NAME  

APPLE III

MANUFACTURER  

Apple

TYPE  

Professional Computer

ORIGIN  

U.S.A.

YEAR  

May 1980

BUILT IN LANGUAGE 

Business BASIC

KEYBOARD  

Full stroke 74-key with numeric keypad

CPU  

MOS 6502A

SPEED  

2 MHz

RAM  

128 KB (up to 512 KB)

ROM  

16 KB

TEXT MODES 

40 or 80 chars x 24 lines

GRAPHIC MODES 

40 x 40-48 (16 colors), 280 x 160-192 (6 colors), 560 x 160-192 (2 colors)

COLORS  

16 maximum

SOUND  

One channel 7 octaves

SIZE / WEIGHT 

44.4 (W) x 46.2 (D) x 12.2 (H) cm

I/O PORTS 

Monitor, Internal Slots (4), RS-232, Floppy disk port

BUILT IN MEDIA 

One built in 140 KB 5.25'' disk-drive

OS  

SOS

POWER SUPPLY 

Built-in power supply unit

PERIPHERALS  

4 expansion slots, 5 MB Profile hard disk unit, dual floppy disc unit, color video card, provision for extra memory

PRICE  

$1995

 

Apple III

Apple III


 The Apple III was designed to be a business machine. It was partly compatible with the Apple II (thanks to a few options in the operating system). It used a powerful memory management system and worked under SOS (Sophisticated Operating System), which was a great, device-independent, operating system. This OS was the "ancestor" of ProDOS (the "professional" Apple operating system) and some parts of this system were used later in the Lisa and Macintosh OSs.

Despite its unique features, the Apple III had a lot of technical

problems, namely, the horrible case design. It caused the internal temperature to get so hot that the motherboard would warp and some of the socketed chips would become unseated. To remedy this, Apple told people to literally pick up the computer several centimeters off the desk and drop it! It was a miserable flop in the marketplace.

The Apple III was followed in December 1983 by the Apple III Plus, which had an Apple IIe style keyboard and a new video interface. Four months later, it was discontinued.



Custom Search