Over the past years, on every April Fool's Day, it has been my pleasure to show you one of my foolish Apple-1 projects.
The projects are "foolish" not because they don't work (they do work fine !) but in the sense that they were designed for a vintage computer microcosm which is so small (in terms of number of people involved in it) that such projects are expected to not find much interest, meaning: adopters who want to build one example for themselves. So why design and develop a project almost nobody else is interested in ?
Here is a quote from the late Steve Jobs:
"Stay hungry, stay foolish"
- Steve Jobs
Of course he did not mean that we should starve ourselves, or behave like fools - this would be illogical. What he likely meant was to never be statisfied, be always hungry for new ideas and improvements, and allow yourself to pursue "foolish" projects - because these won't have much competition. Most people are conservative - especially when it comes to investing time and money into projects - and so they prefer to follow well trodden paths. Which only can lead to boring "mee too" projects, not to disruptive breakthroughs. Under Steve Jobs, Apple created lots of disruptive (aka "foolish") products which turned out out to be stellar successes and made Apple Corporation one of the most valuable companies in the world. Just as one example for "foolish" in this sense: a google search tells us: "the colorful, translucent iMac G3 (released in 1998) is widely credited with saving Apple from near-bankruptcy". And when it was in the concept phase, there were plenty of naysayers who claimed: "nobody would buy that, it doesn't look how a personal computer should look !".
WHY THIS PROJECT ?
Yet another color graphics card for the Apple-1 ? Why ? Did the first one (called "GEN1" in the following) not work ? Or were there other problems ?
Before I will go into these technical details, allow me first to tell you why I think having a color graphics card for the Apple-1 may be important, at least for a few hard core aficionados. In his autobiography "iWoz", on page 187, he tells us:
" The Apple II, ..., was a phenomenal improvement over what I'd done before. I knew I wanted to have a computer that did color, for instance. I had built the Apple-1 from the beginning with chips working at the frequencies you would need to generate color on an American television, and I had planned to add color. But though I'd designed the Apple-1 so I could add color to it, I decided it would be better to design a fresh computer instead. "
So here you have it from the horses' mouth: the Apple-1 was not meant to stay B&W forever. Woz had planned its clocking scheme and the video signal divider chains such that it could produce color at a later time, after some minor hardware upgrades.
But we all know it never came to that. The Apple-1 had too many quirks and was soon phased out. Then came the infamous "buyback decision" to purge the Apple-1 from the field and to destroy them - which wasn't a "buyback" at all: as the story is told, instead of getting their money back, the deal was that for each Apple-1 sent back (to be destroyed, mind you !) the owner got a voucher for a brand-new Apple II at a discounted price.
And the surviving Apple-1 were essentially orphaned by Apple.
With the hindsight of 50 years, this rises the most powerful (and most feared) question in the Universe:
" WHAT IF ... ? "
So, what if Apple had not orphaned the Apple-1 and had continued to provide upgrades for it, such as new slot cards, one of which could have been a color graphics upgrade ? After fixing the reliability issues, of course, which had doomed the Apple-1 for a long time. But I've shown that by adding just six resistors, the Apple-1 DRAM works much, much more reliable. And I've also shown that a slight mod to the ACI input stage, its readback reliability from cassette tape could also be greatly improved. But none of this happened back then and instead of fixing the Apple-1, they decided to kill it off. Which from a business standpoint made sense, but still leaves a sour aftertaste. The brand new Apple II was the much better and much more capable machine, as Woz had learned his lessons from the Apple-1. The rest is history, as they say.
If you study the Apple-1 video circuits you will find that they are almost the same as in the Apple II, even using the same IC types (horizontal and vertical counters 74161, video shift register 74166, character generator Signetics 2513).
It would be possible to tap into these signals, use them to address a small (8 kBytes) graphics bitmap RAM, add a color burst signal, and get full color bitmap graphics. But doing this on an Apple-1 would need lots of ugly flight wires.
