APPLE II FOREVER? MAYBE WITH VIRTUAL II

Great consumer products can live forever, even when they've been discontinued a long time ago. That certainly rings true with classic automobiles, for example. In fact, just about every product category has its superstars if you think about it. Collectors treasure their antique cameras, transistor radios, television sets, many of them valued at thousands of dollars more today than when they sold brand new. This is also true of the personal computer. Take the Apple I which sold new for $666.66.  Only around 200 were made. The last one I heard about being sold went for around $50,000 at an auction in 1999 however a more typical price for an Apple I is in the $14,000­$16,000 range these days if you can even find one for sale. It is a highly prized collector item.

My very first computer was an Apple II. It was the Integer model with 48k of memory so that I could access the computer's hi-res graphics. I still had to load everything via the cassette tape interface which was miserable at best. Later on, I got an Apple II Plus that had AppleSoft Basic built in along with two floppy disk drives. Finally I upgraded to an Apple //e with a whopping 128k of RAM. I loved my Apple and have many fond memories of the countless hours I spent with it learning about the technology, learning to program in BASIC and using it to type my school reports. Adding the 300 baud modem was another thrill that let my computer talk to other systems over an ordinary phone line. Then there were the disk operating systems starting with DOS 3.2 and DOS 3.3 and then ProDOS. It was great.

While I wax nostalgic here, it turns out that untold numbers out there share many of those happy moments with their Apple II. But alas, we've all moved on to other computers, some going to the Windows platform, others staying with Apple but using the Macintosh. But to those of you who would like to take a happy trip down memory lane, you now can do so without trying to locate an actual Apple II computer. You can take that trip virtually with an amazing Apple II emulator program entitled Virtual ][ that runs on, most appropriately, a Macintosh.

First go to the developer's website to download Virtual ][. While there, make sure your speakers are on as you will be treated to a 30 second refrain from Apple Computer's "Apple II Forever" song they played back at the unveiling of the Apple //c on April 24, 1984 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Nice touch and it's still a catchy tune!

Run Virtual ][ and the first thing you hear is the familiar power-on beep and the clatter of the attached floppy disk drive as it begins to spin. I got goose bumps. I must impress on you that these sounds are the EXACT sounds that you would hear from the real thing. The attention to detail in this emulator is nothing less than phenomenal. After corresponding with its inventor, he confirmed my suspicion that this was truly a labor of love. The author hardly plans to get rich selling it for $19 for a limited license and
$49 for the full-featured version.

The pictures of the two floppy drives open and close as you insert in the images of the little 5.25 floppy disks. You even hear the realistic sounds those actions made. Virtual ][ supports a USB game pad or joystick on the Mac to give you the virtual game paddles, supports configurable peripheral cards, and even emulates the old Epson FX-80 dot matrix printer which was one of the more popular printer models found on an Apple II back in those days. Virtual ][ even emulates the old Z80A processor card that let you run the CP/M operating system.

For those of you who never laid hands on an Apple II, all this will mean squat. To those of you who had one of these classic computers, prepare for a blast from the past. I was amazed at how my fingers remembered what key sequences to press such as the Escape-Control C that cleared the screen, or "Call -151" to go into the assembly language monitor! It was very spooky.
I have to say that if I were to somehow not be able to see the Macintosh hardware and saw and heard only the Apple II display, I would swear that I was using my old computer friend for real. The emulation is that good.

Now in its Version 4.0 release, Virtual ][ has added emulation for the Mockingboard which was a popular add-on card that gave the computer superior sound abilities including speech. If you ever had an Apple II and are one of the many who have fond memories of that little machine, I strongly urge you to get a copy of Virtual ][ and try it for yourself. Most of our nostalgic moments are relived via memories and old photographs. But through the magic of technology, you can relive your happy Apple II moments in a way just not possible with anything else out there. With Virtual ][, you really can have your Apple II Forever.

Virtual ][ can be downloaded from its creator's website at:
www.xs4all.nl/~gp/VirtualII/