Moose O'Malley's Software Valley Established : July 1996 Please bookmark this location only : http://move.to/moose

Introduction : The Apple 2 and Me

I'll always have a soft spot for the Apple 2 computer.

You see, in February 1980 (in my early teens), I touched my first computer keyboard - and it belonged to an Apple 2. My high school (on the Gold Coast in Australia) got its first computer - a single Apple 2 computer for around 500 students to share. Needless to say, there was quite a queue to play with it !!

The Apple 2 was an amazing and incredibly innovative machine for its time. Its hardware, operating system, and its integer basic programming language interpreter were invented, designed, programmed, and built by one man - the brilliant Steve "Woz" Wozniak, and it was pushed into the market place against all odds by Steve Jobs. Without Woz, neither the Apple 1 nor the Apple 2 would have ever existed. Without Jobs, Apple Computer Inc would never have existed, and the Apple 2 would never have become a successful mass market product.

So, my school got an Apple ][ and a year or so later added 3 other "cheap and nasty" "home brand" computers that could run Basic which was somewhat compatible with most of the Apple 2's AppleSoft Basic, but these machines had no graphics capability and no disk drives - so if you used them, then you had to load and save everything to audio cassette tape. Yeuck !!

Don't get me wrong - I wasn't a complete computer novice at the time. My family had owned game consoles - like the Hanimex game console, and PONG, and others since the mid-1970's - and I had been an avid arcade game fan ever since the first coin operated video arcade machines appeared in Australia (the mid 1970's) - but I still had never actually touched a computer keyboard to type in my own progams.

Anyway, I took to programming and computers like a duck to water, and (over the next few years) spent many hundreds of hours writing my own programs for the Apple 2 in BASIC, typing in programs from magazines, and playing games. For me it was a religious experience. Within a very short time, I knew that I would devote my life to computer programming.

School Daze :

At the time, I was very much into sport and was wining all sorts of school awards for my running and athletics ability, so I stuck with sports on Thursday afternoons and didn't officially join the club until my final year of high school.

But, I tinkered with computers at lunch times and after school sometimes (in between basketball practice, interval running, and all of the other sports I was playing). The Computer Club guys kept nagging me to join instead of playing sport, but I stuck with sport for the next 2 years.

But, even at this time I was still writing programs and I needed somewhere to store them, so I purchased my first floppy disk, and started writing little 10-20 line programs, and playing some of the very simple games that were around at the time.

This disk - like all of the other disks I got latter on - had been "notched". This means that I had cut a small rectangular section out of the top left hand side of the disk so that I could use the reverse side of the disk.

(All Apple 2 disks were single sided - which means that the Apple 2's disk drive only wrote to the top side of the disk. By "notching" the floppy disks, you could turn the disk over and insert it into the drive upside down and use the other side of the disk to store programs and data. By doing this you effectively doubled the capacity of all of your expensive floppy disks. For people of a tight budget, this was incredibly useful).

Then, next year, in Maths 1 in Grade 11, we did a term of BASIC programming, but by then I already knew most of the commands we would cover that term, so the computer club guys and I set about learning more advanced stuff.

But, I was sports mad in school. For example, every school day during my 3 final years of high school, I woke up at 6:00 AM, went down for a swim and surf (we lived on the beach - just near the Currumbin Bird Sanctuary ), rode my push bike 10 kilometers to school, had an hour of basketball training. Then showered and had 3 hours of classes. At lunch time, I had an hour of interval running training, which aimed at getting your sprint speeds up, by making you sprint for 100m, then jog 100m, then sprint 100m, etc. It was a killer, but it was the key to getting fast times. After lunch came the afternoon's classes. After school, I usually had some other training (such as cross country running or soccer), and then I would ride my push bike 10 kilometers home, and then have a swim and maybe a surf just before dark, had dinner, and then got stuck into homework until 11:00 PM or so. I did this every day - right up until the day I left school. I loved sport. And, I also loved mathematics and computers.

In early 1982 (during my last year of high school), I was asked to train as a 100m and 200m sprinter by the top coaches on the Gold Coast in Australia. They saw me run at some interschool carnivals where my fastest time was 11.40 seconds for a 100m sprint on a bumpy grass track, with bare feet, and they got in contact with my teachers and Physical Education (PE) teacher who then talked to me about it. They said that I would have shaved 0.40 seconds off my time on an indoor paved track, so they said I was already running 100m in 11.00 seconds - which was just over 1 second off the world olympic record).

I also remember in the final year of high-school that me and a friend (Glenn) were messing around with some weights one day and were weight lifting weights above our heads (snatch and jerk ?). We were just having fun and trying to out do each other and messing about. Then another guy (Mathew) came up to check out what we were doing, and all of a sudden his eyes bulged as he toted up the weights we were lifting, and he said "You guys are f***ing mad - that is how much the guys in the Commonwealth Games were lifting !". And sure enough, what he said was true. And, here we were doing it without any prior weight lifting training.

Such is life when you are young, healthy, fit, and without fear ...

Anyway, back to running ... There were other runners on the Gold Coast and in Brisbane who were doing these 11 second times and better (for the 100m sprint). For example, one guy (Bret) I used to train with was given all of the government help under the sun, and given unlimited support, new running shoes every month, new sports gear, he was paid to stay in school, and all of his school fees and books, etc were paid for by the Australian Government - simply because he was part Aboriginal. Eventually Bret was running faster than me. A few years later, I heard that he was doing times like 10.90 seconds for 100m. But, I was "white" so I didn't get any help or support from the Australian Government, and my 2 year old shoes were so full of holes that I mostly ran with bare feet.

