How Much Video Memory Does A Mac Color Classic II Have, Anyway?

July 25, 2025 by Dan Vincent in text-only

You’ll often see it posted on the internet that the Macintosh Color Classic II and LC / Performa 550 use the same logic board. They both have a 33MHz 68030 CPU, support up to 36MB of RAM, and implement a full 32-bit data bus. But here’s a little weirdness for you: Apple's official spec pages (along with the Color Classic II / Performa 275 Service manual) say there’s 256KB of onboard video memory optionally expandable to 512K by adding a 256K VRAM SIMM. So how could it be the same board as an LC / Performa 550, which come with 512KB of onboard VRAM? These machines are expandable to 768KB by installing a 256KB VRAM SIMM, just like the LC / Performa 520 and LC III and LC III+. People trust these spec lists as a source of truth—they’ve been in the Apple Knowledge Base for decades at this point. Wikipedia cites them, Apple history sites reference them, databases like EveryMac rely on them, and I’ve seen folks wonder about this discreipancy. Did Apple really leave the extra VRAM off of the Color Classic II’s logic board? Or do both computers use the exact same board, which would mean those spec pages and manuals were wrong for over thirty years? I needed to find out.

If you guessed that a recent purchase is what sent me tumbling down this rabbit hole, well… you’d be right. At the MIT swap meet last Sunday I found a logic board for a color all-in-one Macintosh which was in desperate need of a bath.

All this was mine for the cool cost of ten dollars thanks to the Rhode Island Computer Museum.

A quick inspection showed a 33 MHz 68030 hiding under the dust and grime and wondered if it was from an LC 550 or maybe something else. I did some on-the-spot Googling for LC 550 and Color Classic II boards, and sure enough it looked exactly like the board on Recap-a-Mac’s Color Classic II guide, complete with matching ROM and half-AA battery! ID number 820-0368-A was printed on the guide’s board and that matched up with the ID number pritned on my board. Meanwhile searching for LC 550 boards found a board with ID number 820-0595-A which looked similar but had a 4.5V alkaline battery. That lined up with some old memories of handling Performa 550 boards with an alkaline battery. I thought I’d found a diamond in the rough so I paid the ten dollar asking price and brought it home. After a rinse, scrub, and dry-down I popped it in my Color Classic and it booted just fine. But a curious thing happened when I opened the Monitors control panel: I could choose thousands of colors instead of 256! I thought Color Classic IIs only had 256K of VRAM, and I had yet to transfer over the VRAM SIMM from my old Color Classic board. So how was I getting thousands of colors? Did I actually get an LC 550 board, or was something else afoot? What, exactly, is a Color Classic II board anyway?

First, let’s establish a baseline. The original Color Classic definitely has 256KB of onboard VRAM. Just look at the original board from my own Color Classic here:

Macintosh Color Classic Logic Board with VRAM highlighted

There’s two 128Kx8 chips fabbed by Micron, and you can see the data sheet for these MT42C8128 modules here. Adding a 256KB VRAM SIMM brings it up to 512KB total. For another example of all-in-one color Mac’s VRAM here’s my Macintosh TV board.

Macintosh TV Logic board with VRAM highlighted

There’s four Mitsubishi M5M482128J 128Kx8 chips, bringing the total to the spec sheet maximum of 512KB VRAM.

Now here’s my freshly recapped Color Classic II board (or possibly LC 550 board, more on that distinction later).

Macintosh Color Classic II / LC 550 logic board with VRAM highlighted

And sure enough, there’s four Mitsubishi M5M442256AJ 256Kx4 dual ported VRAM chips for a total of 512K VRAM. I went back and double checked Recap-a-Mac’s guide, and that board also has 256Kx4 VRAM chips. I never paid attention to the chip markings before, but that’s what they are. Bruce at Branchus Creations runs Recap-a-Mac and he's a pretty smart fellow who’s refurbished his share of old Macs. He says on the Color Classic II page that he's recapped customer CC II boards, and I have no reason to doubt that because he’s recapped Color Classic II boards on a live stream! The board in the stream might even be the same one pictured in the guide.

But a sample size of one isn’t enough for me, so I searched for more examples of “real” Color Classic IIs. I remembered that Colin from This Does Not Compute imported a Performa 275 from Japan, and luckily he recorded a video about it. I scrubbed through the video looking for logic board shots and saw his board had all the same traits as my board. It was ID number 820-0368-A with four VRAM chips, a half-AA PRAM battery, and the ROM identifiers matched too. And since he imported this machine from Japan I’m pretty confident that the board is original to the machine. I also found another video where Tom // Drives unboxed a Japanese Color Classic II. Freeze-framing his logic board removal shows another board that matches Colin’s, Bruce’s and mine.

Now I needed to look at LC 550 boards. You might remember my earlier Googling showed an LC 550 board equipped with a 4.5V battery, and because I had handled similar boards I thought that’s what an LC 550 board was. Said board was posted on TinkerDifferent by user Fizzbinn and its model ID is 820-595-A. But when I could search at home with less time pressure I noticed a bunch of LC 550s with boards that looked exactly like the CC II board and ID 820-0368-A. There’s a Worthpoint eBay listing archive with photos of an LC 550 that match the Color Classic II boards. Same with Apple Rescue of Denver’s listings for recapped logic boards. Same with Ancient Electronics and their Color Classic which was equipped with a board pulled from an LC 550.

As it turns out there’s two versions of the LC 550 logic board—Fizzbin’s board has REV B printed on the serial number sticker. Rev B board differences are the ID number (820-595-A), the battery header, and a velcro pad to mount the alkaline battery. I’m betting these rev B boards were introduced around the same time Apple switched the LC 550 to tray-loading CD-ROM drives after the launch of the LC 575 in February 1994. It’s a reasonable guess to say that the closer your build is to 1995 the greater the likelihood your LC 550 will have a revision B board. I plumbed YouTube again and found videos where people pulled out or reworked their logic boards. CamelProd666 pulled a revision B board out of a tray-load Performa 550. Matt’s Workbench pulled an 820-0368-A board out of his caddy-load LC 550. Bruce at Branchus repaired an LC 550 Revision A board that looks identical to the Color Classic II. BigBadBiologist’s recent recap of a 820-0368-A board is also identical to the Color Classic II. And somehow there’s even Rev A boards that have what look like factory bodges to use a 4.5V battery, like this one seen in RetroTechIIfx’s video or on powercc.org.

Lastly I decided to look at LC 520s just to be thorough. An LC 520 logic board is supposed to be the same design as the LC 550 except a 520 board has a 25 MHz 68030. After investigating some examples of LC 520s I’d say that’s a true statement. LC 520 boards have the same board ID of 820-0368-A as revision A LC 550 boards. Garth Beagle restored an LC 520 for Marchintosh and his board looks exactly like a Rev A LC 550. The same goes for this new old stock Apple Service kit for an LC 520 logic board that was archived on WorthPoint. And a 520 board restored by CayMacVintage also looks identical to a 550. The only difference is the 25MHz CPU.

Lastly, ROMs aren’t a differentiating factor between all these boards. Every 520, 550, and Color Classic II board I saw had Hi and Lo ROMs marked 341-0534 and 341-0533 respectively. That renders the 520, 550, and Color Classic II identical from a software standpoint. So how can you tell an LC 520 board apart from an LC 550 or Color Classic II?

