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In order to run Apple Pascal on my Apple ][+, I had to buy a "language card". This was bigger than an index card (maybe 3 by 6 inches) and added sixteen whole k
by dfan 9y ago
In order to run Apple Pascal on my Apple ][+, I had to buy a "language card". This was bigger than an index card (maybe 3 by 6 inches) and added sixteen whole kilobytes to your computer's RAM, beefing it up to a massive 64K and rendering it capable of running such a system hog as Apple Pascal. I think it was about a hundred bucks in the early 1980s.
Meanwhile, the Apple ][+ could only display 40 columns on screen, where of course by "screen" I mean "television". (You could buy another big card to give you enough memory to display 80 columns at a time, but who had the cash to make another huge purchase like that?). Of course, 40 columns isn't enough to write in a structured programming language with indentation like Pascal, and in fact the Pascal program itself supported logical lines of up to 80 characters.
This issue was resolved as brilliantly as you might expect. You could toggle between looking at the left half of your program (cut off at the 40-character mark) or the right half. I'm not kidding.
- ribs 9y agoOh, I remember, although in my mind's eye, the 16K expansion card was bigger, about as big as a graphics card of today.
- flomo 9y agoI was lucky enough to have a second hand Apple ][ from a "hacker", it had a ][+ rom and was pretty much loaded to the gills with a "z80 softcard" and etc. The slot 3 80-column card also had 16K RAM and was the only full-sized card in the machine. (It also came with full documentation if you wanted to burn a different font into a ROM.) So I had a 64K machine, but slot 0 was empty. Unfortunately I never had docs for Pascal, so I never bothered learning it and instead was mentally mutilated by BASIC. A full-sized Apple card was a good bit less tall than a PC AT card and had to be angled to fit the case. e.g. [0] [0] http://www.applelogic.org/files/AVOChires.jpg http://www.applelogic.org/files/AVOChires.jpg
- walshemj 9y agoBack in the day THE Gucci accessory for an Apple ][ was the clear Perspex top cover to show off your collection of expansion cards
- slantyyz 9y agoI would think the 10MB Sider HD was a bigger deal. A friend of mine used one to run a BBS in Toronto back in the day. Before that, he had a custom setup that had a pair of 8" floppies, which was pretty uncommon for the Apple ][ platform.