02)

Speed1.02 MHz

Architecture8-bit

Memory & graphics

Standard RAM64 KB

Max RAM128 KB via Extended 80-Column Card (expandable further via third-party slot cards)

Resolutions560x192 (monochrome); 140x192 in 16 colors

Software

Original OSDOS 3.3 / ProDOS

KeyboardBuilt-in keyboard with full ASCII character set, lowercase support, four-way cursor control, Open/Solid Apple keys

Power

Expansion slotsEight expansion slots plus a special Auxiliary slot

Identifiers

Model N°A2S2064

Lifecycle

Introduced1979

Discontinued1993

History

The Apple II Plus, introduced in June 1979, included the Applesoft BASIC programming language in ROM memory. This dialect of BASIC written by Microsoft, previously available as an upgrade, supported floating-point arithmetic and became the standard BASIC dialect of the Apple II series. It was supplied with 16 KB, 32 KB or 48 KB of main RAM memory, expandable to 64 KB by means of the Language Card, an expansion card that could be installed in slot 0 of the computer. Apple's 6502 microprocessor could support a maximum of 64 KB of address space, and a machine with 48 KB of RAM reached this limit because of the additional 12 KB of read-only memory and the 4 KB of input/output addresses. For this reason, the supplemental RAM on the language card was switched between the machine's built-in ROM, allowing code loaded into the additional memory to be used as if it were actually a ROM. Users could thus load Integer BASIC into the language card from disk and switch between the Integer and Applesoft dialects of BASIC with the INT and FP commands of DOS 3.3 as if they had the BASIC ROM expansion card. Like the Apple II, the Apple II Plus had no lowercase character functionality. All letters on the keyboard were uppercase, there was no caps lock key and there were no lowercase letters in the font in text mode stored in the computer's ROM.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_II_Plus · Wikipedia

Trivia

• The Apple II Plus from 1979 was so limited in memory that it had to use a clever trick called "bank-switching" to make the CPU think that additional RAM was actually ROM. • The computer could be equipped with only 16 KB of initial RAM, expandable to a maximum of 64 KB: a limit due to the architecture of the 6502 processor which could not handle more address space. • The Apple II Plus was completely "uppercase" - it had no support for lowercase characters on the keyboard or in the built-in font, because not even the Caps Lock key was present on the keyboard.

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