Anyway, these running coaches seemed to think I had potential and in their sales pitch suggested that I might one day even run for Australia in an Olympic Games. But I shrugged and turned them down. Sport - and sprint running in particular - was not much of a career choice - especially for a "white guy" - so I formally focused all of my energies on maths, physics, chemistry, biology, and computers - all of which I was doing well in as well - especially maths and computers.

For me, it was an easy decision, and I have never looked back.

So, in early 1982 (in my final year of high school), I officially joined the school's Computer Club and kicked back on Thursday afternoons (instead of doing sport) with the other long-term Computer Club guys : David H, Stuart M, Brad N, Fred, and Christian. (I still kept up with the before school and lunchtime sports training though, and still surfed and swam at least twice every day).

On my first "official" afternoon in the club (in early 1982), one of the programs they showed me was a massive program written by Christian that contained all of the mathematical calculations and knowledge we had covered throughout high school : polynomial equations, trigonometry, calculus, sets, projectile motion, etc. Christian called the program "Kinematics". I am not sure how big the program was, but it must have been well over 1,000 lines of Basic code. It was quite an achievement. And, I was impressed and inspired to say the least.

So, then we all thought about the programs we would like to work on, and we each got stuck into our own programs, and each week we would check out each other's work, and make suggestions and help each other out. It was great fun, and we all learned a lot.

We messed around with shape tables, computer graphics, sound routines, peeks and pokes, and we even started to dabble in 6502 machine code on the Apple 2 as well. There were hardly any good manuals or books around at the time, but we struggled on as best we could.

We also took some time out to play our favourite games, and challenge each other to beat our high scores. I remember that one of our favourite games during 1982 was Apple Panic. This game still has enormous nostalgic value for me to this day (20+ years later). Other games that we regularly enjoyed playing during this time were Castle Wolfenstein, Sneakers, Blitzkrieg, and Sabotage.

On the way home from school (we all rode our push bikes to school, and Brad and Stuart lived down my end of the Gold Coast), we would often stop into Burleigh heads library or Palm Beach library and play around on their Apple 2 computer.

The librarians didn't like us playing games too much, but they were really cool. And the two librarians in Burleigh Heads were absolutely gorgeous. Part of the reason we popped in after school was so we could visit them and say "Hi".

An Apple a Day ... at Home :

In late 1982 during my final year of high school (I think it was around August), and after working as a weekend farm hand for many months to save the money, I purchased my very own Apple 2 - a second hand Apple 2 clone (I couldn't afford a new real Apple 2). This second hand machine cost $650 Australian.

But I could not afford a monitor (even B & W or green screen monitors were very expensive back then), so I was looking around at TV modulators - which were all around $100 or so and didn't produce perfect results. So my brother Frank (who is an electronics genius) converted an old B & W portable TV to hook the Apple 2 up to. The picture wasn't perfect, and I had no colour, but I was in heaven ...

With my own Apple 2 at home, I no longer had to wait in line to use the school's Apple 2, and my programming time and skills hit high gear.

At first, I could not afford a floppy disk drive for my machine, so I had to load and save everything to / from audio tapes using a plain old tape recorder. This was a real pain, because it was pretty slow and unreliable. It also required quite a lot of manual record keeping - for recording the program and where it resided on each tape (via the tape recorder's counter).

Here's a scan of my first audio tape for storing programs on. In the end, I think I had around 6 or 8 tapes for storing data and programs on, but this is the only one that still survives. (It still contains my Apple 2 data and programs to this day - 20+ years later ! But I can't access it, because the notebook that I used to record what starts where on each tape is long gone ... )

Saving BASIC programs to tape was bad enough, but saving machine code was far worse and required bizarre custom commands (depending on the size and starting address characteristics of the machine code program) like : CALL -151, AA60, AA72, hit [RETURN] a bunch of times, and pull out particular hexadecimal numbers, and then perform hexadecimal arithmetic just to generate the commands to save and load programs to / from tape - and the generated commands were different for every single machine language program, and you had to calculate them by hand in hexadecimal ! For example, 0800.09FFW (to save to tape), and 0800.09FFR (to load the program back in again). I still remember how to derive the commands like it was only yesterday, even though this was 20 years ago ...

After a few months of using tapes, I had had enough of that malarkey, and I dug deep into my pockets, and worked extra shifts on the farm, to buy a 5.25 inch drive - which cost almost as much as the second hand Apple 2 had - around $400-$500 Aus (for a cheap Taiwanese Apple 2 drive clone with a drive controller card).

Back then, Apple 2 magazines used to publish dozens of pages of BASIC or Machine Code listings (in a miniscule font) for various programs and games. There were no such things as cover disks on magazines back then - disks were far too expensive to put on a magazine cover.

So, it was necessary to type in dozens of pages of assembler (i.e. lines of hexadecimal numbers) or BASIC code and then save it all to disk only then to find the program had errors / typos in it, so you would have to then try and debug it.

I know it sounds awful now, and the poor pampered kiddies of today wouldn't understand (all they have to do is plug in a cartridge or stick in a CD), but Ahhhhh !! those were the days - none of these namby pamby magazine cover disks for you to use - just long listings in very small fonts for the very brave / foolish / desperate / deprived / depraved to type in by hand (which would take days) and you would then spend days (daze ?) debugging the program you had typed in !! ;)) And, then when (if !) you got the program working, you found out that it was a really crappy game anyway, and the one you had written yourself or typed in from a magazine 6 months ago was better. Ahhh, this was great fun !!

Back then, saving and loading data to and from disk was also a real hit and miss affair (even though it was infinitely better than saving data / programs to audio tape), and you could never really be certain that the programs or data that you saved on disk today would load correctly tomorrow or even an hour later. (But, again, disks were far more reliable than audio tape).