Apple’s June 1994 Service Module Identification Manual show the LC550 and CC II logic board as part number 661-1830, and a note is attached to verify that the CPU is 33 MHz. An LC 520 board with a 25 MHz CPU is Apple part number 661-0812.

Color Classic II / LC 550 Identification

But another way to tell LC 520 boards apart from LC 500 boards is the serial number schema. The LC520s I’ve seen have serial numbers formatted like EZxxxxxxDY7 and DWxxxxxxDY7 depending on the board revision, while Rev A Color Classic II and LC 550 boards use a DWxxxxxx1X9 schema. I checked all the boards I found on the web and in videos and confirmed that all the Color Classic II and LC 550 boards followed the DWxxxxxx1X9 schema. As for the rev B LC 550 boards with the 820-595-A board ID, they also used DWxxxxxx1X9. Given the same serial schemas and Apple replacement part numbers those are two more points in favor of the Color Classic II and LC / Performa 550 using the same logic boards with 512KB of VRAM.

Copy and Paste, Sloppy and Waste

Given the evidence in front of me I think it’s safe to conclude that the same 33 MHz 820-0368-A logic boards were installed in both the LC / Performa 550 and Color Classic II. So there’s no difference between “a Color Classic II board” and “a LC 550 board” because they are one and the same. Apple didn’t make specific logic boards with only 256KB of VRAM for the Color Classic II, which means Color Classic IIs have always come with 512K of onboard VRAM expandable to 768K and that Apple’s official spec sheet and service manual are wrong and wrong.

I’m not surprised that such a goof-em-up happened because the Color Classic II and Performa 275 were only sold in Asia, Canada, and some PAL countries. Given the overwhelming plethora of slightly different models Apple was churning out at the time it’s no surprise that mistakes could be made when updating a spec sheet for a speed bump. I bet there’s other mistakes lurking in the spec sheets for other 1990s beige Macs. It’s also possible that Apple intended to make a variant of the logic board for the Color Classic II with two fewer VRAM chips but backtracked after realizing that producing another board variant with all the associated logistics was more expensive than the cost of two chips and then forgot to update the spec sheet. That seems unlikely to me, though—Occam’s Razor and such.

But the service manual is a different story. Almost all the specifications were clearly carried over from the original Color Classic manual and never updated to reflect its new capabilities. The processor speed is updated to 33MHz, but the bus width is still listed at 16 bits. It incorrectly lists the maximum amount of memory as 10MB, the data bus as 16 bits, and the PDS slot as 96 pins along with the incorrect VRAM specs. The RAM upgrade steps still show dual 30 pin SIMMs which would make an unfamiliar tech go “wait a minute.” More stale information is in the sound section. The original Color Classic logic board’s sound output jack only supports mono output duplicated across both channels while the Color Classic II supports true stereo sound with discrete left and right channels. I validated this in two ways. First, I checked the System 7 Sound control panel and the original Color Classic board shows mono, while the Color Classic II / LC 550 board shows stereo. Second, I played a left / right stereo test sound file with SoundApp. The original Color Classic board played a duplicated mono downmix in my headphones while the Color Classic II / LC 550 board played true stereo sound. Incidentally, this means that an internal stereo speaker mod won’t work with an original Color Classic logic board. If you plan to do a stereo mod you must also plan a logic board upgrade.

It’s obvious that whoever made this manual simply did a search and replace for Color Classic to change it to Color Classic II / Performa 275. But at least they updated the logic board part number to 661-1830, which matches the logic board part number for the LC 550 in its service manual.

Bit Depth, Resolutions, and RAMDACs

The LC 550 / CC II Logic Board with 768K of VRAM installed in my Mac TV is capable of thousands of colors.

The result of the spec sheet’s inaccuracy meant Apple actually undersold the Color Classic II’s video capabilities. Since it has 512KB of VRAM standard it can display thousands of colors without spending extra money on a VRAM upgrade. Installing a 256KB VRAM SIMM doesn’t actually do anything for a stock Color Classic II because of limitations in its Andberg ASIC’s video generator and the Ariel RAMDAC. Introduced with the Macintosh LC, the Ariel chip replaced the Brooktree Bt478 CLUT/DAC (also known as VDAC) used in the IIci and IIsi. Ariel variants are found in many 030 machines with built-in video like the IIvi, IIvx, Performa 600, LC III, the DuoDock, and the 520/550. The Mac TV has a slightly different version called Ariel+. Overall Ariel isn’t that different from the VDAC since VDAC was a Brooktree Bt478 and Ariel is pin-compatible. Whether Apple rebranded another Brooktree part, licensed IP from Brooktree to design their own DAC, or commissioned Brooktree to design Apple-secific RAMDACs isn’t really clear.

Ariel improved upon the VDAC by introducing 16-bit color depth to display thousands of colors, but that’s a hard ceiling for that DAC (and the ASICs that generate the video). Adding more VRAM to an Ariel system can enable higher resolutions, but not higher bit depths.1 Speaking of higher resolutions, a LC III with 768KB of VRAM can display 832x624 at thousands of colors, but a Color Classic II or LC 550 can’t because their internal monitors aren’t multisync and the analog board’s sense connections tell the logic board what resolution to use. Yes, I know the Color Classic with a IIe card can switch to the 560-wide Apple IIe display mode, but that’s best saved for a bonus section.2

Other contemporary entry level Macs like the LC 575, LC 475, and Quadra 605 were also limited to 16-bit color despite the logic board’s ability to accept 1 MB of VRAM. That’s because Antelope’s RAMDAC is also limited to 16-bit high color just like Ariel. Originally developed for the Quadra / Centris 610, 650, and Quadra 800, the Antelope was Apple’s attempt to cut cost while eking more performance out of the Direct Access Framebuffer used in the Quadras 700 and 900 which did support true color modes. According to Apple displays engineer Dale Adams, Antelope dropped the 32 bits-per-pixel true color modes because they had high VRAM requirements and added significant cost to the chip design. Customers who demanded true color support would skip right past the built-in video of the Quadra 700 or 900 and buy an expensive dedicated graphics card. Onboard video support for true color graphics wouldn’t return to Apple’s cheapest Macs until the Power Macs 4400, 5500, and 6500.

There is a practical application for installing more VRAM in a Color Classic II, and it’s a VGA mod. After performing a VGA mod a Color Classic II with 768KB of VRAM can display thousands of colors at 640x480 just like an LC 550 driving its native monitor. I have a hunch that such a combination is rare, since the type of people willing to put in the effort for a VGA mod are also the same type to seek out a Mystic upgrade. Or if you’re like me and have a Hook-style chassis floating around you can leave the VRAM SIMM installed and just swap around as your mood dictates. Regardless, I think you can confidently say that the Color Classic II and LC 550 logic boards are in fact identical. Now who can I call at Apple to get that spec sheet fixed?

The following is technical bonus content that could be its own post but I’m including here because nerds might want to read it. You’ve been warned!

A Dive Into The Mac’s History of Onboard 24-Bit True Color Video

Footnote 1: To write accurately about the capabilities of the LC 550 and Color Classic's video modes I had to read about Apple's video chip and DAC history.

