Apple II

Released in 1977, Apple II paved the way for the later and more advanced computers to become a reality. It is one of the first mass produced models and one that made it possible for the average man to finally own a home computer.

Apple II was numerous strides ahead of its predecessor Apple I in the race of technological advancements. Just what did it have behind that easily removable plastic casing? Take a look!

8 expansion slots: This was the most prominent feature that Apple II had in its arsenal. These expansion slots could be used to serve an array of purposes including memory expansion, processor accelerators, video cards, floppy disk controllers, PASCAL and CP/M cards and parallel, serial and SCSI cards. With the addition of these extras, the performance of the Apple II could further be enhanced.

Color display: Apple II was the first to have a color display. Apple II actually drew a rainbow in the once colorless world of computers. This made the computing experience a lot more fun for users.

The other features included a 1 MHz processor, a megabyte of hard disk, RAM of up to 48 Kilobytes and a megabyte of memory.

Apart from the expansion slots and color display, what made Apple II popular was the large number of programs it was able to run-over 1500. One of these was a spreadsheet program named VisiCalc. This program proved to be a blessing in the world of corporate accountancy. Certain tasks that once took hours or even days to complete could be done much quicker. What once took hours could now be completed in minutes, not to mention the improved accuracy it offered.

17 years and five million sales later, the production of Apple II was stopped in 1993. By this time Apple II had laid a stable foundation for the more sophisticated models to come.

Apple II certainly had a personality of its own. Many are still looking for this technological treasure in eBay auctions or seek parts and accessories to help rebuild one.