An Apple a Day

QUESTION: I was cleaning out my father’s attic and discovered an old Apple computer, an Apple II to be exact.  It’s hard to imagine that this little device was at the forefront of computers of its day. How collectible are early computers and how collectible is this Apple II?

ANSWER: The answer to both your questions is simple—very. The Apple II was the granddaddy of home computers. It looked more like a closed typewriter with its built-in keyboard, but it packed a lot of punch for its day.

Steve Wozniak, who designed the Apple I with limited funds, was able to make some definitive and much improved changes in the Apple II. Appearing for the first time at the  first West Coast Computer Faire on April 16 and 17, 1977, it was an instant sensation.

The main difference internally was a completely redesigned TV interface, which held the display in memory and could display it on a TV via an NTSC cable. Not only useful for simple text display, the Apple II included graphics, and, eventually, color. Steve Jobs, Wozniak’s friend and partner, meanwhile wanted an improved case and keyboard, with the idea that the machine should be complete and ready to run out of the box.

But building the Apple II was financially challenging. Jobs began looking for funds. However, banks were reluctant to lend him money—the idea of a computer for ordinary people seemed absurd at the time. He eventually found Mark Markkula, who co-signed a loan of $250,000. Jobs, Wozniak, and Markkula formed Apple Computer on April 1, 1976. They chose the Apple name because they wanted to beat Atari, and Apple came before Atari in the alphabet and this in the phone book.

With its new case and graphics, the Apple II became one of the 1977 Trinity of computers—along with the Tandy Corporation’s (Radio Shack) TRS-80 and the Commodore PET—credited with establishing the home computer market. Apple Computer sold 5-6 million Apple II’s by 1993.

In terms of ease of use, features, and expandability, the Apple II was a major technological advancement over its predecessor, the Apple I, a bare-bones motherboard computer for hobbyists. First sold on June 10, 1977, the Apple II became one of the longest running mass-produced home computer series, with models in production for just under 17 years. Among the first successful personal computers, it put Apple Computers on the map.

Jobs and Wozniak aggressively marketed the Apple II through volume discounts and manufacturing arrangements to educational institutions which made it the first computer to be used in American secondary schools, displacing the early leader, the Commodore PET. The effort to develop educational and business software for the Apple II made the computer especially popular with business users and families.

To load and save programs and data, the Apple II used audio cassette tapes. In 1978, Wozniak implemented a Disk Operating System or DOS, which he commissioned from the Shepardson Company. The final and most popular version of this software was Apple DOS 3.3. Some commercial Apple II software booted directly and didn’t use standard DOS formats. This discouraged copying or modifying of the software on the disks and improved loading speed.

By 1992, the Apple II series of computers had 16-bit processing capabilities, a mouse-driven Graphical User Interface (GUI for short), and graphics and sound capabilities far beyond the original created in 1977.

Wozniak designed the Apple II to look more like a home appliance than a piece of electronic equipment. The lid lifted off the beige plastic case without the use of tools, allowing access to the computer's internal workings, including the motherboard with eight expansion slots, and an array of random access memory (RAM) sockets that could hold up to 48 kilobytes worth of memory chips.

The Apple II eventually had color and high-resolution graphics modes, sound capabilities and one of two built-in BASIC programming languages, plus a microprocessor running at 1 MHz, 4 KB of RAM—today’s computers run at 800+ Ghz with RAM at 8 gigabytes or higher. Jobs and Wozniak targeted the computer for  consumers rather than just hobbyists and engineers. Unlike other home microcomputers at the time, Apple sold it as a finished consumer appliance rather than as a kit.

To reflect the computer's color graphics capability, the Apple logo on the case sported rainbow stripes which remained a part of Apple's corporate logo until early 1998.

Wozniak eventually added an external 5¼-inch floppy disk drive, the Disk II, attached via a controller card that plugged into one of the Apple II's expansion slots, to replace cassettes for data storage and retrieval. Apple's Disk II became the first affordable floppy drive for personal computers.

Wozniak's open design and the Apple II's multiple expansion slots permitted a wide variety of third-party devices, including Apple II peripheral cards such as serial controllers, display controllers, memory boards, hard disks, networking components, and realtime clocks—all common on today’s computers.

The original retail price of the Apple II with 4 kilobytes of RAM was $1,298 and $2,638 with the maximum 48 kilobytes. Today, Apple II’s can be found on eBay selling for $300-400 in working condition.

While there’s a collector for just about any pre-1990 computer, any from the 1970s and earlier are hot. Though there’s a lot of computer related equipment and peripherals to  to collect from this era,  nothing beats the early Apple computers. Apple has staying power. They’re the last of the home-brewed companies that emerged out of the 1970s that are still in business.

