Apple IIe(1983)

Contexto histórico

The Apple II Plus was followed in 1983 by the Apple IIe, a cost-reduced yet more powerful machine that used newer chips to reduce the component count and add new features, such as the display of upper and lowercase letters and a standard 64 KB of RAM. The IIe RAM was configured as if it were a 48 KB Apple II Plus with a language card; the machine had no slot 0, but instead had an auxiliary slot that for most practical purposes took the place of slot 3, the most commonly used slot for 80-column cards in the II Plus. The Apple IIe was the most popular Apple II ever built and was widely considered the "workhorse" of the line. It also has the distinction of being the longest-lived Apple computer of all time – it was manufactured and sold with only minor changes for nearly 11 years. In that time, following the original, two important variations were introduced known as the Apple IIe Enhanced (four new replacement chips to give it some of the features of the later model Apple IIc, including an upgraded processor called the 65C02) and the Apple IIe Platinum (a modernized new look for the case color to match other Apple products of the era, along with the addition of a built-in numeric keypad). An Enhanced IIe with 128 KB of RAM can be considered the minimum requirement for running most Apple II software released after about 1988. IIe models were distinguished from the standard IIe by having 128 KB of memory, DHGR graphics mode, and a 65C02 CPU.