Other contemporary entry level Macs like the LC 475, LC 575, and Quadra 605 were also limited to 16-bit color despite their logic boards’ ability to accept 1 MB of VRAM. These systems used the Antelope RAMDAC—also known as the AC843 (Stripped) RAMDAC—which is also limited to 16-bit high color like Ariel. Antelope emerged from efforts to cost-reduce the video architecture of the Quadra 700 and 900 into something less expensive for the upcoming Quadra / Centris 610, 650, and Quadra 800. According to Apple video engineer Dale Adams, stomers who needed true color support didn’t use the built-in video anyway and bought expensive accelerated graphics cards instead. Adams also wrote that omitting the 24-bit true color modes and convolution support simplified the RAMDAC and reduced the amount of VRAM required which lowered the cost of a base system for those who didn’t mind 16-bit color while those who really needed true color could spend their money on an add-in card.

So what’s the timeline of support for true color on Macintosh built-in video? Let’s start with the Quadra 700/900, which supported 24 bit color and whose video was provided by the Direct Access Frame Buffer chip and the AC842 RAMDAC. The DAC’s even got a fun code name: AC/DC! The Quadra 950 updated these chips to the DAFB II and a revised AC/DC RAMDAC numbered AC843 (see page 6). These improved chips boosted performance, introduced support for 1024x768 resolution, and added more bit depth options to the existing resolutions. For the Quadra / Centris 610, 650, and Quadra 800 Apple integrated the DABF into the djMEMC memory controller and replaced the complete AC843 AC/DC with the stripped AC843 Antelope. The djMEMC was further simplified into the MEMCjr found in the LC 475, 575, and Quadra 605. One of the changes was removing extra VRAM bank connections in the djMEMC that were unused in the 610/650/800. Theoretically a Quadra 650 could be hacked with more VRAM and a full AC843 to get 24-bit video modes, but while it’s been discussed over at 68KMLA I don’t think anyone’s actually tried it.

To bring this back to the Color Classic II and the LC 550, their video setup is very similar to these Quadras from a high-level perspective but use 68030 generation tech. Video generation and memory timing are handled by the Ardberg ASIC (see page 20) which drives the Ariel RAMDAC to generate analog signals for display on a CRT. Since Ardberg is a derivative of the LC III’s Sonora ASIC, it also uses Sonora’s video architecture (see page 7). You can draw a straight line from the V8 gate array which handles video in the original LC and LC II to the VASP chip in the IIvx and IIvi, to Sonora in the LC III, then Spice in the original Color Classic, and lastly Ardberg in the LC 520, 550, and Color Classic II.

Onboard video support for 24-bit true color modes would return with the launch of the Quadra 660AV and 840AV thanks to their CIVIC chip (see page 34), but those were expensive machines that replaced the top end Quadra 700 and 900/950. The Power Mac 6100, 7100, and 8100 used a funky DRAM-based system for onboard video which was limited to 16 bits per pixel, but most 6/7/8100 series Power Macs had either an Apple PDS VRAM expansion card or an AV option card which carried over Civic and other chips seen on the Quadra AVs. Depending on the amount of VRAM on the expansion card the system could support true color output. The AV Option card added 2MB of VRAM and a Civic chip for true color support along with video capture hardware. When desktop Power Macs moved to PCI they ditched the PDS and DRAM setup entirely for new chips that supported true color at a variety of resolutions, provided you installed enough VRAM. The 7200 and 8200 used the Platinum and Iridum combo with the DACula RAMDAC (see page 14) while the 7500, 8500, and 9500 use a duo called Chaos and Control to drive the RaDACal RAMDAC (see page 20).

Meanwhile clone makers were using off-the-shelf video controllers from the likes of ATI and were blowing Apple away in terms of resolution and color capabilities in less expensive machines. Apple’s in-house clone, the Power Mac 4400, also used an ATI chip and has 24-bit true color capability(see page 38).

Consumer and education Macs were a different story. Ariel and Antelope were used in LCs and Performas until the launch of the Performa/LC 580 and 630. These Macs introduced the Valkyrie chip which I would consider to be a complete “video” chip. Apple separated the frame buffer and memory controller functions out of the system ASIC and combined them with the RAMDAC functions to form the Valkyrie. It wasn’t a particularly good chip, mind you, but it did have a neat acceleration that gave Marathon a performance boost. It also adds support for scaling and overlaying video for the Apple TV/Video System. Because Valkyrie is a consolidation of the MEMCjr DABF implementation and the Antelope DAC, it shares the same limitations of 1 MB of VRAM and a maximum color depth of 16 bit.

Valkyrie was eventually replaced by the Valkyrie-AR, and that chip’s RAMDAC does support 24-bit color modes according to its design documentation. But it needs 2MB of VRAM to display 24-bit color at 640x480 resolution and as far as I know it never shipped with that amount. The models that used that chip—the Power Mac/Performa 5400, 6360, and 6400—only ever had 1 MB of VRAM. Apple eventually put ATI graphics chips and 2MB of VRAM into the Power Mac 5500/6500 which finally closed the door on Mac desktops that couldn’t support 24-bit true color.

The Hidden Apple IIe Video Mode

Footnote 2: This bonus section delves into the special Apple IIe monitor mode.

The Apple IIe mode is handled differently on the Color Classic and LCs with the 12-inch RGB Display versus the all-in-ones with a 640x480 display or a Quadra 605/LC 475. According to page 23 of Apple’s Color Classic developer tech notes the IIe card generates a video timing signal for the Apple II display and sends it through pin B31 of the PDS slot when installed in an LC, LC II, or original Color Classic. Starting with the LC III the Apple II video mode timing signal is generated on the logic board by the Omega clock chip (see page 32). Omega’s clock functions were moved into the Spice ASIC on the Color Classic and the Ardberg ASIC on the LC 520, 550, and Color Classic II (see page). The 68040 machines—the LC 475, 575, and Quadra 605—rely on a separate clock generator chip called Gazelle (see page 45). So how does each computer’s video system handle that timing?

For the Color Classics it looks pretty simple: the IIe video mode has a faster horizontal clock to get the extra horizontal pixels. The vertical timing doesn’t change because the Color Classic already runs at 384 vertical pixels and 60Hz (see page 23). It isn’t explained why the user can’t manually select this mode on the Color Classic (or CC II) despite its ASICs having the ability to generate the timing signal without the IIe card, but I have a hunch as to why. The Apple IIe uses non-square pixels, and since the geometry of the monitor doesn’t change when switching between these two modes the result is narrower pixels that look “correct” for Apple II video in the same geometry. If you used the 560x384 mode for a Mac desktop you’d need to reduce the vertical size of the display to maintain square pixels. The Color Classic’s monitor is small enough that some users might not care for the resulting empty space that would leave on their monitors. The Color Classic's geometry controls are also hidden inside the case, which makes it difficult to adjust them on the fly! IMO the user should be able to make that choice, but Apple made it for them.

This is also the situation when using the Apple 12 inch RGB display with the LC, LC II, and LC III. When using that display those computers output a 560x384 at 60Hz mode for the Apple IIe card, just like the Color Classic (see page 20). What if you’re using something other than the 12 inch RGB display? Keep reading!

The 14 inch all-in-ones are slightly different. Their normal display mode is 640x480 at 67 Hz. On the LC 520 and 550 the monitor and analog board support switching to a 560 x 384 mode at 60 Hz. The LC 520 technote describes the timing for this secondary display mode in diagrams onsee page 27.

