• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Bargain Apple I

Is that the same Apple I sold over and over again? I saw those pictures so many times.
 
Given that the last real sale was for about 1/3 of the asking price, I assume the latter.

Or maybe with all the perfect repros we have these days, no one cares anymore about a real one. :sneaky:
 
Honestly there is absolutely ZERO reason the Apple-1 should go for the prices it has. IT doesnt do anything and there are even more rare machines out there which go for much much less. That whole "Protoype" broken board was just the epitomy of the craziness.
 
Last edited:
VERAULT said:
Honestly there is absolutely ZERO reason the Apple-1 should go for the prices it has. IT doesnt do anything and there are even more rear machines out there which go for much much less. That whole "Protoype" broken board was just the epitomy of the craziness.
Click to expand...
This is one of the reasons why when it came time to exploring that wing of 6502 history for me, I just built Briel Replica1 Plus units instead. I don't really have any regrets going that route.
 
skate323k137 said:
This is one of the reasons why when it came time to exploring that wing of 6502 history for me, I just built Briel Replica1 Plus units instead. I don't really have any regrets going that route.
Click to expand...
Let me ask you once it was built and tested.. did you use it much? I had thoughts about going that route but I trully believe I will never use the thing after building it. And its amazing how like the Apple Lisa, noone is making anything new to run on it. So whats the point? If it had a community of folks making fun little things for it I could maybe justify it.
 
VERAULT said:
If it had a community of folks making fun little things for it I could maybe justify it.
Click to expand...

The sad fact is that Apple I just isn't a fun computer. It's pretty much a naked 6502 SBC with no interesting peripherals nor a particularly accessible I/O bus, and its video system, its only selling point in 1976, is crude to the point that it's worse than a serial terminal for interactive software.

If you want a fun 6502 made by Apple buy a II. Even Woz knew the Apple I was a turkey that day after he built it.(*)

(* Well, he did know, for a while. Now he likes to pretend it was the first computer EVAR and it proves he's a genius as he makes his sad living prancing around the Internet promoting scam businesses with his name on them.)
 
Woz and Jobs pitched the system at HCC and didn't get a lot of takers. Many already had their own 8080/6800/6502 rigs and didn't see the sense in paying $666.66 for a PCB that didn't even come with a keyboard.
 
There are people who buy computers for the readymade software, and others that want to just program. The problem is systems need very good programming tools available at the start for people to want to program and to have ready made software available for those who don't. The Apple 1 had neither, and the Lisa had little so both platforms are not fun to use nor program.

If Apple never got to be as popular as they are now nobody would be spending crazy money on the failed Apple I or Lisa. You see a lot more activity with the Apple II and 68K/PPC Macs because of ready made software and programming languages for both of them plus expansion cards.
 
VERAULT said:
Let me ask you once it was built and tested.. did you use it much? I had thoughts about going that route but I trully believe I will never use the thing after building it. And its amazing how like the Apple Lisa, noone is making anything new to run on it. So whats the point? If it had a community of folks making fun little things for it I could maybe justify it.
Click to expand...
Fair question, here was my adventure.

Having built one and spending forever watching programs transfer over serial with the necessary character and line delays, I looked for some option of any expansion. I soon realized the CFFA1 was/is likely going to be unobtanium. I reached out to P-LAB regarding their SD Card interface for Apple 1. At the time, it had not been tested on a Briel replica 1 plus. With minor mods we made it work, and they made their newest revisions compatible with "Real" replicas and R1+ as well. It holds plenty of software, languages, etc. And the SD/OS is actually usable (more on that later).

Similarly, P-LAB has a Wifi card for the Apple-1, which I use off and on to connect to a BBS. That one is actually pretty fun, and now [also] works with R1+ systems.

For fun I also 'beta tested' Uncle Bernie's Rev2 ACI. It is very reliable on the R1+ but at this time it's not available by itself, only with a full kit of his Apple 1 ICs. Still, this was a fun adventure and I can load from / save to cassette tape from the Briel. That in my opinion made it the most like an Apple 1. It can be seen here:


Software wise what do I really do with it? Mostly learning. Again, the BBS from the WiFi card is fun, I let the CNN or BBC news scroll by on a monochrome display. Also the P-LAB guys write great software, like the SD card has a VIA on it, which they used to make a VIACLOCK application; an ASCII art clock that runs on the Apple 1.

Regarding SD/OS, I personally made a modified rom and a bank switch for booting it. The only difference is a 3 byte hack within wozmon to JMP to the address of the SD/OS after it has done what it needs to do to be ready for keystrokes. Enabling that puts you into SD/OS with subdirectories and backspace support; it feels like a real CLI and not just a system monitor. Turning the switch back restores normal wozmon. See a video as well on this:


I never disagree when someone says something like:
Eudimorphodon said:
The sad fact is that Apple I just isn't a fun computer. It's pretty much a naked 6502 SBC with no interesting peripherals nor a particularly accessible I/O bus, and its video system, its only selling point in 1976, is crude to the point that it's worse than a serial terminal for interactive software.

