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14 MIN READ TIME

EMULATION

Run an Apple II on your Linux system

Les Pounder steps into his time machine and travels back to 1977, and not just to watch Star Wars on the big screen for once.

Credit: https://paleotronic.com/software/microm8

OUR EXPERT

Les Pounder is associate editor at Tom’s Hardware and a freelance creative technologist. He blogs about his discoveries at bigl.es.

QUICK TIP

In Logo we used commands to move around the screen. For example, FORWARD and LEFT. But we can shorten these commands for ease of use. FD and LT perform the exact same functions.

T he Apple II (often referred to as the Apple ][) was released in June 1977. It was one of the first successful mass-produced computers and Apple’s first personal computer aimed squarely at the consumer market. The hardware was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak and the case by Steve Jobs, who were the founders of Apple.

In 1977 there were three machines vying for attention and inclusion in our lives: the Commodore PET 2001, TRS-80 and the Apple II. Powered by a MOS Technology 6502 CPU running at 1,023MHz and available with between four and 64KB of RAM, the Apple II spawned a series of machines from 1977 to 1992, ending with the Apple IIGS.

Our favourite Apple II models in the series are the Apple IIc and the IIc Plus. You might be thinking, “Why?”. Well, these models both featured a built-in floppy disk drive (5.25- and 3.5-inch, respectively) and they were designed to be portable. They are by no means a laptop, but they took up very little space, and offered plenty of power and compatibility with software. The downside of these machines was that they lacked the space to install aftermarket add-ons. This didn’t stop some ingenious individuals, who managed to squeeze CPU accelerators and RAM upgrades into the casing without ruinning the clean aesthetics.

In the UK, the Apple II didn’t make much of a dent (just me then? Ed) in the saturated home computer scene. They were expensive compared to machines from Acorn, Sinclair and Commodore. But in the US the Apple II was adopted and loved by a generation of coders. Right now the cost of original Apple II hardware has skyrocketed and so to take our first steps with this great machine, we once again look to emulation and sometimes we find emulators in the strangest of places.

Emulating an Apple ][

We start with the easiest means to emulate an Apple II, specifically Applesoft BASIC (www.calormen.com/ jsbasic), which uses JavaScript. It continues a trend that we’ve seen with other retro computers, where they’re emulated on the web via JavaScript.

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Linux Format
May 2021
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