I have to imagine there’s some kind of geometry compensation on the 520/550 analog board for this mode, but I don’t have an Apple IIe card to validate this. The Macintosh TV would have the same rectangular pixel conundrum when converting television video, but I don’t have the skills to test how this ends up working on the analog board side of things.

This differs from the LC 575, where the developer technote says the following on page 30:   “When the Apple IIe Card for the Macintosh LC is installed in the expansion slot, the computer generates an Apple IIe video display with 560 by 384 pixels. The Apple IIe display uses the standard video timing but displays only a 560-by-384-pixel area in the middle of the display.”

That’s definitely different than the 520/550. So how does that work? If the video timing doesn’t change, how does it display the lower resolution? The solution is a bordered mode. The LC 475/Quadra 605 technote gives us a clue on page 28 and the LC 575’s architecture is largely the same as those machines:

“The Macintosh LC 475 and Macintosh Quadra 605 computers can provide a 560-by-384 display on any size monitor; only the 12-inch monitor requires modifed [sic] timing parameters to provide the 560-pixel display width.”

Ah, that’s the ticket! It’s only sending native 560x384 at 60Hz video if it knows it’s using the 12 inch RGB Display. Other monitors get what amounts to a bordered mode running at 67Hz. This even seems to be the case for the earlier LCs if you use a IIe card and a monitor other than the 12 inch RGB. mg.man on Tinker Different posted as much showing an LCD connected to an LC II running the Apple IIe mode at 640x480 at 67 Hz. I’m not sure how running at the 67 Hz refresh rate affects the speed or playability of the IIe card; someone who’s an expert on this could help fill me in.

What does this mean for modified Color Classics? It probably depends on how you modded your machine to run 640x480. If you did the traditional 60Hz VGA mod and used a LC 575 logic board you get the bordered screen behavior like the LC 575 as mentioned by JDW on the same TinkerDifferent thread. I don’t have a Mystic board to test but I’m curious if unmodified systems that run at 512x384 still switch to the native 560x384 60 Hz mode.

But how about users who upgraded a Color Classic II or installed an LC 520/550 logic board? I haven’t found any examples of anyone doing this on the web. My gut says if you do the 60 Hz VGA mod, you’ll still get the bordered display behavior. But if you did the 67 Hz high voltage mod—basically telling the logic board you’ve installed it in an LC 520/550 chassis—perhaps it would behave like the LC 520/550 and switch to the 560x384 60 Hz mode. I’d love to validate these scenarios and update this as necessary if I ever get a hold of such a machine.

The Apple IIe - Computers Of Significant History, Part 2

February 21, 2022 by Dan Vincent in podcast

Here in Userlandia, an Apple a day keeps the Number Muncher at bay.

Welcome back to Computers of Significant History, where I chronicle the computers crucial to my life, and maybe to yours too. If you’re like me and spent any time in a US public school during the eighties or nineties, you’ve likely used a variant of the Apple II. As a consequence, the rituals of grade school computer time are forever tied to Steve Wozniak’s engineering foibles. Just fling a floppy into a Disk II drive, lock the latch, punch the power switch... and then sit back and enjoy the soothing beautiful music of that drive loudly and repeatedly slamming the read head into its bump stops. Sounds like bagpipes being repeatedly run over, doesn't it? If you're the right age, that jaw-clenching, teeth-grinding racket will make you remember afternoons spent playing Oregon Trail. ImageWriter printers roared their little hearts out, with their snare drum printheads pounding essays compiled in Bank Street Writer onto tractor feed paper, alongside class schedules made in The Print Shop. Kids would play Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego at recess, and race home after school to watch Lynne Thigpen and Greg Lee guide kid gumshoes in the tie-in TV show. Well, maybe that one was just me. Point is, these grade school routines were made possible thanks to the Apple II, or more specifically, the Apple IIe.

Unlike the BBC Micro, which was engineered for schools from the start, the Apple II was just an ordinary computer thrust into the role of America’s electronic educator. Popular culture describes Apple’s early days as a meteoric rise to stardom, with the Apple II conquering challengers left and right, but reality is never that clean. 1977 saw the debut of not one, not two, but three revolutionary personal computers: the Apple II, the Commodore PET, and the Tandy Radio Shack 80—better known as the TRS-80. Manufacturers were hawking computers to everyone they could find, with varying degrees of success. IBM entered the fray in 1981 with the IBM PC—a worthy competitor. By 1982, the home computer market was booming. Companies like Texas Instruments, Sinclair, and Atari were wrestling Commodore and Radio Shack for the affordable computer championship belt. Meanwhile, Apple was still flogging the Apple II Plus, a mildly upgraded model introduced three years prior in 1979.

Picture it. It's the fall of 1982, and you're a prospective computer buyer. As you flip through the pages of BYTE magazine, you happen upon an ad spread. On the left page is the brand new Commodore 64 at $595, and on the right page is a three year old Apple II Plus at $1530. Both include a BASIC interpreter in ROM and a CPU from the 6502 family. The Apple II Plus had NTSC artifact color graphics, simple beeps, and 48K of RAM. True, it had seven slots, which you could populate with all kinds of add-ons. But, of course, that cost extra. Meanwhile, the Commodore had better color graphics with sprites, a real music synthesizer chip, and 64K of RAM. Oh, and the Commodore was almost a third of the price. Granted, that price didn’t include a monitor, disk drive, or printer, but both companies had those peripherals on offer. Apple sold 279,000 II Pluses through all of 1982, while Commodore sold 360,000 C64s in half that time. In public, Apple downplayed the low-end market, but buyers and the press didn’t ignore these new options. What was Apple doing from 1979 until they finally released the IIe in 1983? Why did it take so long to make a newer, better Apple II?

Part of it is that for a long time a new Apple II was the last thing Apple wanted to make. There was a growing concern inside Apple that the II couldn’t stay competitive with up-and-coming challengers. I wouldn’t call their fears irrational—microcomputers of the seventies were constantly being obsoleted by newer, better, and (of course) incompatible machines. Apple was riding their own hype train, high on their reputation as innovators. They weren’t content with doing the same thing but better, so they set out to build a new clean-sheet machine to surpass the Apple II. To understand the heroic rise of the IIe, we must know the tragic fall of the Apple III.

When Apple started development of the Apple III in late 1978, IBM had yet to enter the personal computer market. Big Blue was late to the party and wouldn't start on their PC until 1980. Apple had a head start and they wanted to strike at IBM’s core market by building a business machine of their own. After releasing the Apple II Plus in 1979, other Apple II improvement projects were cancelled and their resources got diverted to the Apple III. A fleet of engineers were hired to work on the new computer so Apple wouldn’t have to rely solely on Steve Wozniak. Other parts of Apple had grown as well. Now they had executives and a marketing department, whose requirements for the Apple III were mutually exclusive.

It had to be fast and powerful—but cooling fans make noise, so leave those out! It had to be compatible with the Apple II, but not too compatible—no eighty columns or bank-switching memory in compatibility mode! It needed to comply with incoming FCC regulations on radio interference—but there was no time to wait for those rules to be finalized. Oh, and while you’re at it... ship it in one year.

