Apple II Plus
I have two main units (one European and one USA), two Apple Disk II,
Apple Disc II Interface Card and Kaga Electronics 12″ RGB Vision-I monitor.
type computer
country USA
year 1979
os Apple DOS (optional Pascal and ProDOS)
cpu MOS 6502
speed 1 MHz
ram 16 KB
graphic lo-res 40×48, hi-res 280×192
colors lo-res 16, hi-res 6
sound 1-bit speaker
ports NTSC video out, Parallel, Serial
The Apple II Plus — The Computer That Launched an Industry
The Apple II Plus, released in 1979 as a successor to the original Apple II, was one of the most significant personal computers ever built. Designed by Steve Wozniak and sold by Steve Jobs’ fledgling Apple Computer company, the Apple II family essentially created the personal computer industry as we know it. The II Plus added Applesoft BASIC in ROM — a floating-point BASIC co-developed with Microsoft — making it dramatically more capable than its predecessor for both business and educational use.
Origins
The original Apple II launched in 1977 was already revolutionary: a fully assembled, colour-capable personal computer with an open architecture that invited expansion. The II Plus refined this formula, shipping with 48 KB of RAM (expandable to 64 KB), Applesoft BASIC in ROM, and Apple’s DOS 3.3 operating system. Its open architecture — eight expansion slots on the motherboard — allowed third-party manufacturers to create an extraordinary ecosystem of peripherals, from disk drives and memory expansion to serial interfaces and graphics cards.
VisiCalc and the Business Revolution
The single most important application in the Apple II’s history was VisiCalc, released in 1979 — the world’s first spreadsheet program. VisiCalc transformed the Apple II from a hobbyist’s toy into a serious business tool, and businesses bought Apple IIs specifically to run it. This ”killer application” phenomenon — software so compelling it drives hardware purchases — was first demonstrated on the Apple II and has shaped the technology industry ever since.
The Computer Museum Ata Collection
The collection holds two Apple II Plus units — one European and one USA model — along with two Apple Disk II drives, an Apple Disk II Interface Card, and a Kaga Electronics 12-inch RGB Vision-I monitor. Having both European and American variants is historically significant, as the European models were often modified for different power standards and video output formats.