And, to top this off, the required 140 KB 5.25 inch floppy disks were incredibly expensive back then. In fact, they were so expensive that friends and I used to travel from Burleigh Heads (on the Gold Coast in Australia) on slow public transport buses to Computer Land (in Southport) just to buy second hand disks for $5 (Aus) each - which was a lot of money for us in 1980-1983 - and it was a 3-4 hour return bus trip for us each time we did this. I can't remember how much brand new disks were back then, but they must have been $10-$15 (Aus) each - otherwise we would not have bothered making the long trip to buy second hand disks for $5 from Computer Land.

I remember that Computer Land staff were pretty rude to us, and didn't let us play with any of the computers on display in the store or try out any games before we purchased them, etc. The stupid staff didn't realise that the young computer geeks of today were going to be the wealthy computer gurus of tomorrow. Needless to say, that I don't buy anything from Computer Land even today ...

At the best of times, the Apple 2 disk drive used to make horrible grunting and scrapping sounds as it loaded programs. (Click here for a 57 KB sample of these sounds in MP3 format).

When we went to the local Burleigh Heads and Palm Beach libraries and used the single Apple 2 each library had, everyone in the library would stop and stare (and often glare !) at us whenever the Apple 2 was reading floppy disks - the grunts and groans from the drive were *that* loud !!

N.B. These terrible sounds were perfectly normal for Apple 2 drives, and they were quite loud as well, even when using brand new floppy disks and brand new floppy drives.

If you want to hear a wider range of Apple 2 disk drive sounds and hear what it sounded like when games were loaded from floppy disk on the Apple 2, then you could always download my : Apple 2 Disk Drive Sound Simulator

Whenever something went wrong with the machine, or just at regular intervals (like daily or even hourly), the Apple 2 would just corrupt and destroy whatever disk was in the drive. Back then, you really had to keep backups of your disks, or you were ran the risk of losing data / programs forever.

The software and games back then were great fun, but extremely primitive and quirky by today's standards.

The games - even commercial games - were extremely basic, and the emphasis was on playability, as even the highest resolutions supported by the Apple 2 were extremely primitive compared to today's machines.

Here are some screen shots from some of my favourite games in the early 1980's. (Click the screen shot for a full sized screen shot).

Back then, we weren't just programming computers, we were exploring where no-one had gone before, and we were writing programs that no-one had ever written before - or at least that's the way it felt for us at the time.

There was also a real atmosphere of sharing back then - most people shared their programs and ideas freely. We didn't quite have a "Home Brew" computer club on the Gold Coast (in Australia), like they did at Silicon Valley, but my friends and I certainly had some of the same pioneering, exploration, and sharing philosophy and atmosphere that this famous club had.

We shared ideas, sat around and played games, wrote our own programs and gave them to our friends, and we all dreamed of a future when our computers were faster, had colour screens, when we could scan in photographs, and produce better sound. The day that our dream computers appeared was only a few years in the future, but by then our dreams had changed and we wanted so much more from our machines.

There was no such thing as lowercase letters on the Apple 2 at the time - SO EVERYTHING HAD TO BE UPPERCASE - and this makes programs look even more dated when I look at them now ! People weren't shouting - that was all there was. It was only with the Apple 2+ onwards that Apple 2 users could use lowercase and uppercase, but this was still extremely restrictive. For example, all Apple 2 commands still had to be UPPERCASE. But, even when lowercase was available, most programmers still kept everything in UPPERCASE to ensure that all Apple 2 users (even those with older Apple 2s which didn't have lowercase) could run / use their programs.

Programming the Apple 2 was a painful process. At the time on the Apple 2, there was no such thing as full screen editors or integrated debuggers, and programming languages and the Apple 2's operating system were extremely basic.

At the time, the limitations of BASIC as a programming language (inability to create user defined functions and procedures, quirky commands, no ELSE statement for IF tests, no concept of scope or blocks of code, complete lack of a usable program editor, no integrated debugging options, no on-line help, little documentation, etc) made it very difficult to write sophisticated or easily understandable code of any size.

Everything had to be entered line by line back then, and this took a great deal of work, effort, and patience.

If you made an error, then the whole line of code had to be entered again, or else you could use some arcane commands ESC+I, J, K, M, and arrow key combinations to copy an existing line of code and fix the error. Programming was a slow and painful process.

In addition, the Apple 2's 40 x 25 character screen meant that only a small fraction of your code could appear on the screen at any time. Listing lines of a program involved typing commands like LIST 50-100 to view the lines from 50 to 100 - there was no such thing as page up or page down keys. So if you were writing a big program, then you had to have a very good memory to remember what you were doing and what was already written, otherwise you would end up with a hopeless mess of code and a nasty headache.

Even though things were incredibly primitive in the early 1980's, it was still great fun.

Back then the whole personal computer revolution was only just beginning and everything was very fresh and new and most people shared ideas and programs they had written freely. There was a real sense of adventure and humour about everything. Every step forward was a big step.

One of the best software publishers at the time was Beagle Bros. They were based in California - on the other side of the planet to me - but they were famous all around the world. Their software was truly amazing - a mix of machine language and Applesoft BASIC - that pushed the Apple 2 to its absolute limits. As most people (but few companies) did at the time, Beagle Bros shared their knowledge, and helped Apple 2 programmers improve their skills and knowledge in many ways. Their PEEK / POKE charts were much sought after.

Beagle Bros also put funny warnings on the back of their floppy disk sleaves informing users what not to do with their disks.

Beagle Bros also put funny ads in magazines. Here's one of Beagle Bros ads from the January 1982 issue of Call-Apple Magazine , that promised to help you "Poke your Apple all night long". (POKE was a powerful command on the Apple 2 that enabled you do do things that you could not do from standard BASIC commands). So, "Poke your Apple all night long" was a funny pun, and it still makes me smile - even after all these years ...