Given these contradictory requirements and aggressive deadlines, it's no surprise that the Apple III failed. If this was a story, and I told you that they named the operating system “SOS," you'd think that was too on the nose. But despite the team of highly talented engineers, the dump truck full of money poured on the project, and what they called the Sophisticated Operating System, the Apple III hardware was rotten to the core. Announced in May 1980, it didn’t actually ship until November due to numerous production problems. Hardware flaws and software delays plagued the Apple III for years, costing Apple an incredible amount of money and goodwill. One such flaw was the unit's propensity to crash when its chips would work themselves out of their sockets. Apple’s official solution was, and I swear I'm not making this up, “pick up the 26-pound computer and drop it on your desk.” Between frequent crashes, defective clock chips, and plain old system failures, Apple eventually had to pause sales and recall every single Apple III for repairs. An updated version with fewer bugs and no real-time clock went on sale in fall 1981, but it was too late—the Apple III never recovered from its terrible first impression.

Apple III aside, 1980 wasn’t all worms and bruises for Apple. They sold a combined 78,000 Apple II and II Plus computers in 1980—more than double the previous year. Twenty five percent of these sales came from new customers who wanted to make spreadsheets in VisiCalc. Apple’s coffers were flush with cash, which financed both lavish executive lifestyles and massive R&D projects. But Apple could make even more money if the Apple II was cheaper and easier to build. After all, Apple had just had an IPO in 1980 with a valuation of 1.8 billion dollars, and shareholder dividends have to come from somewhere. With the Apple III theoretically serving the high end, It was time to revisit those shelved plans to integrate Apple II components, reduce the chip count, and increase those sweet, sweet margins.

What we know as the IIe started development under the code name Diana in 1980. Diana’s origins actually trace back to 1978, when Steve Wozniak worked with Walt Broedner of Synertek to consolidate some of the Apple II’s discrete chips into large scale integrated circuits. These projects, named Alice and Annie, were cancelled when Apple diverted funds and manpower to the Apple III. Given his experience with those canned projects, Apple hired Broedner to pick up where he left off with Woz. Diana soon gave way to a new project name: LCA, for "Low Cost Apple", which you might think meant "lower cost to buy an Apple.” In the words of Edna Krabapple, HAH! They were lower cost to produce. Savings were passed on to shareholders, not to customers. Because people were already getting the wrong idea, Apple tried a third code name: Super II. Whatever you called it, the project was going to be a major overhaul of the Apple II architecture. Broedner’s work on what would become the IIe was remarkable—the Super II team cut the component count down from 109 to 31 while simultaneously improving performance. All this was achieved with near-100% compatibility.

In addition to cutting costs and consolidating components, Super II would bring several upgrades to the Apple II platform. Remember, Apple had been selling the Apple II Plus for four years before introducing the IIe. What made an Apple II Plus a “Plus” was the inclusion of 48 kilobytes of RAM and an AppleSoft BASIC ROM, along with an autostart function for booting from a floppy. Otherwise it was largely the same computer—so much so that owners of an original Apple II could just buy those add-ons and their machine would be functionally identical for a fraction of the price. Not so with the IIe, which added more features and capabilities to contend with the current crop of computer competitors. 64K of RAM came standard, along with support for eighty column monochrome displays. If you wanted the special double hi-res color graphics mode and an extra 64K of memory, the optional Extended 80 Column Text card was for you. Or you could use third-party RAM expanders and video cards—Apple didn’t break compatibility with them. Users with heavy investments in peripherals could buy a IIe knowing their add-ons would still work.

Other longtime quirks and limitations were addressed by the IIe. The most visible was a redesigned keyboard with support for the complete ASCII character set—because, like a lot of terminals back then, the Apple II only supported capital letters. If you wanted lowercase, you had to install special ROMs and mess around with toggle switches. Apple also addressed another keyboard weakness: accidental restarts. On the original Apple II keyboard, there was a reset key, positioned right above the return key. So if your aim was a quarter inch off when you wanted a new line of text, you could lose everything you'd been working on. Today that might seem like a ridiculous design decision, but remember, this was decades ago. All these things were being done for the first time. Woz was an excellent typist and didn't make mistakes like that, and it might not have occurred to him that he was an outlier and that there'd be consequences for regular people. Kludges like stiffer springs or switch mods mitigated the issue somewhat, but most users were still one keystroke away from disaster.

The IIe’s keyboard separated the reset key from the rest of the board and a restart now required a three finger salute of the control, reset, and open-Apple keys. Accidental restarts were now a thing of the past, unless your cat decided to nap on the keyboard. Next, a joystick port was added to the back panel, so that you didn't have to open the top of the case and plug joysticks directly into the logic board. A dedicated number pad port was added to the logic board as well. Speaking of the back panel, a new series of cut-outs with pop-off covers enabled clean and easy mounting of expansion ports. For new users looking to buy an Apple in 1983, it was a much better deal than the aging II Plus, and existing owners could trade in their old logic boards and get the new ones at a lower price.

A Platinum IIe showing off the slots and back panel ports.

Apple might have taken their time to truly revamp the II, but 1983 was a good year for it. Computers weren’t just playthings for nerds anymore—regular people could actually use them, thanks to a growing commercial software market. Bushels of Apple computers were sold just to run VisiCalc, but there were even more untapped markets than accountants and bookkeepers. By 1983, both the mainstream and the industry press had figured out how to explain the benefits of a microcomputer in your home and/or business. Word processors, databases, and—of course—games were all valid reasons to buy a computer, and sales exploded as a result.

Consider Apple’s sales numbers before and after the IIe’s introduction. Ars Technica writer Jeremy Reimer researched estimated sales figures for various microcomputers, and we’ll use them for the sake of argument. For all of Apple’s hype, they sold just 43,000 Apple II and II Plus computers from 1977 to 1979. Radio Shack, meanwhile, sold 450,000 TRS-80s during the same three years. Commodore sold 79,000 PETs. Atari waltzed into the market and sold 100,000 home computers in 1979. One difference is that the Apple II series had a higher average selling price than most of these computers—a TRS-80 kit with monitor and tape deck cost $599 in 1977, while an Apple II without monitor or drives cost $1239.

But this was a time of rapid advancement and innovation, and a hot start was no guarantee of long-term success. The TRS-80 family’s strong start gradually faded away despite newer models with better capabilities, and Tandy shifted to IBM compatibles in 1985. Likewise with Commodore and the PET, which Commodore largely abandoned after the C64 took off like a rocket. IBM sold 1.3 million PCs in 1983 and would only sell more from there. Apple sold 400,000 IIes in 1983, and a million more in 1984, all with excellent accessory attachment rates and monstrous margins. Shipping that many computers with Woz’s original board design would’ve been impossible because Apple’s quality control processes didn’t scale with manufacturing. Between the IIe’s reduced board complexity and new self-test routines, Apple could both build and test computers faster than ever before. With something like a 60% margin on the IIe’s wholesale dealer price, it was wildly profitable—and that was before upgrades and add-ons. With margins like these, Apple could afford to negotiate with schools, and sometimes even give away computers to seal deals.

Not mentioned: Help provided from Xerox.