If you want a fun 6502 made by Apple buy a II. Even Woz knew the Apple I was a turkey that day after he built it.
Click to expand...
because really, it's accurate. I do spend a lot more time with my Apple II systems at the end of the day. And 6502 aside, when it comes to computers I built from the ground up, the RC2014 gets more of my time than the Briels. But that's nothing against the Briel, I like them; I just also have a beast of an RC2014 Pro :)
 
I recognize that machine. IIRC one of the Apple tech youtube channels had a photo of it on Twitter the other day (different angle and either it was on their table or on display somewhere) and this one is extremely easy to spot because they paired it with that Sony B/W TV instead of the Sanyo CCTV monitor everyone else pairs the Apple I and II/II+ with.
 
VERAULT said:
And its amazing how like the Apple Lisa, noone is making anything new to run on it.
Click to expand...

There's a community, but it's small. http://github.com/stepleton?tab=repositories has some of my own contributions. I'm hopeful that the source release may interest folks in writing new Lisa ToolKit applications, but one hold-up is that the LisaEm emulator has historically had trouble running the Pascal compiler. I think we'd be further along if you could build programs in emulation, but right now real hardware may be the only way to build new apps.

(NB: I haven't checked in a while.)
 
skate323k137 said:
I never disagree when someone says something like: (redacted)
because really, it's accurate. I do spend a lot more time with my Apple II systems at the end of the day. And 6502 aside, when it comes to computers I built from the ground up, the RC2014 gets more of my time than the Briels. But that's nothing against the Briel, I like them; I just also have a beast of an RC2014 Pro :)
Click to expand...

Heh. Maybe I sound a bit harsh there, because I don't actually intend to hate on projects like the Briel replicas. If you just want a 6502-based dingus for learning the basics of small computers you could probably do worse than an "Apple 1"; it is a reasonably well documented platform that does have at least some programming resources available to it, and, honestly, the drawbacks of the video system that make it suck for real interactivity also coincidentally make it very amenable to replacing the original video circuitry with a modern MCU bitbanging composite and interfacing a PS/2 keyboard in place of an awkwardly unobtainable parallel encoded ASCII keyboard. Functionally it's a shade worse than just having a serial port on it and using a null modem cable, but if you want an all-in-one dingus, hey, you've got it. Simple is good for learning or just casual faffing around (I'm guilty of plenty of that) and more power to anyone that gets good educational/play value out of their replica.

(If we're just judging by the merits of the system from an educational standpoint I'd probably say the KIM-1 would be a better thing to clone, but the other thing I guess the Apple 1 has in its favor is all the pieces to make a "modern" clone like the Briel are readily available. Unless WDC decides to start churning out modern RIOT chips any modern KIM respin either needs to rewrite a bunch of software or rely on a dwindling supply of hard to find parts. Of course this *doesn't* apply to literal clones of the original Apple-1, which need bits that were obsolete when the computer was brand new...)

Mostly my point is simply, again, it's really a minimal machine, both in terms of overall features and, frankly, quality, so unless a quirky hard-to-use learning toy is what you want it's objectively a thing not for "normies". (Woz's 256 byte monitor is neat and all, but at the end of the day it's still just a software front panel. And Integer Basic isn't even finished, lacking things as fundamental as Save/Load commands.) There is literally nothing it can do better (other than being easier to wrap your head completely around) than any subsequent machine, nor could it even really do those things it could do better than any of its contemporaries. (The folk histories praising the Apple-1 love harping on the myth that the only way to get a personal computer running back then was pounding on front panel switches, but by the time it actually went on sale in July 1976 "turnkey" machines with monitor ROMs instead of switch panels were rapidly supplanting the Altair 8080, and plenty of those machines were starting to come with the option at least for built-in video cards instead of external terminals.) The only reason people care about it specifically today is because of the whole affiliation with the Holy A2S (Apple and the Two Steves) Trinity.

I guess I probably shouldn't hold that silliness against it but, man, it gets hard to hold it in when you see people act like an Apple-1 is equivalent to a piece of the One True Cross. (And priced accordingly.)
 
VERAULT said:
Honestly there is absolutely ZERO reason the Apple-1 should go for the prices it has.
Click to expand...
The Apple tax spares no one! I see ridiculous garbage that I can't get out of my eBay feed every day... Apple pens, shirts, just random junk being sold for at least 10x what it should. And luckily it rarely sells, though unlucky for me as I still have to look at it over and over again...
 
Eudimorphodon said:
PS/2 keyboard in place of an awkwardly unobtainable parallel encoded ASCII keyboard.
Click to expand...
That brings an interesting one too (yet again, P-LAB is involved here). https://p-l4b.github.io/appledore/

I am using a Commodore 64 keyboard now with my Briels. Or a Commodore 16 keyboard; I adapted the firmware for that, and P-LAB added the additional header to the PCB). I'm also using a modified version of the same adapter to use C64 keyboards on my RC2014.

While it's certainly not the datanetics, it makes the machine feel and look a bit better than a PS/2 keyboard.

qTxSWhP.jpeg
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top