Broderbund Software were another company that I remember was helping foster knowledge and skills at the time. Here's another ad the January 1982 issue of Call-Apple Magazine , in which Broderbund was helping independent software developers. Broderbund also published some awesome games at the time, such as Apple Panic and they pushed the Apple 2 to its limits.

Games, manuals, operating systems, and software were extremely primitive back then. But, it was great fun to unravel things and get things working and looking nice.

We weren't just programming the computers, we were exploring where no-one had gone before. Well, at least, that's how it felt to us at the time ... Ahhhh, happy days ..... ;)

My University Daze :

In February 1984, I started a university degree. I loved Mathematics and Computers, so that's what I studied at university.

But, I soon discovered that studying these things at uni wasn't like studying them at school, and, for a while, the fun was gone as the uni lecturers and the rotten DEC System 10 mainframe actually managed to kill my love of computers. But, I persevered ...

The university had massive labs of Apple 2 computers, massive labs of the first IBM PCs, and a DEC System 10 mainframe, and assorted other computers. But, the Mathematics department, where I was enrolled, had virtually no computers - just the mainframe. So, I used to sneak over the the Business department and use their Apple 2's and IBM-PCs.

All of my assignments needed to be written in langauges like Fortran, Macro-11 Assembler, Pascal, DBase / Clipper, Forth, etc.

Some of these were apparently available on the Apple 2 (as I found out many years later), but nobody seemed to have these at uni, so I gradually moved to the world of IBM-PCs - the only alternative at the time.

In my first year of university (1984), I had quite a few programming assignments to do. And, I was computer hungry, so I used to seek out new computers and learn about them and check them out.

For all of my first year assignments, however, I used the DEC System 10 mainframe, that was used by hundreds of students at a time, and was always crashing and breaking down. In addition, you had to queue up to get a free terminal, and when assignments were becomming due, you often had to queue up all night. I remember many nights of waiting in the lab all night, and finally getting a spare terminal near dawn, and getting stuck into finishing my assignment until 8 AM, then rushing home for a shower and a change of clothes, and back again for lectures at 9:00 AM. Half the time you would just get on the terminal, and the whole machine would crash - maybe for minutes, maybe for hours. It was a nightmare. It made working very difficult, and the lecturers refused to believe that there were any problems.

And, it also meant that you could have real problems getting your assignments done. You could spend nights just waiting for a free DEC terminal. Because of the crashes and queues, it could take anything from a day to a week to write 2 hours worth of code on a DEC 10.

So, early in first year, I began dreaming of doing my assignments on a computer which was plentiful and didn't have all night queues ... Or even better, doing my assignments at home on my own personal computer. If only my Apple 2 could help ....

In 1984 and 1985, I discovered more about the IBM PC - many languages were already available or soon would be. Turbo Pascal, COBOL, Fortran, Macro-11 Assembler, Forth, C, DBase / Clipper, etc, etc. And, students and staff at the university already had these compilers, and when you asked about them, someone just handed you a copy.

The Apple 2 was old technology, and had basically stayed the same for the past 8 years. Apple had no plans to upgrade it into a serious or useful business machine. Steve Jobs was running amuck and trying to destroy the Apple 2 division at Apple, and kill the Apple 2 as a product. It was crystal clear that the Apple 2 was not part of Apple's future. So, how could it possibly be part of anyone else's future ?

I also checked out what else was coming. The Apple MAC was being released later in the year, and the Apple Lisa was out already (but horrendously expensive - it cost more than a 3 bedroom house in Brisbane !!), and Apple magazines were becomming full of these stupendously overpriced machines.

Functionally, IBM PCs (in 1984-85) could not do a lot more than the Apple 2. I remember in 1985 one of my house-mates purchased an IBM PC, and (being the stirer that I am) the first thing I asked him was "What games can it run ?". He wasn't impressed. It ran at 4.77 MHz, had 640 KB of memory, and lousy graphics and sound, and it only had a yellow monochrome monitor and 2 floppy disk drives.

Functionally this early PC wasn't that much better than my Apple 2. And, (stiring the pot some more) I let my friend know this, and he was even less impressed ! ;)

But, the IBM PC was fast, Fast, FAST ! And the IBM PC was infinitely more stable and reliable than the Apple ][. And it already had dozens of programming languages, and 1,000's of applications and utilities. It was hard to resist this machine.

So, I began using IBM-PCs more and more, and doing all of my assignments on them, and got them done without any hassle or queues. The PCs were excellent, fast, and never let me down. Overnight, I was suddenly getting my assignments done 3 weeks before the deadline. It was nirvana.

The only problem was that the PCs were so fun to use, that I spent loads of extra time messing around with them and learning about what they could do, and tinkering with every programming langauge I could get hold of, and checking out every application and game that I could get hold of. I soon progressed onto more advanced topics, and began writing Terminate and Stay Resident (TSR) programs, computer graphics programs, dabbling in PC Assembler, C, Forth, Turbo Pascal, and COBOL, and using DBase to develop my own database appications - even though none of this was part of my university studies at the time.

By the end of 1984, the money I had saved from my farm-hand work during the past 3 years (2 years of weekend work and 1 year of full time work) was running low. So I did a bar course over the Chrismtas break and then got a job in the university bar working up to 40 hours a week for the next 2 and a half years. So, now I was working full time and studying full time. The bar work was great fun and it was more party than work, and it was a great way to meet people - particularly girls. By doing this bar work, I put myself through university.

And, when I finished my degree, I was completely debt free and had slightly more money in the bank than when I started my degree - unlike 99.99% of other students. At the time, I felt that this was quite an achievement.