The IIe wasn’t the only computer Apple introduced on January 19, 1983. Apple management—especially Steve Jobs—were all-consumed with dethroning IBM as the premier choice for business computing, and the Apple II just wasn’t part of those plans. A complex and powerful machine, the Lisa was the talk of the tech press thanks to its graphical interface and forward-thinking document oriented software suite. It was supposed to change the world of computers and singlehandedly make all text-based workstations obsolete. Yet even Apple had to know that, at ten thousand dollars each—in 1983 dollars, no less—the Lisa would be extraordinarily difficult to sell, even though its advanced graphical interface was unlike anything on the market. Another drawback was Apple’s new FileWare floppy disk drives. These drives, codenamed Twiggy—yes, after the British supermodel—were notoriously unreliable. Apple sold around ten thousand Lisas during its lifetime. Meanwhile, the IIe kept on keepin’ on, much to the chagrin of executives who wanted to change the world. Apple finally cracked its next generation computer conundrum with the Macintosh, and they were also hard at work building the Apple IIc and designing the IIGS. Soon the IIe would retire with the original Apple II and the II Plus. Or would it?

An Apple for the Teacher

My memories of the Apple IIe are bound together with its role as an educator. A computer was in every classroom at Highland Elementary School, and as far as my classmates and I were concerned a computer was as fundamental to learning as a textbook or a chalkboard. Like millions of other kids who were tutored by Apples, we had no clue about who designed these machines, or the cutthroat markets that forged them. A school computer was an Apple, just like a school bus was yellow, because that was the way things were. It never crossed our minds to ask why we had Apples at school instead of Commodores or IBM PCs.

By the time Apple launched the IIe, their computers had already found a foothold in American schools. This was largely thanks to the efforts of the Minnesota Educational Computer Consortium, or MECC. Minnesota might not be the first place you think of when it comes to computer leadership, but by the late seventies MECC had brought mainframe and minicomputer access to schools across the Gopher state. Like Silicon Valley and Route 128, Minnesota had a bustling technology and computer center. Control Data Corporation was headquartered in the suburbs of Minneapolis. 3M was a major supplier of materials and media for computers, and the University of Minnesota was full of programmers. When the 1977 trio of microcomputers that all ran BASIC came to their attention, MECC saw an opportunity. MECC’s library of software—called courseware—was written in BASIC for mainframe and minicomputers. Some Minnesota schools already had terminals to access said mainframes, but mainframes were expensive—very expensive. Mainframes also required a staff for maintenance, and they took up a lot of space. Microcomputers solved all these problems—individual teachers could manage them, and they were small and cheap enough to place in every classroom, or even a lab. Since all the new microcomputers used BASIC, it would be straightforward to port MECC’s courseware to a micro—the question, of course, was which one.

Outfitting the entire state school system with microcomputers wasn’t as easy as picking a company and giving them a million dollar order. Rules of acquisition aren’t just for Ferengi—laws dictate how you can spend public money. The first step was acquiring a few computers to experiment with porting their software. MECC was already excited about the new Apple II, specifically for its color video capabilities. They asked if Apple would be willing to cut them a special price for five computers, and Apple obliged. When it came time for the formal bidding process, MECC opened up bids to all comers, but some bidders were better than others. Dale LaFrenz, former president of MECC, recalled as much in a 1995 oral history with the Charles Babbage Institute.

Yes, we got bids from Apple. We also got bids from other companies. Some of the companies, particularly Radio Shack, were not enamored with this process and thought it was kind of hokey—the process being the bid process and the state requirements—and so they weren’t real particular about how they responded. We told Radio Shack, “You know, if you don’t respond in the right way, we can’t accept your bid,” and they weren’t willing to change. The Atari people and Commodore people were late and there were very stringent rules—if you aren’t in by noon on the appointed day, you are [out]. Well, the fact is that the sentiment of the evaluation committee representing Minnesota education was toward the TRS-80.

How different would educational computing have been in America if Radio Shack hadn’t blown off MECC? The bid was theirs for the taking, but for whatever reason, they let it slide. Apple jumped through the hoops, won the bid, and sold 500 computers to MECC. Those 500 computers were crucial to expanding access to Minnesota students, but they were also the base upon which MECC built a software empire. Instead of spending years figuring out what to do with their new computers, MECC ported that existing library of mainframe software to the new Apple II. Word quickly spread and other states and districts knocked on MECC’s door. This ready library of software made the Apple II an easy choice for schools, and launched a virtuous cycle of educational Apple sales. People bought Apples because they could buy MECC courseware, and other developers wrote educational software because the market was Apple. MECC was so successful that by 1983 they transitioned to a private corporation owned by the state of Minnesota, and the Gopher State profited handsomely.

MECC’s early software would be updated and revised and ported to other platforms over the course of the early eighties, but the Apple II would always be its bread and butter. The IIe especially was a crucial ingredient to MECC’s ongoing success as a software powerhouse. MECC’s most popular and memorable titles were either introduced on the IIe or had their definitive versions released for it. Updated classics like the graphical versions of Oregon Trail and Odell Lake required 64K of RAM, which meant a IIe in almost all circumstances. Newly designed games like Number Munchers, Word Munchers, and Spellevator were designed from the ground up for 64K machines. These are the games most people in my age group would have played on their classroom IIe machines in the late eighties on to the early nineties. Though MECC diversified into other platforms, they were still publishing Apple IIe compatible titles well into the nineties.

Apple also updated the IIe during its lifetime, first with the Enhanced IIe in 1985 and then the Platinum IIe in 1987. Internally an Enhanced IIe featured an updated 65C02 processor and new ROMs that brought bug fixes and character updates from the IIc back to the IIe. One such “update” was the MouseText character set, which was used to construct a Mac-ish display using characters instead of bitmaps. Add the mildly updated internals with a mildly refreshed keyboard and you’ve got some mild enhancements. The Platinum IIe was so named due to its new exterior case color, which was a shade of gray that Apple's designers had named "platinum" the year before. The optional Extended 80 Column card was now standard equipment, which brought the total memory up to 128K. The keyboard layout was updated to match the IIGS, which included a standard numeric keypad. Improvements in density meant that eight 8K RAM chips on the logic board were replaced with two 32K RAM chips—Moore’s law in action!—and both ROMs were consolidated to a single chip.

In 1990, the Apple II seemed like a computer Apple just couldn’t kill. They sold over 300,000 across three model lines because schools kept buying the IIe and, to a lesser extent, the IIGS. Schools didn’t want to lose their investment in software, and when a IIe broke, it was easier and cheaper to just replace it with another one instead of a Macintosh or a IIGS. A Platinum IIe retailed for $800, and schools got even better pricing than that. Though the more powerful and advanced IIGS was still a thing, Apple much preferred it when you bought a Macintosh, thank you very much. The new for 1990 Macintosh LC was thought to be the Apple II killer. But even when Apple offered the Macintosh LC to schools at a 50% discount, $1700 was still too expensive for most districts. So they kept on buying the Apple II even if they procured a Mac or two with a CD-ROM drive that might get carted around or parked in the school library.

Still, 1991 and 1992 saw declining sales, and Apple officially discontinued the IIe in November 1993. It outlived its more powerful sibling, the IIGS, by a whole year. Though you could buy a machine labeled IIe for nearly eleven years, it’s hard for me to say that Apple sold the “same” machine for that time. It's the Microchip of Theseus question—does a ROM update, a memory increase, and a new case color really make for a “new” model? Still, the heart of the computer—the 6502 processor, the slots, the logic chips designed by Broedner and his team—was still the same.