50 YEARS FAST FORWARD
Now, with the hindsight of 50 years, we can ask the "WHAT IF ..." again and add a color graphics capability to the Apple-1, just as Woz had intended to do half a Century ago. Of course, this color graphics system must use Woz' technology to be faithful. Which means such a color graphics card must be Apple II compatible. Just taking some old color graphics LSI chip from Commodore or TI would not meet these criteria. Others have done that and the reception was poor.
THE GEN1 COLOR GRAPHICS CARD
April 1st, 2023, I showed my GEN1 color graphics card, see this link:
https://www.applefritter.com/content/glimpse-uncle-bernies-apple-1-color-graphics-card
... which worked fine (at least for me) but it did have some drawbacks: when I started that project, I had adopted the self imposed doctrine that the color graphics card should plug into the Apple-1 expansion connector (not the sole slot, which is needed for the ACI) and must not require any trace cuts or flight wires added to the Apple-1 motherboard.
Alas, in the development phase of the wire wrapped prototype it turned out that some of the quirks in the Apple-1 foiled that plan. Some flight wires (but no trace cuts) were still needed.
So I had to drop the doctrine but now had a solution without using Woz' 'long cycle' trick for which he got U.S.-Pat. 4,136,359 "Microcomputer for use with video display". Adding a 'long cycle' would have required trace cuts and many flight wires to the unused NANDs in the 7400 at location C15 of the Apple-1 motherboard. As a side note, this patent for the Apple II was filed 11th April 1977 - just one year after the "Apple Computer Company" was founded and about 5 months after Woz began to wire wrap the Apple II prototype (AFAIK this started in November 1976). So the Apple II design and development phase happened at lightning speed - and this was only possible because of the lessons Woz had learned with the Apple-1.
For the Gen1 graphics card, I did use an alternate solution needing no 'long cycle' despite I knew - from my professional background having designed ICs for TVs - that this made the video signal unfit for modern, LCD based flat screen TVs - but I also knew it would work perfectly fine with CRT based, analog color decoder based TVs or monitors. Little did I know that it got so difficult (and costly) for other people to procure these old TVs/monitors in the 2020s.
The worst issue was that due to yet another lovely Apple-1 quirk: the 'write-through' concept I wanted to have for TEXT and LORES graphics pages turned out to be infeasable to do - these reside in the lower 4k DRAM bank of the Apple-1 motherboard, and one nasty Apple-1 quirk is that the address bus on the slot and the expansion bus gets scrambled whenever on-board DRAM is accessed, rendering the address useless for any expansion card. So the Apple-1 DRAM had to be disabled whenever the graphics card is plugged in.
All these technical compromises were ugly, and I was not satisfied.
GEN2 COLOR GRAPHICS CARD IMPROVEMENTS
In past 3 years I figured out a trick how the 'long cycle' could be implemented with no trace cuts on the Apple-1 motherboard and with only one short flight wire added. This allows generation of a better NTSC standard conforming video signal which also works with many LCD based TVs and monitors.
The 'write-through' was enabled by using an address latch and a VMA signal coming from the graphic cards which delays the scrambling action just long enough to capture the unscrambled address. I'm not 100% sure yet if the timing for this trick is not too tight to be viable for all Apple-1 (the tolerance of the 74123 oneshot time period plays a big role) but there also is a Plan B needing only one diode more on the graphics card and no further mods to the Apple-1 motherboard if the write through would not work.
Better period correctness of components used
I also found a way in optimizing and repartitioning the logic such that it could be implemented with MMI PAL16R6 which appeared in Y1978. The GEN1 card needed the programmable macrocells of the GAL16V8 which appeared in the mid 1980s. And I'm in the process to redesign the video ROM and associated logic to work with 2716 EPROMs. Which I think are more appropriate for a graphics card which might have appeared in Y1978, if Apple had decided to do that (2732 EPROMs were available in Y1978 but still very expensive compared to the older 2716 types, this is why even the Taiwanese Apple II cloners used 2716 EPROMs until the early 1980s).