But, my thirst for knowledge was insatiable. In 1985 (the second year of my degree), for example, I spent more time in the Business department's IBM-PC labs than I did in lectures and tutorials in the Maths department building. And, at home, I also used my house-mate's PC whenever I found it free - which started to annoy him. He would go to the toilet for 10 minutes, and come back and find me sitting on his PC - and he quickly got pretty sick of this ...

And, we all used to play games on the PC at home - and some great games at the time were J-Bird, Digger, and Spacewar.

When I couldn't get on the PC at home, I would still use my old Apple 2.

Turbo Pascal was my immediate favourite as a programming language - super fast, on-line help, full screen editor, and dead easy to use. I started programming in Turbo Pascal in 1984, and immediately loved the simplicity and speed. However, none of my 1st year assignments were allowed to be done in Turbo Pascal, so it wasn't until the following year (1985) that I started really getting serious with Pascal. (To this day, I still use Pascal as my main language of choice - in the form of Delphi).

Then at this time (1985), PCs were suddenly coming out with massive 10 MB harddrives as standard, and turbo CPUs to enable them to run at double the speed of the original IBM-PC. These machines were awesome. I remember a lot of people saying at the time "How the hell could anyone fill a whole 10 MB harddrive ??"

Then, in early 1986, another of my house mates purchased a new PC with a turbo CPU, a floppy drive, a 10 MB harddrive, and a colour monitor.

This machine was awesome. Programs (in Fortran, etc) that used to take a minute to compile and link using the twin floppy disk machine, would be finished in a few seconds on the new machine.

Back in 1984, the Apple MAC was released, but I didn't have much to do with them until an aquatance of mine brought one around to my house for a few months in 1985, and then he left it there for almost a year in early 1986. (He was very keen on impressing a girl I shared a house with, so he brought around his MAC to try and impress her and to give him an excuse to visit. He also brought around a nice turbo PC with a vector monitor - which was very nice - and a 64 KB Apple ][ - meaning that we now had 5 people and 7 computers in our "student" house : 4 PCs, 2 Apple 2's, and a MAC). It was the latest, newest and greatest 512 KB MAC, and it was attractive and fairly easy to use, but it had a miniscule black and white screen and it was pretty slooow.

On the surface, the MAC's operating system seemed nice, but it was in fact very patronising. Dragging your floppy disk to the trash can to eject the disk seemed like the MAC was suggesting that my data was rubbish. Having to stick a piece of wire into the floppy drive to get a stuck disk to eject was also strange. In fact, many parts of the MAC and its OS seemed incredibly backward and ill conceived to me. While Apple were arrogantly trying to proclaim the machine as "INSANELY GREAT", many (most ?) were shouting back, "Ermmm, no it isn't !". But, hey, I know that it is easy to be a critic ...

Computer geeks - like me - wanted to dig beneath the surface and get control of the machine, but MAC OS didn't like this.

The MAC often assumed it knew better than its users, and this was annoying. I used the MAC a lot that year - word processing my Resume, writing letters, drawing pictures with Mac Paint, playing some games (such as Risk), and messing around with some great programs like a really cool animation creation program. (One animation included with the program had King Kong on a sky scrapper bashing at the planes attacking him).

But, the MAC was not backwards compatible with the Apple 2. At the time (1985-86) I phoned Apple's office in Brisbane, and asked them how to migrate my Apple 2 programs, data, etc to the MAC so my investments were not lost, and they didn't like this question at all. They did say (very abruptly) that the MAC did NOT run any Apple 2 software, and that the MAC could NOT read Apple 2 disks, and that Apple had absolutely NO plans to allow the MAC to do these things in the future.

All of the Apple 2 users I knew were getting well and truly pissed off big time with Apple Corporation for screwing us over, destroying the Apple 2, and ignoring and then insulting us. So, the last thing I wanted to do was support Apple again. And, while the MAC was nice, it wasn't that nice, and it was horrendously expensive. The PC was much faster and much more useful, it had mountains more software, mountains more programming languages, more games, better games, and it was a lot cheaper (well, the PC clones were a lot cheaper anyway).

Sadly, my old Apple 2 broke down in early 1986. It used to break down a lot, mostly, I guess, because I used it so much. But, this time it was serious, and several different repair guys said it wasn't worth fixing.

So, with my Apple 2 dead and packed away, and my hands were firmly on the IBM-PC now.

Well almost .... In late 1986, I did a Biology subject at uni, and the Biology department had just purchased a whole lab of 40 brand spanking new Apple 2s - a decision that I thought was very strange and backward at the time - the Apple 2 was already dead, so why would they buy old, dead technology ?? Anyway, immediately I was recognised by staff and students as the Apple 2 guru, and while working full time and studying full time, I also spent dozens of hours teaching staff and students - for FREE - how to use and program the Apple 2 machines in Basic. The Biology subject consisted of four Basic programming assignmments to model various aspects of preditor-prey relationships.

I got stuck into my assignments, which ended up being far more advanced than anyone elses in the class. But, all they gave me was a lousy PASS for a final result. Given all of my hard work and teaching them and other students how to use Apple 2s, and the fact that my assignments were far better than anyone elses, I was amazed not to get full marks - a HD. But, all they gave me was a pass - which was redicilous. I never found out why. The only possible explanation was that I had put the lecturer's nose out of joint because I was helping everyone, and he wasn't, so he wasn't doing the job he was paid for. It must have been his "revenge". What a fool !

So, in late 1986, I had officially reached the end of my Apple 2 programming days. And, I concentrated completely on IBM-PCs.

And, as many others did, I remember running Windows 1.x and 2.x and getting Flight Simulator to run in a window while running other programs. But, GUI operating systems slowed down the machine too much to make them useful for serious work. We preferred the raw speed and power of DOS, so we derided GUIs.