Mr. Jobs Goes to Washington

Content warning: this next segment discusses federal tax law. Sensitive readers might want to put on some music for a few minutes.

In today’s world of budget Chromebooks, the idea of the premium-focused Apple dominating the educational market seems quaint. Computers aren’t just one per classroom anymore. Schools are networked now, with devices relying more and more on web services provided by companies like Google and Microsoft. That’s the difference between personal computing and information technology—most teachers could manage a single computer, but you can’t expect them to manage a fleet of cloud-connected services. MECC might have gotten Apple’s foot in the door, but Apple secured their dominant position in schools the same way Microsoft and Google did: good old-fashioned American politicking.

Not every state had an organization like MECC that could advocate for computers in the classroom, so Apple altruistically advocated for them—because we all know how altruistic corporations are. Steve and Steve—Jobs and Wozniak—were true believers. They'd both been using computers since they were young, and wanted to give kids across America the chance to share in the experience. But Steve Jobs also had dollar signs on his eyeballs. And that's why Apple was so eager to work with MECC to supply those 500 computers to Minnesota in 1978, even though that was almost 7% of their sales that year.

Because Kids Can’t Wait to help make Steve Jobs more money.

But getting a computer in every classroom was easier said than done. Even though the microcomputers of the late seventies cost a lot less than their minicomputer brothers, that still didn't mean they were cheap. And obviously, Apple couldn't afford to just give free computers to every single American school. Compounding the cost of computer components were the complexities of complying with the conglomeration of codes that comprise America’s state-based education system. The solution was obvious: federal legislation. If Apple could get a law passed in time for the launch of the IIe, they could capture the educational market with the help of good old Uncle Sam.

As part of the Smithsonian's History of Computing project, Steve Jobs told the story of how he and then-California congressman Pete Stark worked together to draft a bill granting a corporate tax deduction to companies that donated computers to public schools. According to Jobs, there were already tax breaks for companies donating scientific equipment to colleges and universities. But those breaks didn’t apply to primary and secondary schools, which limited the financial benefits for donating computers. Under the proposed law, Apple would donate 100,000 computers, which would cost Apple about $10,000,000 after the tax break. Without the tax break, Jobs figured the plan would have cost Apple around $100,000,000. The bill’s details and failures were more complex than Jobs’ characterization, and I actually dug through Senate Finance Committee and House Ways and Means Committee records to figure out how it worked.

Stark designed House Resolution 5573 to allow a company donating computer equipment to deduct its cost to manufacture plus 50% of the difference between the cost and the retail price. The total deduction value per computer would be capped at twice the cost. Let’s say you have a computer that retails for $1300, and it costs $500 to make. Under these rules, Apple would receive a $900 deduction—a pretty significant valuation. Multiply that by 100,000 computers, and you’re talking real money. The bill also increased the total amount of money the company could deduct from their taxable income using this method from 10 to 30 percent. Remember, these are deductions, not credits, so it’s not a straight gift. But based on the average corporate tax rate of 42 percent in 1982, the net effect would have been about $90,000,000 over the course of five years.

Jobs personally met with senators and congresspeople to convince them of the need to get more computers in classrooms, forgoing professional lobbyists. Stark’s bill, known as the Computer Equipment Contribution Act of 1982, passed the House with an overwhelming majority of 323 yea to 62 nay, but it died in the senate. Jobs’ recollection of some of the facts was a bit off—he claimed Bob Dole as “Speaker of the House” killed the bill during “Jimmy Carter’s lame duck session.” Bob Dole was a lot of things—professional endorser of Viagra and Pepsi, guest-star on the NBC sitcom Suddenly Susan, space mutant—but he was never speaker of the House. And the 97th Congress’ lame duck session was called by Ronald Reagan in 1982, two years after Carter left office. Dole was chairman of the Senate Finance Committee in 1982, and their report requested a few changes. First, it broadened the definition of educational institutions to include libraries and museums, and it also increased the time period to claim the deduction from one year to three years. But the biggest change of all was reducing the maximum amount of the deduction from 200% of the cost to 150%, and kept the 10% taxable income cap. This change could have reduced Apple’s tax break by 75%. To make matters worse, the other changes could potentially have benefited Apple's competitors.

The US Senate in 1982 was under Republican control for the first time in nearly thirty years, and it was embroiled in all sorts of filibusters and procedural delays. This was especially true in the lame duck months after midterm congressional elections. While Bob Dole’s finance committee was responsible for the changes to the bill, it did recommend that the Senate put the bill to the vote. It’s more likely that majority leader Howard Baker and majority whip Ted Stevens declined to put it on the floor or honor the request to waive certain debate rules. Without some experienced lobbyists on hand to push for their bill, Jobs’ and Wozniak’s dreams of donating thousands of computers went up in smoke. Another angle to this story is the Minor Tax Bills article from the April 1983 edition of Congressional Quarterly Almanac, which is a contemporary take on the events. It turns out Apple itself stopped supporting the bill after the Senate changes, because that would have made the donation plan too costly. But this paragraph got a sensible chuckle thanks to forty years of hindsight.

While the bill was promoted as a boost for technological education, some members objected that it was little more than a tax subsidy for Apple. They pointed out that once the donated computer was in place, a school would be constrained to buy more equipment from Apple, rather than another computer company, if it wanted to expand the use of the machine.

Oh, if only they knew. Even though Apple failed to secure a federal subsidy, they did get a consolation prize at the state level. Around the same time the federal bill fell apart, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a law introduced by California assemblyman Charles Imbrecht that gave a company donating a computer to schools a 25% tax credit against its retail value. In January 1983, Apple announced its Kids Can’t Wait program along with the Apple IIe. Every public school in California with more than 100 students was eligible for a bundle of an Apple IIe computer, a disk drive, a monitor, and a copy of the Apple Logo programming package valued at $2364. Given that the tax credit is based on the retail price, if every one of California’s 9,250 public schools took Apple up on the offer, the total retail value of all those packages would be around $21,867,000. That results in a maximum possible credit of $5,466,750! Apple estimated their cost of the program at around $5,200,000, which included the cost of the hardware, software, dealer training, and dealer incentives. I haven’t been able to find a record of exactly how many schools took delivery, but Steve Jobs claimed every school took him up on the offer. Even if only eighty percent of California schools took Apple’s deal, that would have been over $4.3 million dollars worth of credits on a program estimated to cost $5.2 million. It had to be the cheapest marketshare Apple ever bought.

Apple and congressman Stark did try their national bill again in 1983, but this time it didn’t even make it past the House committee. Sometimes governments don’t move as fast as Silicon Valley would like, but in time other states and the federal government would end up with their own tax breaks and incentives to bring more computers into the classroom. And thanks to the lessons learned from these attempts, Apple’s later teams that sold the Macintosh to colleges were more adept at dealing with governments. By the mid-eighties, Apple was synonymous with education due to the efforts of local educators, governments, developers, and enthusiastic users. They even advertised on TV with music videos set to Teach Your Children by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. It seemed like there was no stopping Apple as they sold millions of computers to schools across the globe.

