At last, towards the ecumenical computer
by GARETH POWELL, Computer Editor
The Sydney Morning Herald — February 16, 1987 [OCR text]
LAST week, we reported that two serious PCs would soon go on sale in Australia
for less than $1,000. And last week, Dick Smith Electronics released its basic
MultiTech beneath that magic figure. As forecast, it sold like hot cakes. No
official denial was forthcoming from Commodore that it will release a machine at
the same price in March. Little doubt, however, that it will. Since then, many
manufacturers have made plans to get on the bandwagon with varying degrees of
agility. Atari, distributed in Australia by Mobex, will launch one in March a
busy month for personal computers and there are at least three other near
certainties which will hit the market at the same time. At which point the
perceived price of a bottom-of-the-line PC will be firmly established at less
than $1,000. And the el cheapo imported-and-assembled Taiwan clones will be
forced to drop below $800 if they are to compete.
[....]
... Personal computers will be cheaper this year than ever before. Parents, who would traditionally buy their children a cheaper machine, will find that for much the same money they can buy a fully optioned PC clone which will keep the ankle-biters happy, and can also be used for business. This is not good news for the manufacturers of machines traditionally aimed at the home and education rather than business use.
A good example is the Apple IIe, the machine that started the revolution but is now getting a little long in the tooth in computer terms. Sales for this machine essentially now aimed only at education and hobbyists will undoubtedly be affected by the price of these new, ultra-cheap PCs. Because the Apple IIe sells for $2345, it could be helped by a new plug-in board, called TrackStar, which has just been released for PCs. When installed in a PC, this board allows the machine to run both PC and Apple II software. In other words, it accepts and operates both MS-DOS and Apple's disc-operating system, DOS 3.3. It's important to note that it does not work with Apple's latest operating system, ProDOS. TrackStar sells for $906. In theory, the price of this card plus a PC is less than Apple is asking for its standard IIe. This is not quite the case because, to get full value from the card, you need to install an Apple II disc drive in your PC, and this will cost you a nudge under $300 for a Taiwan clone. But you can certainly put together a very respectable machine, running both Apple DOS and MS-DOS programs, for less than $3,000.
TrackStar fits into any slot on a PC. It then cunningly interlinks between the standard disc drive and the PC, and between the monitor and the PC, and links in with an Apple II disc drive if you have fitted one. There is 125K of memory on board as well as the 65C02 chip, the central processing unit that drives the Apple II series. On my MultiTech, I normally run one 20-megabyte hard disc and one 1.2-megabyte floppy. There are blanking pieces covering holes which take two more half-height drives, so I had room to install a Taiwanese Apple drive running 5.25-discs. The software that comes with the TrackStar I loaded on to my hard disc along with Apple DOS 3.3 and a simple automatic boot program that I wrote. Then I switched on and nothing worked. Nothing. Not PC or Apple. The TrackStar apparently is unhappy with AT equivalents. I then switched it over to a standard PC and it worked first time, just like a bought one. With that set-up I can choose between Apple and PC programs. When I chose Apple programs, there is a slight lag before the program runs because the computer is loading Apple DOS 3.3 into memory but, in truth, the delay is not overly long. When I want to switch from an Apple program to an IBM program, I press the ALT and ESC keys at the same time and the changeover is immediate.
At the back of the TrackStar card is a port which allows me to hang on an Apple joystick. The board gives me a choice of composite, RGB colour or monochrome. I have an RGB monitor and the results on the screen are about the same in both IBM operating mode and Apple. The TrackStar card comes from Logo Computer Centre (819 6811). Several problems arise. First, the legality or otherwise of the board. Apple management says it has the matter under review. My guess is that it would be almost impossible to create such a board without infringing several of Apple's copyrights. On the other hand, it might be tricky explaining exactly what has happened to a jury. The second is that the machine, as set up, will run only Apple DOS 3.3 programs, not ProDOS, which is where all the action is on the Apple II series. All of my Apple DOS programs, which I have treasured for years, look positively old-fashioned now I see them again. Programming and computers have moved on since those early days. Apple DOS programs, in truth, have become old hat. Sad. This TrackStar card, rather than being of great import for the present, perhaps rather more points the way towards the future. When the new Macintosh line is launched at the beginning of March, it may well show some possibilities of interleaving with some MS-DOS programs. Ecumenism will have come to computers.
NB: Different models and revisions of the Trackstar board were made...
Trackstar E (compatible with IBM PC, XT, AT, 386) & Trackstar Plus 2.0 (for IBM Model 25, 30, 30/286 & analogue monitors) offer true 128K Apple IIe/IIc and ProDOS compatibility
→ Trackstar E manual @ applelogic.org is available HERE [1MB PDF]
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