At the time, the MAC was also very slow, as was any IBM-PC running Windows, especially when it came to trying to do any serious work.

The joke at the time was that running a GUI was "like running a car with a few of the spark plug leads pulled off !" And it was true !

But at the end 1989, CPU speed and memory suddenly went through the roof, and the Intel 80386 was released, PCs were soon coming with 2 MB of RAM as standard, beautiful colour VGA was standard on all PCs, sound cards were standard in PCs, harddrive space was going through the roof (40 MB and then 80 MB harddrives), and pretty soon Windows 3.0 was bundled with all new PCs as well. CD Drives weren't standard yet, but they would be within a couple of years. The world of the IBM PC had well and truly hit high gear, and all PC users were empowered to use the best tools for the job - we could run DOS and Windows applications at the same time and multi-task between them with ease.

But, that's all a story for another time ...

In the early 1990's, my old Apple 2 was thrown out with most of my Apple ][ floppy disks and all of my Apple 2 magazines, all but one of my note books, and all of my manuals during a house move. (It wasn't thrown out by me - I would never have thrown it out !! I was working overseas at the time ... ) (Luckily around 40 of my disks and my main notebook were locked in my filing cabinet at the time, or I would have lost everything).

I was saddened by this ... It was the lost work that hurt the most.

When I left uni, I worked in Canberra, Melbourne, and freelanced overseas in England for 6 years, working in a dozen languages and using Unix, VMS, MVS, TSO, and loads of other operating systems and a vast array of computer hardware. I had an amazingly successful career.

But, this was all thanks to the Apple 2. The quirky little Apple 2 had given me an insatiable thirst for knowledge, and launched me on a path of discovery which resulted in an amazingly successful career.

For this, I will always be grateful. The Apple 2 will always have a place in my heart. Thanks Woz !

The Dawn of the Emulators :

Anyway, since the mid-1980's, I had heard whispers and rumours about some very clever programmers who were working on an Apple 2 emulator for your IBM-PC. However, I could never track the elusive developers down, and in fact I never managed to even obtain concrete evidence that such an emulator was being worked on.

For example, in 1985-86 I heard that a school teacher in Monto (Queensland) was developing an Apple 2 emulator - but I could not find out anything more. (The guy who loaned us the MAC for a year above was the same guy who told me about this guy in Monto).

In early 1994, while working in England, I finally got onto the internet in a big way. I had read about the SimTel archives in magazines, and these sounded like nirvana to me. Anyway, as soon as I got connected to the internet, I tracked down the SimTel archive immediately, and as I was scrolling down the list of directories of each type of software, when I saw an "emulators" directory - my eyes nearly popped out of my head and my hands were shaking as I clicked on and opened up the "emulators" directory. And what a suprise - it contained primitive Apple 2 emulators.

Back in 1994, there were no Apple Disk Image archives on the internet - or at least none that contained more than a few disk images, and the emulators were still very primitive, and you needed to dump the ROMs from your old Apple 2 - even these were extremely difficult to find on the net. So, it was all a bit of an anticlimax really ... However, I could still run an emulator (Sim2E - which didn't need ROM images - it had reverse engineered it's own custom images), which enabled me to once again type in and run my own programs and Apple DOS commands.

A short while later, the Asimov Apple 2 Archive and others sprang up like wild fire - and they soon contained 100's and then 1,000's of disk images of ancient (10+ year old) Apple 2 software. As soon as this happened, the Apple 2 emulators were perfected and soon could run disk images of all commercial applications, games, and utilities - even those from copy protected disks.

In 1998, I found about 40 of my old Apple 2 disks in an old filing cabinet - somehow these were not thrown out with my Apple 2 in the mid 1980's. I was so happy to see them again.

Then, in 1999, I purchased a mint condition second-hand Apple 2c, green screen monitor, with 2 floppy disk drives, and printer (all for the bargain basement price of $25 Australian). So, once again I was an Apple 2 owner. My life had gone full circle.

One of my first tasks with my new Apple 2 was to transfer images of all of my remaining Apple 2 floppy disks to my IBM-PC for use with the emulators. (Out of my 40 or so double sided disks, about one third were bad / corrupted due to the ravages of Bit Rot, so I got the others transferred in the nick of time).

For historical interest and for a bit of fun, I have uploaded most of these to the Asimov Apple 2 Disk Image Archive.

Almost all of my old Apple 2 disks were thrown out when my store room was cleaned out in the in the early 1990's (when I was overseas), and I lost about 60 of my 100 Apple Floppy Disks when this happened. (Luckily 40 were locked in my filing cabinet and weren't thrown out).

These disks contained some of the games, applications, and programs that I wrote in 1980-1983. Some of the programs I wrote back in the early 1980's still survive today on these remaining disks - the other programs I wrote - that were on the thrown out disks or were on damaged disks - are sadly lost forever.

In 1999, I dug out my first ever floppy disk which I purchased in February 1980 when I first started programming Apple ][ computers (in year 10 of high school). Here is a scan of the poor battle-scared 5.25" disk.

It's amazing that the programs still work and run exactly how I remember them via the wonders of emulation - what a hoot !! ;)

It is amazing how far things have come though - what was state of the art back in the early 1980's and caused people to say "WOW !!!" or crowd around the Apple 2 with their jaws hitting the floor, is now incredibly pathetic and mundane.

A Few of My Earliest Programs :

Below you can download some of the more significant Apple 2 programs that I wrote back in 1980-1983.

These programs are all virtually useless on today's PCs, as they are extremely basic and limited. They are all written for Apple 2 computers which use mid-1970's technology and these machines are infinitely more primitive than today's computers. But, some people (especially old Apple 2 programmers / users) might find these programs slightly useful or interesting.