Last but not least, I succeeded to throw out all the blanking signals and their associated logic. This fixes the quirk of the Apple IIe that it can't make a proper orange colored vertical line at the rightmost edge of the visible screen.
CURRENT STATE OF THE WORK
The prototype works but is not yet complete. The adoption of the 2716 without losing the lower case character set requires a re-write of my software which generates the video ROM contents. So at the moment I can only show HIRES graphics because this is the only graphics mode in the Apple II which does not require a video ROM to translate the video byte into appropriate dot patterns.
I also don't have any 74LS258 TTL in my stockpile and must order it, which has to wait until I have accumulated an order large enough to make economical sense. I have hundreds of 74LS257 in my basement, but I need its inverting cousin (the 74LS258) to avoid adding yet another IC package.
Here is a closeup of the GEN2 (right) and the GEN1 (left) graphics card:
and here is the backside of the GEN2 card:
... the bunch of red wires are the bypass of the unpopulated video ROM. These will be removed later, once I have the 74LS258 and the video EPROM.
Here are the function blocks of the card:
Here is my Apple-1 work bench:
You can see that I use a switchmode power supply (the metal box with holes on the right hand side) which produces exactly 8V to feed the 5V/3A regulator on the motherboard. Linear regulators (like the LM323K) turn excess voltage into heat (actually, the power = voltage drop over them times the current is turned into a temperature rise that depends on the thermal resistance in K/W of the regulator/heatsink assembly) and without any forced air cooling the Apple-1 is not able to handle the extra load of the graphics card when using transformers that have much more excess voltage than the switchmode power supply. Another lovely quirk of the Apple-1 which needs to be taken into account when plugging power hungry expansion cards in.
Here is a screen photo of the test picture seen on the consumer TV in the above photo when displayed on a professional video monitor:
... alas, the photo looks terrible, and the real visual on the screen is much, much better. Seems that my old Y1998 digicam has its limitations when it comes to taking snapshots of pictures on TV screens. With a classic mirror reflex camera using chemical film I knew how to take such pictures. But nobody does that anymore. Another dying technology.
OUTLOOK
So far for today. Y'all have to celebrate Apple's 50th birthday. In the next few weeks I'll continue the work and complete all the functions and tests and then post here in this thread again about the final results.
And then - if there is enough demand - I might design a PCB. The "form factor" of which is t.b.d., but I think a long vertical PCB running along the right edge of the Apple-1 motherboard would look nice. It should not exceed the height of the ACI card, though, because of the many custom made enclosures out there. But any builder who had the foresight to leave a little bit of empty space to the right of the Apple-1 expansion connector should be able to fit such a PCB in.
Comments invited !
- Uncle Bernie
I actually logged on to see if your 4/1 announcement would be here, and believe it or not was wondering if it would be a video related thing, looks cool. Sorry I don't know enough about Apple I to say much more!
Thanks for the detailed description and photos; it looks quite good from the outside. Of course, I’d love to see a ready-to-build kit with gerber files and firmware straight away – I’d definitely put one together. Otherwise, it’ll just become another half-finished project in the ‘someday…’ category. Please don’t get me wrong, I really appreciate your involvement and the effort you’re putting in, but in my view you should consider giving the whole thing a finished look. There’s a huge difference between projects you can only read about and projects you can actually build and use.
Very nice project, I'd like to see it completed, too.
My friend Nino and I did something similar back in 2021, using the TMS9918A (although it's from 1979):
https://www.applefritter.com/content/graphic-card-apple-1
Reference page:
https://p-l4b.github.io/graphic/
The project is open sourced under CC BY 4.0 license.
Boards, schematics, gerbers and code are free to download.
Enjoy!
