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silveradept[Welcome to December Days, where I natter on about things organized around a theme (sometimes very loosely), one a day, for 31 days. This year, we're taking a look back at some touchpoints along the way of my journey with computing and computing devices.]
Which was the first encounter I had with the Apple Computer Corporation in a Catholic school kindergarten (and several grades after that). The sound of the computer booting that I remember, a beep followed by what I might best describe as what a disk drive might do if it were trying to shuffle cards, meant there would be at least a little bit of computer time. Computer time was almost always out in the hallway away from the classroom so that it wouldn't be distracting to the rest of the class inside, and there wasn't a whole lot of it, honestly. There were some reading assessments done on those machines, and once it became clear that I was reading and my grade level, I got taught passwords to input at the name screen so as to jump up to levels that would be more appropriate for me. Being a gifted, somewhat computer-literate child was a thing that I did well, although I regret a little bit that I might have had the opportunity to get tested for being born brilliant and neurodivergent had we known them what we know now when one of my teachers was worried I was, in fact, neurodivergent. Instead, I tested brilliant, and because I got really good at being brilliant all throughout school, I managed not to have major issues with the composition of my brain chemistry until after being employed for a few years.
Anyway, the Apple IIe was a workhorse of a lot of my early school computing practice, and I suspect it was because Apple did really good with education discounts and device management, like they do now. (My hatred for their, and all, planned obsolescence schemes comes later on in the series.) I don't remember doing a lot of what we would think of as computer education now, either in learning how to use an operating system or engaging in programming exercises, but I do remember playing some games on it, one of which was the digital equivalent of the toy where you have to find the correct shape for the hole. And, much later on, a game that was about investigating who stole a key from a dinner party and then making your accusation by throwing a pie in their face. Which you then had to justify by saying where they had hidden the key. (If you were right, you got a password to input to skip to the next mystery of that type.) I remember that game specifically because on the third time around, the host character had very clearly been replaced by a robot duplicate, so instead of investigating, I flung a pie immediately, and then when asked to justify it, I think my brain said something to the equivalent of "it's stored where the Tin Man wishes he had something," and so, on the strength of that cultural assumption, I said he had it in his heart, and it turns out, that was the right spot, cue the final chase sequence. (That game was part of a disk that contained other games as well, which sometimes required flipping which side of the disk was being read, because that was an era where the 5.25" floppy disk had data on both of its sides in a bid to increase the total amount of storage space available.)
I'm pretty sure there wasn't an entire lab of IIe computers when I got to middle school, but don't quote me on that, since I didn't spend a lot of time in the computer labs learning things I may have already known. It certainly wasn't the case in high school. I think the middle school computers had The Oregon Trail on them, and while I saw a lot of people hunting the local species into oblivion, I did not embark on trying to die from dysentery myself. In my memory, the machine isn't much more than a blip, really, but I have a sneaking suspicion that IIe got way more use than it had any right to because my elementary or middle schooling never really intended to do much about computers in those time periods, even as I was using computers plenty at home.
- CPU: MOS Technology/Synertek 6502 @ 1.023 MHz or
NCR/GTE 65C02 @ 1.023 MHz - Memory: 64 kB RAM built-in, expandable up to 1 MB RAM or more, 16 kB ROM built-in
- Video: Up to 560×192 (16 colors), NTSC composite video output (RCA connector)
- Audio: Built-in speaker with 1-bit toggling, Built-in cassette recorder interface using two 1⁄8-inch mono phono jacks with 1-bit toggle output, 1-bit zero-crossing input
- Expansion: Seven 50-pin card-edge slots, one 60-pin card-edge slot.
- Input: Keyboard, with numeric keypad available separately, single-button mouse available as an expansion card or with the DE-9 connector interface, Joystick (DE-9)
Which was the first encounter I had with the Apple Computer Corporation in a Catholic school kindergarten (and several grades after that). The sound of the computer booting that I remember, a beep followed by what I might best describe as what a disk drive might do if it were trying to shuffle cards, meant there would be at least a little bit of computer time. Computer time was almost always out in the hallway away from the classroom so that it wouldn't be distracting to the rest of the class inside, and there wasn't a whole lot of it, honestly. There were some reading assessments done on those machines, and once it became clear that I was reading and my grade level, I got taught passwords to input at the name screen so as to jump up to levels that would be more appropriate for me. Being a gifted, somewhat computer-literate child was a thing that I did well, although I regret a little bit that I might have had the opportunity to get tested for being born brilliant and neurodivergent had we known them what we know now when one of my teachers was worried I was, in fact, neurodivergent. Instead, I tested brilliant, and because I got really good at being brilliant all throughout school, I managed not to have major issues with the composition of my brain chemistry until after being employed for a few years.
Anyway, the Apple IIe was a workhorse of a lot of my early school computing practice, and I suspect it was because Apple did really good with education discounts and device management, like they do now. (My hatred for their, and all, planned obsolescence schemes comes later on in the series.) I don't remember doing a lot of what we would think of as computer education now, either in learning how to use an operating system or engaging in programming exercises, but I do remember playing some games on it, one of which was the digital equivalent of the toy where you have to find the correct shape for the hole. And, much later on, a game that was about investigating who stole a key from a dinner party and then making your accusation by throwing a pie in their face. Which you then had to justify by saying where they had hidden the key. (If you were right, you got a password to input to skip to the next mystery of that type.) I remember that game specifically because on the third time around, the host character had very clearly been replaced by a robot duplicate, so instead of investigating, I flung a pie immediately, and then when asked to justify it, I think my brain said something to the equivalent of "it's stored where the Tin Man wishes he had something," and so, on the strength of that cultural assumption, I said he had it in his heart, and it turns out, that was the right spot, cue the final chase sequence. (That game was part of a disk that contained other games as well, which sometimes required flipping which side of the disk was being read, because that was an era where the 5.25" floppy disk had data on both of its sides in a bid to increase the total amount of storage space available.)
I'm pretty sure there wasn't an entire lab of IIe computers when I got to middle school, but don't quote me on that, since I didn't spend a lot of time in the computer labs learning things I may have already known. It certainly wasn't the case in high school. I think the middle school computers had The Oregon Trail on them, and while I saw a lot of people hunting the local species into oblivion, I did not embark on trying to die from dysentery myself. In my memory, the machine isn't much more than a blip, really, but I have a sneaking suspicion that IIe got way more use than it had any right to because my elementary or middle schooling never really intended to do much about computers in those time periods, even as I was using computers plenty at home.
no subject
Date: 2021-12-05 10:22 pm (UTC)That was one of Wozniak's cost-saving inventions.
Booting an Apple II from a disk requires loading track 0 sector 0 into memory and then jumping to it. (For Apple DOS, that sector contains enough code to read in the rest of the first 3 tracks and then jump to that. Bootstrapping at its finest.) This requires the disk head to be on track 0. How does the computer know what track the head is on? Well, there could be a sensor that tracks the head position and reports it back to the CPU, but that would add hardware cost.
So Woz simply had the boot process move the head toward track 0 more than 35 times (bouncing off the stop as many times as necessary), guaranteeing that by the end of the process it would be on track 0 no matter what track it had been on previously. After that, software could keep track of the head moves to determine what track the head was over at any given point.
no subject
Date: 2021-12-06 03:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-06 03:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-06 05:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-06 06:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-06 11:01 pm (UTC)