For my programs below you can download :

• my AppleSoft Basic source code for each program,
• my Apple 2 disk image files of the programs for use with Apple 2 emulators on your PC,
• text files with some background information on my programs,
• screen shots of my programs in action running under emulation (courtesy of Apple Win Emulator ) on my Windows PC,
• and other tid bits, depending on the program.

These programs below are up to 630 "40 character" lines of AppleSoft Basic code in size, and these were fairly *big* programs way back in 1980-1983 ! I was just a high school student when I wrote most of this code. But, I took to programming like a duck to water, and made computer programming the focus of my life and career.

The biggest Apple 2 program I ever wrote was Words Worth - Crossword and Scrabble Companion.

Also below, you can find links to the Asimov Apple 2 Archive , which contains emulators and 1,000's of images of Apple 2 disks, and information about Apple 2 Newsgroups , check out My Campaign to Preserve ORIGINAL versions of ancient Apple 2 Games. , and also, as said before, download some of my first big Apple 2 programs, such as Words Worth - Crossword and Scrabble Companion.

Moose O'Malley

Apple 2 Disk Drive Sound Simulator Apple 2 Disk Drive Sound Simulator does just what the title says - it simulates the sound of Apple 2 disk drives by playing back sounds I recorded of my Apple 2 disk drives in action.

Apple 2 Newsgroups The following newsgroups are great places to make contact with other Apple 2 enthusiasts, obtain help on using the Apple 2 emulators, or on any other aspect of the Apple 2 : comp.emulators.apple2 comp.binaries.apple2 comp.emulators.misc Since 1994, I have checked these newsgroups almost daily, and I regularly post messages and help others out. (Although, because of Internet Spammers, I don't often post messages publicly now, preferring instead to email replies to people directly).

Asimov Apple 2 Archive Many places on the internet now contain Apple 2 emulators and disk images. However, Asimov was one of the first and it is also one of the biggest - containing 1,000's of disk images for anicent Apple 2 software, along with the latest Apple 2 emulators : ftp://ftp.apple.asimov.net/pub/apple_II// You can also download these directly from my web site : Apple Win Emulator. This is the best Apple 2 emulator in the universe, and will let you run any program on any Apple 2 disk image right on your own PC.

SunRaycer N.B. The following story was posted on my Recent Updates WEB Page on 26-May-2005. SunRaycer is an ancient program for Apple ][ computers, dating way back to 1987. At the time, General Motors had just won the first solar car race across Australia, and they decided to commemmorate the achievement by developing some solar car racing software. Thanks to General Motors kindness, this software was released to the PUBLIC Domain so that it was free for school kids around the world and everyone else to use and share. The software came on two 5.25 inch floppy disks, and one of these was double sided. I received a copy of this software when it was released and I enjoyed exploring and racing solar cars. The software was truly innovative for its time, and you could race solar cars, design and build your own solar cars (from a limited set of options), and test them out on test tracks, etc. No other software since has allowed you to do anything like this with solar cars. However, I always wondered why they released it for the Apple ][ (a fiesty little machine that was way past it's use by date by then, but still refused to die despite Apple Inc's best efforts to kill it off). At that time, they could have made an infinitely better / sexier / more user-friendly version for the PC or MAC. Somewhere in the intervening years, I lost or loaned my Sunraycer disks to somebody. For the past few years I have been trying to play SunRaycer again under emulation on my PC. However, NONE of the disk images on Asimov or any other sites worked with any Apple 2 emulators (and I have tried new and old versions of just about everything out there - AppleWin, Apple PC, Apple OASIS, MESS, etc, etc). So, I assumed that the disk images were bad. In Feb, 2005, I stopped off in Hawaii on a round the world trip to visit Mike Ching (from Kula Software - http://www.angelfire.com/hi/kulasoft/ ) specially to pick up the only copy of the working disks that I had been able to find after years of posting messages on the comp.emulators.apple2 and comp.sys.apple2 newsgroups. I also spent a few hours trying to help Mike get his Apple <-> PC transfers setup and working, but something fishy was going on, and ADT wasn't playing ball at all with his setup. When I got back home to Australia following this trip, I went to backup and trasnfer the disks and found that my Apple ][c no longer worked. After several months of trying to fix it - reseating all of the socketable chips, replacing the Monitor BIOS with the self-test version (thanks to David Wilson of Wollongong, Australia), etc, etc - I still did not have a working Apple ][, so I could not investigate or transfer the working SunRaycer disks. In the meantime, back in Hawaii, Mike Ching was having problems setting up ADT on his Apple ][, so I sent him over my Apple ][ floppy disk containing ADT, SST, Copy ][+, DDD, etc. i.e. everything needed to transfer disk images between the Apple ][ and the PC. The disk image for this disk has been available on Asimov since ~1999 : ADT_SST_Copy_][+_DDD_BCopy_Locksmith_Autonum_Renum__Mooses_Disk.zip Mike tried various methods to transfer the SunRaycer disks but the resulting disk images would NOT work under emulation on the PC. As an experiment, he transferred working Sunraycer disks over to the PC as DSK (not NIB via SST !!) and then back again to the Apple ][ as DSK, and they booted fine on the Apple ][, but still would NOT work under any of the Apple ][ emulators out there (AppleWin, Apple PC, Apple OASIS, MESS, etc, etc) on the PC. So, the disks must be using some sneaky or undocumented feature at boot. There were 2 ways to fix this - fix the disk images or ammend the emulators to support whatever is happening. Seeing it is only 2 disks in this boat so far, I reckoned that fixing the disks may be the easiest / fastest way forward. The emulators could wait until later. The first step was to find what was going on. So, I posted a request for help on comp.emulators.apple2 , and Thomas Lai stepped forward to check out the disks and see if he could fix them. I emailed them to him that night. The next morning, Thomas forwarded me working Sunraycer disks. According to Thomas : "The fix was simple: change the byte (Track$19, Sector$0A, Address$17) from $E7 to $F7. The problem is caused by all of the emulator is not implement rotating disk model (real floppy drive read different data when the time between successive read is different)." So, now we know what is wrong. If the emulator authors want to think about adding support for this, then that would be terrific as well. The current - unmodified - Sunraycer disk images on Asimov might then work / be OK. These fixed / working images of all 3 Sunraycer disks have now been uploaded to the central repository for all Apple ][ software ftp.apple.asimov.net. Special thanks to : Mike Ching at Kula Software - http://www.angelfire.com/hi/kulasoft/ Thomas Lai for their help with this !! Thanks guys - it has been a pleasure working with you and you have helped save more ancient software from oblivion. Downloads : An Apple ][ disk image of all the software you need to backup and transfer disks between your PC and Apple 2 : ADT_SST_Copy_][+_DDD_BCopy_Locksmith_Autonum_Renum__Mooses_Disk.zip Before you can transfer disks backwards and forwards between your PC and Apple ][, you need to install ADT (Apple Disk Transfer) for Windows on your PC. Instructions / hints and tips for using this software, especially SST (Super Saltines Trans-Copy) : ADT_SST_Copy_][+_DDD_BCopy_Locksmith_Autonum_Renum__Mooses_Disk.txt Details about the SunRaycer Apple ][ disk images : SunRaycer_GM__All_3_Disks__Fixed.txt A ZIP file containing the Apple ][ disk image for all 3 Sunraycer disks SunRaycer_GM__All_3_Disks__Fixed.zip Details of how the patched disks vary from the unworking disks previously on Asimov. This patch file was generated by my File Patcher software SunRaycer_GM__Patches.txt