Do NOT Delete

QUESTION: I was rooting around in my attic recently and came across an old Commodore 64 computer that belonged to my late husband. Does this have any value or should I just recycle it?

ANSWER: Before you give that old computer the heave-ho, you might want to read on. It’s been 30 years since the Commodore 64 first appeared on the market. In that relatively short time, personal computers—better known as “PCs”—have turned the world upside down and inside out. In fact, most people do very little without computers today, and businesses, especially, couldn’t operate without them.

As technology progresses, people, especially nerds who grew up with computers, seek out their first computers. Like most parents, they always fondly remember their first. And in the retro movement, twenty- and thirty-somethings are also trying to discover the computers from before they were born. In fact, someone out there collects just about any pre-1990 computer, but it’s the ones from the 1970s that are hot.

With 17 million units sold during its long lifetime, there are probably more Commodore 64 computers stashed away in closets and attics than any other model. Some say the Commodore 64 was the best-selling single computer model of all time. Collectors can usually find one or two available on eBay for anywhere from $10 to $300, with some in their original box.

Of all the early computers, the Apple models are the overall favorite among collectors. The most sought after one is the Apple I. Of the 200 assembled in a wooden cases in 1976, only 35 still exist. When they first appeared, they sold for $666.66 and even at that price, Apple co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak struggled to drum up interest in their new creation. Originally, they had planned to sell the Apple 1 as a bare circuit board that electronics hobbyists could turn into a working computer by soldering in the chips themselves. But it was only a modest success. In today’s Apple IPad world, it’s become the most famous collectible computer, bringing in $15,000 and $25,000 when one goes up for sale.

With over 5-6 million sold, the Apple II isn’t that rare. Originally selling for $1,298, today about the most a collector will pay for one is $250. Some call this model one of the greatest PCs of all time. Of all the ones that appeared on the market in 1977, it was definitely the most advanced. The hottest one today is the plain-vanilla II model.

Garage sale and dumpster divers have no trouble finding discarded computers. But the more valuable ones, like the Apple Lisa, are harder to come because of their age and collectability. By 1983, Jobs and Wozniak had refined their computers with a graphical interface—that is users were able to display fonts, illustrations, and photos on the monitor. This put the Lisa way ahead of its time with a hefty price tag of $10,000 to match. It even came with a mouse, a feature that wasn’t to appear regularly until the MacIntosh. Unfortunately, this computer was also temperamental and thus failed in the market. Its historical significance makes it one of the most valuable computer collectibles, valued at $10,000,  the same amount it sold for 29 years ago. To add to its mystique, Jobs and Wozniak ordered 2,700 unsold Lisas buried in a Utah landfill in 1987.

In February 2005, Christie’s held an “Origins of Cyberspace” auction which offered old documents detailing the foundations of computing. The auction drew a lot of attention to vintage technology and placed value on items once used only by geeks. Unfortunately, that attention caused vintage computer prices to skyrocket, thus pricing a lot of collectors out of the market. 

Cover-featured in a famous issue of Popular Electronics magazine as a do-it-yourself project, the Intel 8080-based Altair wasn't the first microcomputer, but it was the first one that truly caught on, spawning an entire industry of clones, add-ons, and software suppliers. Bill Gates, through his company Micro-Soft, developed the first operating system for that computer, launching a company that operates to the present day. And because the Altair was such a big seller, it isn’t as valuable as some of the other early computers, however, models in good condition do sell today for over $2,000.

The first clone of the Altair was the IMSAI 8080 which sold for $600 in 1975 and has a value nearly that now. It’s main selling point was its compatibility with the Altair 8800. It’s probably most famous today as the computer that Matthew Broderick used in the 1983 movie “War Games.”

Two of the most popular computers to catch the eye of consumers and now collectors are Radio Shack’s Tandy TRS-80 Model 1, which hit the stores in 1977 for $599, and the TRS-80 Model 100, which appeared in 1983 for $799. The TRS-80 became the first computer sold in shopping malls while the second became the first popular notebook computer, with nearly 6 million sold, making Radio Shack the world's leading computer retailer for a while. Both sell today on eBay for $25 to $250.

Last but not least is the IBM PC, first coming on the computer scene in 1981 at a staggering price of $1,565 and now worth between $50 and $500. More formally known as the IBM 5150, it foretold the end of the early days of the Computer Age. The PC revolutionized computing for the average consumer, becoming the first to use hardware and software made by third-party companies. After it’s introduction, no computer company, except Apple, had a monopoly on their wares. And in its January 1983 issue, Time Magazine named it the “Machine of the Year.” And today, in all of its many forms, that machine still is.