The Apple IIgs
was the last in the line of the original Apple II's designed by Steve
Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple Computers Inc. This
latest and greatest computer was as far above the original Apple II technically
as the original Apple II was the ENIAC. But yet the IIgs
could still run all of the Apple II software without any
problems. This was a masterful achievement considering the IIgs
used a 16 bit processor and a 16 bit architecture.
When the IIgs was being
designed the Apple company was in the midst of a retooling phase
with the announcement and release of the Macintosh. the majority
of the company resources were committed to the Mac. Still the
design teams for the IIgs were able to pull off yet another miracle.
Released just 2 years after the Mac the IIgs became one of
the most popular of the Apple II series, replacing the older IIe's
as a favorite in the schools.
It's sleek new design with its
component structure was a radical change from the all in one box design
of past Apples, more in line with the trend in the PC
market. Unlike the Apple IIc, the IIgs was expandable
through add on boards, a return to the earlier Wozniak philosophy
to make the Apple an open architecture. As with the earlier Apple
II's and IIe's the top of the CPU unit is removable allowing
access to the 7 expansion slots inside.
The detached keyboard was
beautifully designed and had a great feel to it and was connected along
with a one button mouse to the CPU unit through the ADB (Apple Desktop Bus) port.
The ADB was another innovation introduced on the IIgs and
later adopted by the Macintosh line. I have found that the IIgs
keyboards are interchangeable with some of the SE and later
series of Mac's with the ADB ports in case anyone needs a
replacement keyboard in a pinch.
The first IIgs' came with a
256k of RAM
built into the motherboard and were expandable to 8
Megabytes with an expansion card
installed in a special slot on the motherboard. These were the128k ROM 1
versions of the IIgs later to be replaced with versions up to the
final 256k ROM 3 with 1 Megabyte of RAM built into
the motherboard and capable of
accessing up to 8 Megabytes through the expansion slot.
The OS (Operating System)
also benefited from the Macintosh and got a makeover. Gone was
the opening BASIC
command line replaced by the sleek new GUI
(Graphical User Interface) similar to the Mac's. The IIgs
was not all looks, it was a very powerful computer for its time. Its
processor was the Western Design Center's 65C816 running at 2.8MHz, a 16-bit
processor with the unique ability to emulate the MOSTEK 6502
8-bit processor that resides in all previous Apple II series
computers.
The IIgs addressed a
couple of
the weaknesses of the previous versions of the II series,
the graphics and sound capabilities. Hence the G and S in
the Apple IIgs name. The IIgs now had a dedicated graphics
processor capable of delivering high resolution graphics up to 640 x 200
pixels and a color palette of up to 4096 colors. One of the drawbacks though
was the need to use an RGB
monitor to display the great graphics
and no allowances were made for the hookup to a standard television or
composite monitor. Still impressive by anybodies standards of that
period.
And it did not stop there,
the IIgs was given sound, not just beeps and tones as its
predecessors had, but a built in music synthesizer chip with 15 voices.
The co-processor was designed by Ensoniq and given a dedicated 64
kilobytes of RAM (That's as much total memory the original Apple
II had in it's RAM and ROM combined)
The IIgs was not without
its shortcomings, It had no internal floppy drives or hard drives.
Although the IIgs was bundled with a 800 kb 3.5 inch external
floppy drive. To remain compatible with the previous Apples, an optional
5.25 external floppy drive was needed to be
able to use the existing software for older Apple II's. An
optional external hard drive was supported in ROM
and could be
connected to a SCSI
( pronounced 'scuzzy') adapter card inserted into a slot in the computer.
Finally in honor of the
creator of the Apple II line of computers a specially marked IIgs
was released called the Woz Limited Edition. This is
a highly coveted machine by collectors and usually pulls a premium price
at the online auctions.
I would like to thank Rob
Byrnes for donating his Apple IIgs to the museum, it is one
of 2 working models I have. This one is a ROM 3 version with a
built in 1 MB of RAM, it has both a 3.5 and 5.25 inch floppy
drives and is connected to a standard Apple RGB monitor.