Claudio - P-LAB
PS in the video the famous "puzzle game" has been obscured on purpose to avoid any copyright issue. ;-)
In post #3, 'macintosh_nik' wrote:
" Of course, I’d love to see a ready-to-build kit with gerber files and firmware straight away – I’d definitely put one together. Otherwise, it’ll just become another half-finished project in the ‘someday…’ category. "
Uncle Bernie comments:
The problem is, as always, the small size of the Apple-1 microcosm. I've explained this many times here on Applefritter: if there are only 2-3 people worldwide who are interested in building one of my projects, then it's simply not worth my time to design a PCB for it. And as I don't use CAD schematics (only hand-drawn scribbled ones optimized for Wire Wrap) I could not hope to give these to some volunteer who then would redraw them in a CAD tool to then go ahead with doing the PCB layout. And so far, no volunteer ever contacted me expressing willingness to spend his or her own time on these chores. Whoever would do these chores and makes a PCB layout could decide to "own" it and try making money with it instead of putting Gerbers on the web. And unless that person is too greedy, this could make sense for everyone involved - for builders of the project, these PCB could be much cheaper to get from that source than ordering a small number from the usual PCB manufacturers like JLCPCB. If you factor in all the costs with packing and shipping, ordering just 3 or 5 PCBs from JLCPCB makes no sense because they end up to be quite expensive due to the small lot size. And then you are stuck with 2-4 excess PCBs to need to sell off somehow, otherwise your one build will get very expensive even when using "cheap" Chinese PCB manufacturers. And I can't do that anyways as I live in the USA, with all the unacceptable tariffs on Chinese made PCBs. The ideal case would be to have "kit providers" who live in nations not having excessive tariffs, and being near other nations with prospective kit builders, to keep postage low. These "kit providers" could also own the programming equipment needed to make the PLDs and the EPROMs. This could help to keep costs low for the individual builder (never underestimate the tools / equipment needed other then the plain Bill-Of-Materials). One such kit source could be in Canada or Mexico to serve U.S. based builders, and one source could be in some country near the EU to serve the builders all over the European continent. It's important that the nation where the kit source lives has no ongoing trade war with the prospective buyers. Or worse, a shooting war, which always leads to sanctions and trade barriers. In the past years, this planet has turned into a madhouse. The recently started Iran war not making things any better. Gas and food prices going up, and all too many people worldwide are struggling with that. Would they rather buy gas and food (if they still can afford it) or buy one of these kits ? Should anyone order a lot of 25-50 PCBs hoping to be able to resell them under these conditions ?
Look, in my long life I got burned too much with investing my time and money into projects which were based on great innovations and looked very promising just to find out, after having invested many man-years and sums anywhere from $250000 to $500000, that the market demand was not there and no purchase orders could be had. Despite during the market research phase, the same potential customers gave the impression that they would love to buy the envisioned product. In the industry, this trap is called "dangling the carrot in front of the donkey". And the stupid donkey was - me ! (and sometimes, my partners in these failed business ventures, too). And don't get me wrong - not all of my business ventures did fail. And I think my success rate was better than the "9 out of 10 tech based business ventures fail" rule which has been around for a long time. Still, I can't afford to own a private jet so I'm still poor and a loser. Because owning and flying around in a private jet is the ultimate measure of success. Worldwide.
Maybe this is because I stopped developing products on my own dime and went into the semiconductor industry as a mere employee aka "wage slave", despite I could have lived well from the interest on my bonds without doing any work on a job. Where the greedy corporation would found my flights of fancy and allow me to try out novel circuits (always a risk). They got the patents for that and some of the products I designed even made them a healthy profit. But not all of the products were profitable - despite they worked fine as specified in the "objective spec". Meaning the product planners also were donkeys who fell for the dangling carrot. Only large corporations can afford such a waste of design ressources, time, and money. It's the nature of the game. Only few semiconductor products ever make a good profit. And the whole history of the semiconductor industry is full of sad stories of companies who never were profitable and soon were swallowed up / sold to larger competitors for dimes on the dollar. Despite these failing companies had great products. MOS Technology with the 6502 processor was one of them. Allen-Bradley (one of the major investors and stock holders) was fed up with the losses produced by MOS Technology and so it was sold off to Commodore in late 1976.