My Campaign to Preserve ORIGINAL versions of ancient Apple 2 Games The emulators and sites like Asimov are great, because we can be confident that the Apple 2 will never be forgotten. However, one thing that has always niggled at me is that many of the old Apple 2 games on Asimov and other sites display "cracker" messages / greetings when they load. It is a shame that the games are being preserved in this "unpure" state, and IMHO it would be a much better if copies of the original games - without all of the cracker greets (i.e. without messages like "Thanx to the Pir8 and Lord dArKnEss" on the intro screen) - could be preserved instead. I believe that this be a better testament / memorial to the original developers of the software than the cracked / hacked versions that are currently preserved in the vast majority of cases. I have an Apple 2c, a PC, the transfer software (ADT and SST to transfer unprotected and copy-protected disks), the required serial cable to link the machines together to transfer disk images, and some spare time to do some transferring, and I am prepared to help use these to work towards building a "pure" software repository for ancient Apple 2 games that have not been sold or supported for well over 10 years. On Tuesday, October 10, 2000, I formally kicked off my "Campaign to Preserve ORIGINAL versions of ancient Apple 2 Games" with this posting on comp.emulators.apple2. If you have original versions of any old Apple 2 software and would like to help me with this campaign to preserve these originals, or would like to have old disks backed up or transferred for use with the emulators, please Email me

Some Of My Old Apple 2 Programs

Introduction : To run the programs below : Download, unzip, and install Apple Win Emulator and read the documentation that comes with this emulator. download the disk images below and unzip them to wherever you have installed the Apple Win Emulator and then you should be able to double click on a disk image (.dsk file) and it should load into the emulator and run automatically. If not, then run the emulator, and select the disk image and reset the emulator to load the programs on that disk. Check the documentation that comes with the Apple Win Emulator for further details.

Address Book :: 1982 Apple 2 version Address Book is one of the many, many dozens of programs I wrote way back in 1982 on my Apple 2 computer. At a little over 380 "40 character" lines of code, this was a fairly *big* program way back in 1982 ! I spent a lot of time writing this program, and had a lot of fun doing it. This program is *extremely* limited, but someone might find it useful. It is really only here for fun / historical purposes.	More Info Screen Shot Download Program Disk Image Download AppleSoft BASIC Source Code Apple Win Emulator
Text File Editor :: 1982 Apple 2 version Text File Editor is another of the many, many dozens of programs I wrote way back in 1982/83 on my Apple 2 computer. At a little over 460 "40 character" lines of code, this was also a fairly *big* program way back in 1982/83. Editing and using text files on an Apple 2 is a real pain in the neck - but this program makes it easier. This program is *extremely* limited - it is basically a real simple line editor for text files on the Apple 2 - but someone might find it useful. To edit / view text files you would be much better off using something like the great text file editor in Locksmith v6.0 (which didn't come out until 1986 - years after I wrote this program) or a word processor. (such as Zardax, Homeword, Sandy's, or some other word processor) - which were around but I didn't have way back in 1982. (Hence the reason I wrote this program ...) So, this program is virtually useless today, and is only here for fun / historical purposes.	More Info Screen Shot Download Program Disk Image Download AppleSoft BASIC Source Code Apple Win Emulator
Words Worth - Crossword and Scrabble Companion :: 1982 Apple 2 version Long before I wrote the Windows version of my Words Worth - Crossword and Scrabble Companion there existed an Apple 2 version of the program, which I wrote way back in 1982. The basic list of 938 words (available for use by non-registered users of the Windows Version ) was actually extracted from the original floppy disk of my 1982 Apple 2 version of Words Worth - Crossword and Scrabble Companion. This list of 938 words is downloadable here. So, this word list data file now spans generations of computers, generations of operating systems, and more than 20 years of time. Pretty cool hey !	More Info Screen Shot Download Program Disk Image Download AppleSoft BASIC Source Code Download Word List Apple Win Emulator

From Here you can :