Early Microcomputers in Singapore

In this section, I will be talking about my experience with the various microcomputers:

  • Apple ][
  • Commodore
  • Tandy Radio Shack
  • NEC Microcomputers
  • Sinclair Microcomputers
  • Otorona Attache
  • IBM PC
  • Creative Technology's Cubic microcomputers
    		•
  • Corvus System Winchester Disk Systems

    • Note that these pages are full of graphics and may take a long time to load. What I will be showing are the capability and capacity of such microcomputers and what better way to show it is via their brochures.

    This pages were set up in the hope that students and people of today would appreciate the technology advances made as compared to now and 20 years ago, to compare the microprocessor speed 1MHz to 600MHz, to compare memory of 4K to 128M (or 131,072K), to compare disk storage of none (or 140K) to over 10Gb (1 Gb = 1,048,576K) of today.

    When I first started work in 1981, the micromputer which I use was Apple ][.

    Specifications of the Apple ][ was as follows:

  • CPU - 6502 microprocessor running at 1 MHz.
  • RAM Memory of 4K or 16K.
  • VDU - usually monochrome, later colour, 24 lines per page, 40 characters per line (and later 80 character per line).
  • Graphics 40 x 48 at low resolution and 280 by 192 at high resolution.
  • 52 keys keyboard.
  • Input-Output - initially cassette, later 5.25" diskette.
  • Diskette capacity - 35 tracks, 16 (or 13) sectors at 256 byte per sector, or about 140K per diskette. Note that initially there were no hard disk storage for the microcomputers. Later came the Corvus System (discuss later) which provides 7Mb, 11Mb or 20Mb of hard disk space. I had the chance to use only the 7Mb hard disk as the rest were too expensive to consider for small systems.

    Now compare Apple ][ with today's PC (as at mid-year 1999), Intel Pentium III microprocessor running at 500 MHz (or 500 times faster), 128M RAM (over 8,000 times more capacity) , disk capacity in terms of gigabytes (or 10,000,000 times more).

    Apple ][ and Apple III system

    Technical Information

    Click to read

    Getting Started Information Video Display and Memory Floppy Disk System

    Using this Apple ][ system, I programmed using Applesoft, a BASIC interpreter with a very limited set of instructions. I have to write my own functions or subroutines for accepting data at the keyboard, for formatting number of decimal places and many others.

    More often than not, there was a need to PEEK and POKE in assembler instructions to get better performance and solve problems not possible using Applesoft. This is where the other two Apple manuals, The DOS manual and the Apple ][ reference manual became very, very useful.

    For begineers in BASIC, there is the Applesoft Tutorial.

    Next there is something you never hear nowadays, want to know who is the ancestor of Windows 98?

    Then see the answer below:

    Last but not least, the Tiger printers for Apple ][. This model below Paper Tiger 560 is one of the later models.

    I will not touch on the later models of Apple Computers such as Apple IIe, Apple III and later Lisa and Macintosh due to the appearance of IBM PCs which literally overwhelm the Apple computers and every one is requesting for the IBM PCs instead of the Apple computers.

    I do not have all the brochures either.

    To proceed to the Commodore Page

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