The Head of the Class

The Apple IIe’s long and prolific career as an educator is remarkable for technology with a reputation for a short shelf life. It’s theoretically possible that a first grader who used an Apple IIe in 1983 could use a IIe in 1993 as a high school sophomore. It’d be unlikely, because the Apple II platform was phased out of high schools before middle or elementary schools, but if you told me you were that kid, I’d believe you. The IIe weathered stronger, tougher competition because the hardware was stout and the software library vast. Still, even a high quality textbook goes out of date eventually.

My hometown of Pittsfield, Massachusetts and its public schools hung on to the Apple II well into the nineties, with the venerable system finally being replaced in the 1995-96 school year. Three of the four walls of my middle school’s computer lab were lined with all-in-one Macs from the LC 500 series, and one lonely row of Apple IIe computers remained. Kids who drew the short straws for that week’s computer lab session were stuck in the 8-bit penalty box, forced to endure the same titles they had in grade school while luckier classmates got the latest in CD-ROMs. After winter break, the computer lab rang in 1996 by supplanting the last remaining 8-bit machines with shiny new Macintosh LC580s. Some places held on even longer—I’ve read reports of grade school classrooms still using the Apple II at the turn of the millennium.

Reid Middle School may have retired their remaining Apple II systems by the fall of 1996, but some vestiges of the old computers lingered on. One day when fixing my seventh grade math teacher’s Macintosh LC II, I noticed something unusual: an Apple II 5 1/4 inch disk drive was attached to it! I knew that Macs didn’t use those old floppies, so I opened up the case to see what, exactly, the drive was connected to. I pulled out the card attached to the machine’s processor direct slot and saw the words “Apple IIe Card” silkscreened on the board. This little piece of hardware was Apple’s way of convincing conservative education customers that yes, a Mac could fit right in. Using tech derived from the IIGS, Apple managed to shrink an entire Apple IIe to the size of a postcard. Moore's Law strikes again. A host Macintosh could run Apple II programs from floppies or a hard disk, and a special Y-cable allowed you to attach external drives and joysticks. It wasn't quite emulation, or virtualization either—if you’re familiar with Amiga bridge boards or Apple’s DOS compatibility cards, it was kind of like that. For the low price of $199, you could make that shiny new Macintosh LC compatible with your vast array of Apple II programs and ease the pain of putting an old friend out to pasture.

Apple IIe Card — The Apple IIe PDS card.

The IIe card was introduced in March 1991, and sales of actual Apple IIe computers plunged. According to Apple, half of the LCs sold in schools came equipped with a IIe card, but actual sales numbers for these cards aren’t really known. The IIe card combined with the ongoing cost reductions in Macs meant the Apple II’s days were numbered. In 1991 Apple sold just 166,000 Apple IIe and IIGS computers—almost half of the previous year—and 1992 declined further to 122,000. Only 30,000 IIes were sold in its final year of 1993. Apple sold the IIe Card until May 1995, and you might think that was the last anyone would hear about the Apple II. Well, it turns out that yes, people still wanted to run Apple II software, and two engineers within Apple wrote a software IIGS emulator. This unofficial project, named Gus, was one of Apple’s few standalone emulators, and it could run both IIGS and regular Apple II software with no extra hardware required. Targeted towards schools, just like the IIe card, Gus kept the old Apple II platform shuffling on for those who made enough noise at Apple HQ.

Most product managers would kill to have something like the IIe—it was a smashing success no matter which metric you cite. Yet Apple always seemed to treat the machine with a quiet condescension, like a parent who favors one child over another. “Oh, yes, well, IIe certainly has done well for himself, but have you seen what Mac has done lately? He’s the talk of all of the computer shows!” The IIe sold a million units in 1984, but it wasn’t good enough for Mother Apple, who kept putting the Mac front and center. Even when the Mac suffered its sophomore slump in 1985 Apple seemed to resent that the boring old IIe sold almost another million units. Macintosh sales didn’t surpass the Apple II until 1988, and Apple didn’t sell a million Macs until 1989. Yes, yes, I know about transaction prices, but that’s not the point—without the Apple II to pay the rent, the Mac wouldn’t have been able to find itself.

I don’t want to judge the Apple II or its fans too harshly, because it’s a crucial piece of personal computing. But I also don’t think Apple was fundamentally wrong about the prospects of the Apple II—they just whiffed on the timeline. The core problem was the 6502 and later 65C816 architecture. Even though faster variants of the 65C816 used in the IIGS were available, the 6502-based architecture was a dead end. Maybe that would have been different if Apple had committed to the architecture with something like the Macintosh. But Western Design Center was a tiny design house operation which wasn’t on the same scale as Motorola, who not only designed their own chips, they fabricated them. Apple’s needs for things like protected memory, supervisors, floating point units, and so on would have meant a move away from 6502-based architectures eventually. A new CPU platform was coming whether Apple II users liked it or not.

The divide between the Apple II and Macintosh is endlessly fascinating to me. Could Apple have made the Apple II into something like the Macintosh? Maybe. The IIGS, after all, runs an operating system that mimics the Mac’s GUI. But what separates the two platforms is more of a philosophical divide than a technical one. The Apple II always felt like a computer for the present, while the Macintosh was a machine for the future. Wozniak designed the Apple II as a more reliable, practical version of his TV terminal dream. The Macintosh was a statement about how we would interact with computers for the next thirty years. Unlike the Xerox Star and the Lisa, an average person could buy a Macintosh without taking out a second mortgage. Other consumer-grade machines with graphical interfaces wouldn’t be out until 1985, and the Mac had the benefit of Steve Jobs’ Reality Distortion Field that let him get away with pretty much everything.

I don’t think Apple expected the IIe to live as long as it did. The IIGS was supposed to replace it—Apple even offered kits to upgrade the innards of a IIe to a IIGS! But the venerable computer just kept chugging along. Unlike the Commodore 64, which was just wearing out its welcome, the Apple IIe aged gracefully, like a kindly teacher who’s been around forever but never quite managed to make the jump to administration. By the 90s, Apple didn’t need the Apple II to survive, so they just quietly kept selling it until they could figure out a way to move everybody to Macintoshes without a boatload of bad press. Maybe it didn’t go as quickly as they would have liked, but they eventually got it done.

What accelerated the IIe's retirement, aside from just being old, was the proliferation of multimedia CD-ROMs and the World Wide Web. The Web was an educational tool even more powerful than a single personal computer, and unfortunately there weren't any web browsers for the IIGS, let alone the IIe. Computers were changing, and computer education was finally changing along with them. Now computer literacy wasn’t just about learning to program; it was learning about networking, linking, and collaboration. A school’s computer curriculum couldn’t afford to sit still, but even after all these years some things stay the same. Oregon Trail is still teaching kids about dysentery, just with newer graphics, nicer sound, and better historical accuracy. Carmen Sandiego is still trotting the globe, both on Netflix and in games.

The IIe was too personal for this new interconnected world, but that’s OK. It did its job and the people behind the first educational computing initiatives could retire knowing that they made a difference. Those classroom Apples taught a generation of children that computers weren’t mean and scary, but friendly and approachable instead. True, any other computer of the day could have risen to the challenge—look at our British friends across the pond with their beloved Beeb. But the IIe managed to be just enough machine at just the right time to bring high technology into America’s classrooms, and its true legacy is all the people it helped inspire to go on to bigger and better things.