Binary Dinosaurs - Apple Computer Inc

Who can tell, without Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs I wonder how long it would've taken for the PC brigade to cotton onto the concept of a mouse related operating environment? Both Steves met at the Homebrew Computer Club (whose membership also boasted one William Gates III) where Woz had been working on a MOS 6502 based micro kit. That machine became the Apple I after the company was formed, and it sold for $666.66.

Its successor, the Apple II, was a massive success in homes, schools, colleges and universities all over the world - it was very expandable and many companies jumped on the expansion bandwagon, offering everything from memory expansion through colour TV cards to SCSI interfaces once SCSI had been accepted as a standard, Z80 co-processors etc. I've got a massive box of Apple cards here that range from printer interfaces to %DEITY% knows what. Maybe one day I'll catalogue them :)

Despite the fact the computer mouse had been a reality since the mid 60s (1966 I think) only bigger workstation manufacturers like Xerox and Three Rivers had used the rodent in their machines. Apple changed all that with the Lisa and the Macintosh - named after the designer's favourite brand of apple. They also gave us floating toolbars in applications (MacDraw, 1984) and very small pre-emptive cooperative multitasking operating systems - LisaOS plus the Lisa Office applications fitted on 7 400K floppies!

Many stories surround the flop of the Apple III, I like the one that says Steve Jobs had designed the case before the hardware boys had finished the electronics, which resulted in a machine that failed a lot due to overheating.

Success of the Apple ][ line of machines led to competition from companies who copied the design and beefed it up a bit, 2 names spring to mind here - Franklin and Laser both made Apple ][ clones that did more than irk Apple themselves (lawsuits abounded in those days :), they made 'em produce machines like the ][c and ][c+ to try and outdo the competition.

There are many sites documenting Apple's creation and successes so I won't do that again here. Have a look at the links page if you're after more info.

Machines

Lisa 2 - ho yus.....:o)
MacXL, aka a Lisa 2/10 with Sun Remarketing SCSI card and Seagate ST225, new ROMs etc
III with Monitor III and ProFile.
][+< on its own.
][Europlus from Stuart, rescued from Port Talbot steelworks.
//e also from Stuart, badly corroded but should cleaned up beautifully.
][gs personally signed by Woz and dedicated to the previous owner. SMART machine!
][gs, boxed with keyboard and mouse.
][GS with keyboard/mono monitor and a pair of 3.5" floppies, donated by Jon Newson - thanks!
120V ][c+ - another smart machine, released in the US only.
][ Europlus with 128k card, twin floppy drives and loads of books
][e with tilting screen and twin floppy drives
Mac 512K with extended keyboard and rodent, donated by Stuart Northfield - thanks!
Mac Plus with keyboard, mouse and SC40 external hard drive.
Mac Plus in Apple carrying case complete with 800K external floppy, keyboard & mouse.
Mac SE with a Radius Accelerator 25, er, accelerator.
Classic with 4MB, 40MB hard drive, books, disks etc.
Classic II with 4mb, 40mb HD, books, disks etc.
Colour Classic with 80mb HD.
Macintosh II complete
Macintosh IIfx with hi-res video card
IIci complete with monitor, keyboard and rodent.
IIcx on it's own. Cheers Rich!
IIsi, just missing the hard drive tray - swapped by Chris Davies.
LC with extended keyboard, mouse, monitor and disks
LC II with keyboard, monitor, mouse
LC II with keyboard and PDS Appletalk card
LC III on its own but working.
Performa 400 with monitor and CD-ROM
Centris 650, on its own but then again it was only a quid :)
Centris 650 with high framerate video capture card, found in a skip
LC475 with Monitor, keyboard, rodent and CD-ROM
Performa 6200 with Apple Design keyboard and mouse.
Performa 6320 with Apple Design keyboard, rodent and Multi-Scan display
Powerbook 180 with PSU
Green and White G3 with matching monitor, keyboard and mouse
PowerMac 6500/266, on its own and not very well (from Freecyclers)
PowerMac 7100/66av with a Sonnet Crescendo G3 CPU upgrade (from Freecyclers)
Powerbook Titanium G4, from Jay on Freecycle, it's unfortunately dead
'Quicksilver' G4 with 15" LCD Studio Display
MDD G4 currently needing a PSU, from freecycle
Indigo iMac DV, complete and running OS9 very nicely
15" Flat Screen Telescopic iMac G4 from Judith on Freecycle, thanks!
PowerPC Mac Mini G4, the machine that served this site until 2020 when it was replaced by a Raspberry Pi4.
G5 dual core with 20" Studio Display
Newton Messagepad 2000 with documentation, smart wallet and CDs
Newton 120 with a ton of extras I haven't documented yet, an excellent donation from Richard Cassidy - thanks!
eMate from Kieran Matthew, cheers! It doesn't work yet but when has that stopped me.

Peripherals

Fileware 'Twiggy' disk for the Lisa 1! *bounce*
External floppy for the Plus. (visible in the Plus picture)
External floppy for the Apple ///
3.5" floppy for the Apple ][GS
5 1/4" floppy for the ][GS
MacinStore external hard drive for the Mac
MacinStore external Magneto-Optical drive for the Mac
External CD-ROM for Macs
System board for the Apple ///
System s/w, books, Visicalc etc for the Apple ///
Integer BASIC card for the ][, boxed.
Parallel card for the ][, boxed.
Super Serial Card for the ][ and //e, boxed

More ][ add-on cards than I can count ATM including CoPro cards, cache cards, serial cards, parallel cards, ROM cards etc
A bundle of books and software for the ][ and ///.
Original spares including chips, screws, mountings, feet, paint for the ][ series
Newton Fax Modem with manual.
Mac II Video cards
Bundles of Appletalk, ADB and SCSI cables
This is what you need to get your Mac IIfx working properly with external SCSI devices

Printers

Stylewriter Printer
Stylewriter II printer
Laserwriter Style, er, laser printer
Apple printer for the Lisa and others, looking suspiciously like the DEC LA50....or was it the other way round? :o)

Related pix:

LC, Woz GS, LCii