I lived through 50 years of progress in semiconductor technology which was an amazing run but I also saw the failed projects and companies. So I got very, very conservative with investing my own time, money and effort into anything electronic. The projects I publish here on Applefritter are just a hobby for me, to kill time while being retired, to do something useful, and keep my circuit design skills sharp. No intent to make any profit with any of that - and there is no hope to ever make a profit even if I wanted. The marketplace for Apple-1 projects is just too small. And I think that most aficionados in the Apple-1 microcosm see it in the same way. So they don't want to invest much of their own time and money either. They just want ready-to-build "open source" projects for which they don't want to contribute any effort by themselves. Other than downloading it for free and then - maybe - build it. I don't think that all of the 2-3 people who have expressed interest in my projects in the past would really build one, if the files were available.
What I have hoped for this time, being the 50th birthday of Apple, is that more people seek for the topic "Apple-1" and might find to this page and then get interested enough and in large enough numbers (two dozen or so worldwide would be great !) to motivate me to make a PCB layout for this project. I want this PCB for myself because the prototypes occupy the sole slot and are no good for anything other than the development and verification effort as such. But more adopters are needed to add the missing motivation (don't try to "bribe" me with money - for me it's worthless green toilet paper, I already have enough of owning larger quantities of that fraud than I want, but for me, there is nothing out there worth buying and not turning into a burden).
What I will do is to wait. And when not enough demand materializes for an Apple-1 color graphics card PCB, I will turn the prototype into something that might appeal to the Apple II crowd, of which there are maybe 1000 times more aficionados in the world than for the Apple-1. If you look at the photos in my post #1, you can see that I did plan for that eventuality, too.
- Uncle Bernie
The Apple-1 group on Facebook has over 1,000 members, and the parts group has nearly 600. What ‘micro-world’ of the Apple-1 are you talking about?
The problem lies in your approach to the matter. You keep slipping in the phrase ‘I’ll finish it if there’s interest’, but naturally there won’t be any interest until there’s a finished project. This situation is starting to resemble the age-old debate about which came first, the chicken or the egg.
In post #6, 'Macintosh_nik' wrote:
" ... but naturally there won’t be any interest until there’s a finished project. This situation is starting to resemble the age-old debate about which came first, the chicken or the egg. "
The first statement in your comment is not how it works in the real world. For any serious project there is first a market / demand survey to find out if anybody is interested in buying the envisioned project which at this point of time may only exist on paper. This is typical for each and every industry. Nobody will spend resources, time and money, on developing something nobody wants and for which there is no demand. When I post my projects here on Applefritter, this takes the role of the market / demand survey. And as I have very verbosely (may be too verbosely) explained in my post #5 above, even a positive outcome of such a survey does not guarantee any sales, not even one. Potential customers may just feign interest to learn what is out there being "floated" around, maybe to develop a similar product themselves, or file fake patents on the idea to block any patents by the rightful innovator (happened too me, too), and even if their motives are honest, and their interest is truthful, until the product is developed and ready for production, the market may have changed and the interest is not there anymore.
In case of this graphics card this is not about money, because I would only lose the time I would need to invest to design the layout, as the CAD tool I use (DIPTRACE) has long been bought and is paid for. A prototype run at OSHPARK would cost me maybe $100-$150 for three PCBs, and this is not an issue for me, just a bottle of Champagne less. But what I can't afford under any circumstances is to waste any of my precious RQLT (residual quality lifetime) on projects nobody wants. Even if it's only maybe a week or so which would go to waste.
And don't get me wrong - this particular project is very dear to me as I have developed it over 40 years. I started it in Y1986 when I made "first contact" with the Lattice GALs and back then the project was called "GALAPPLE", aiming at implementing a whole Apple II with Lattice GALs, 16V8 and 20V8. It was a very interesting test case for PLD development tools including my proprietary ones. But I never built a GALAPPLE. All I did is the design and simulation. For more, I did not have any motivation nor any time. My own proprietary simulation tools had become so good that it was pointless to build the hardware to prove that it works. The simulation was enough.
After I got sucked into the Apple-1 microcosm, which really is tiny - 1000 members in the Facebook forum, you say ? - I decided to do a few small mods to adapt it to the Apple-1 and I actually built the wire wrap prototypes to prove to potential adopters /builders it's real.
As to the "chicken-and-egg" problem, this is a well known trope, but does not apply here. People could see my prototypes, and comment or send me a PM ('personal message') to encourage / motivate me to make a PCB layout. I won't even take money nor would I want to produce and sell any of these PCBs. But I would absolutely hate if I spend all that effort designing a PCB and nobody wants to build it ? Guess how many people ordered my Gen2 improved ACI PCB from OSHPARK, where I put it up for grabs ?
(Another untold side of my story is how many piles of unused PCBs I have around, all for projects that did not find builders, among these some 50+ (or so) Gen2 improved ACI PCBs which I ordered before the tariffs struck. Every time I see these useless and wasted PCBs I get angry and feel stupid. But I don't want to throw them into the trashcan either).
So, what can we do ?
As I am not going to go to Facebook in any way, shape or form, maybe you go ahead and post a link to this thread there, using your own Facebook account. And tell them to post likes or dislikes (or any other idea how the PCB should look) there, in Facebook. And then, in maybe 2-3 weeks, you can report back to us here on Applefritter how much interest was generated by your post. (I never understood why people a shy to become Applefritter members, Tom Owad does not spy on you nor does he want your name, address, birth date, nor your phone number, Applefritter is much, much safer than Facebook which spies on you and sells all your data (your "personality profile") to third parties, which include organized crime, dubious spook/"Gestapo" type agencies, telemarketing scammers, etc. - this is why I never use Facebook, and for a good reason).
I'm curious how much resonance such a campaign on Facebook might bring. More than the 2-3 people my posts about my projects on Applefritter bring ? Let's see !
Do we have a deal, 'Macintosh_nik' ?
- Uncle Bernie
Perhaps the problem lies in your ‘professional approach’; whilst its principles can certainly be applied to hobby projects, on the whole it’s a completely different matter. In my view, hobby projects generally exist more on a creative level. In most cases, the average enthusiast starts a project primarily to create something for themselves; that is exactly how Woz created the Apple-1. Mike Willegal, Michael NG and Misha originally built their replicas because of a strong desire to own an Apple-1 and a lack of the financial means to purchase an original. Interest in the Apple-1 is not static; there are peaks and troughs. We all remember the last surge of interest in the early 2020s, when it seemed as though the whole world was preoccupied with nothing but building Apple-1s. There were reasons for this surge: Misha published his project as open-source, so anyone could now order a printed circuit board at a low cost; Armin produced excellent reproductions of the original manuals; and you offered the market fully ready-made construction kits, which greatly simplified the assembly process for novice builders. In other words, it is hobbyist projects that are sparking interest in the Apple-1, thereby helping to popularise this hobby. It is the popularisation of this hobby that should be the main objective, rather than the commercial prospects of individual products. That said, if a product is good and attracts a lot of interest, there is nothing wrong with trying to make a profit from it, or at least recoup the money invested.
I’ll certainly post about this graphics card on Facebook, but likes and comments shouldn’t be your main motivation; the main thing should still be promoting this hobby. If you like, I can help you sell your ACI GEN 2 cards; I’ll post an ad in the components group so that anyone interested in buying them can get in touch with you. I’m generally open to any kind of collaboration, provided it’s above board and doesn’t involve prolonged fasting :)
It’s a bit like a young writer approaching Sergei Yesenin with a notebook full of his poems and asking him to assess them and say whether he should even bother with poetry at all. Yesenin didn’t even bother to read them; he said that if you can choose not to write, then you shouldn’t even start — true poets write simply because they cannot help but write.
Hello Uncle Bernie,I made a simple post with a link to this thread.I hope that some of the 1,200 members of the group will come by here.Even though your work only interests a few people, for me it is a form of art that I admire for the simple beauty of the gesture.
Capture d’écran du 2026-04-04 13-16-34.png
In post #9, 'wirehead' wrote:
" Even though your work only interests a few people, for me it is a form of art that I admire for the simple beauty of the gesture. "
Uncle Bernie comments:
Thanks for putting this post into the facebook forum. I really cross my fingers that your post attracts more Apple-1 owners willing to build my color graphics card. If we get about a dozen or so, I will definitely design a PCB for it and make the Gerbers and all the files needed to program the GALs and the VROM available as a tarball.
I like your take that this is a "form of art". I always try to make my designs into works of art, they not only must function perfectly, but also look nice. This is why my PCB layouts require much more time and effort than "normal". And like any artist, I hate the idea that I create something beautiful and nobody cares about it and nobody wants to build it.
So let's see what comes out of your facebook post. Alas, I can't follow facebook myself as I don't want to get spied upon and sold out to crime organisations and/or nuisances (marketers).
I once considered to buy a "burner phone" for cash, with no links to my real person, just to use it to participate in the Apple-1 forum on facebook, but this turned out to be infeasable due to the activation process of such a phone - unlike the various spook agencies who do this all the time, I can't fabricate a fake persona whose data would pass muster. So, no facebook for me. Which is bad as I can't interact with this 1200+ Apple-1 aficionado community there - but maybe we found a way, at least for this project !
I'm really looking for inputs how this card should be specified in its final form, and I'm willing to listen. There are so many options ... such as taking the 14.31818 MHz clock off the Apple-1 motherboard, or providing a DIL-8 or DIL-14 metal can oscillator. Or if the ICs should face to the motherboard, or away from it. Or if the card should have a small fan on it which would blow air onto the LM323K regulator. Or if it should be a modular, dual PCB solution: a basic 48 kByte DRAM card which plugs into the expansion edge connector, and the video section being a 2nd PCB which plugs into the memory card.
And then, the software ... with Microsoft having "freed" their 6502 Microsoft BASIC, by adding the graphics commands to it, a "free", "open source", 100% compatible BASIC could be built.
And who (of the users) would port Apple II games to this graphics card ? (it's 100% Apple II compatible, mind you).
I also have an idea for a "game box" which is cheap and adds joystick ports and sound output to the Apple-1 on a very small budget.
The possibilities are endless !
The only thing that is missing - yet - is a large enough group of interested Apple-1 owners who would build the card and the game box, and port some games. This would be fun, no ?
Comments invited !
- Uncle Bernie
I'm retiring soon and I am willing to build things. A color Video board for a Apple I interests me. :-)
In post #7, 'linuxha' wrote:
" I'm retiring soon and I am willing to build things. A color Video board for a Apple I interests me. :-) "
Uncle Bernie comments:
This made me chuckle ... seems we can only do the fun things - which we always wanted to do - only after retirement. I'm also retired and this is the reason why I can design and build these things now.
Note that "a color video board for the Apple-1" won't be very interesting if it isn't Apple II compatible. My design is 100% Apple II compatible and so it is possible - at least theoretically - to port Apple II games to the Apple-1 so equipped. But this needs volunteers who actually a) build the card and b) port games to it.
Let's see what resonance the campaign on facebook initiated by 'wirehead' of post #9 brings in the next few weeks.
Until then I'll also have the development phase finished and may have some demo software ready.
- Uncle Bernie
I'll gratefully buy one, and help test, if/when they are made.
Thanks and much appreciated.
>> In post #8, 'UncleBernie' wrote:
>>> In post #7, 'linuxha' wrote:
>>> " I'm retiring soon and I am willing to build things. A color Video board for a Apple I interests me. :-) "
>> This made me chuckle ... seems we can only do the fun things - which we always wanted to do - only after retirement. I'm also retired and this is the reason why I can design and build these things now.
I went to school for electronics (they told me all I would do was repair TVs and Toasters, this was befor computers). Somehoe I ended up doing software (QA)
I'll post an off topic thread as to I am retiring, I don't want to steal this thread