Apple II Series - Clones

Clones

The Apple II was frequently cloned, both in the United States and abroad – similar cloning of the IBM PC later occurred. According to some sources (see below), more than 190 different models of Apple II clones were manufactured. Many of these had "fruit" names (for example, "Pineapple"and "Pearcom") to indicate to the initiated that they were Apple II clones. Apple successfully forced the "Pineapple" to change its name to "Pinecom." Well known in the Soviet Bloc were the Agat, an oversized Russian Apple II clone with a Cyrillic character set, and Bulgarian Pravetz series 8, a close Apple II replica with Cyrillic support.

Basis, a German company, created the Basis 108, a clone for the Apple II that included both a 6502 processor and the Zilog Z80, allowing it to run the CP/M operating system as well as most Apple II software. This machine was unusual in that it was housed in a heavy cast aluminum chassis. The Basis 108 was equipped with built-in Centronics (parallel) and RS232c (serial) ports, as well as the standard six Apple II compatible slots. Unlike the Apple II it came with a detached full-stroke keyboard (AZERTY/QWERTY) of 100 keys plus 15 functions keys and separate numeric and editing keypads.

Another European Apple II Clone was the Pearcom Pear II, which was quite a bit larger as the original as it sported not eight but fourteen expansion slots. It also had a numerical keypad. Pearcom initially used a pear shaped rainbow logo, but stopped using the logo after Apple threatened to sue.

A Bosnian (at the time part of Yugoslavia) company named IRIS Computers (sub company of biggest electric company in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Yugoslavia ENERGOINVEST) has produced Apple II clones since the early 1980s. Their official brand name was IRIS 8. They were very expensive and hard to obtain and were produced primarily for usage in early computerized digital telephone systems and for education. Their usage in offices of the state companies, R&D labs and in the Yugoslav army was also reported. IRIS 8 had looks of early IBM PCs – separate central unit with cooling system and two 5.25-inch disks, monitor and keyboard. Compatibility with original Apple II was complete. Elite high schools in Yugoslavia and especially Bosnia and Herzegovina were equipped with clusters of 8, 16 or 32 IRIS 8 computers connected in local network administrated by IRIS 16 PC clone. The number of IRIS 8s produced could be as many as a couple of tens of thousands.

An Australian-produced clone of the Apple II was the Medfly, named after the Mediterranean fruit fly that attacks apples. The Medfly computer featured a faster processor, more memory, detached keyboard, lower and upper case characters and a built-in disk controller.

Unitron, a Brazilian company, produced another clone, named ApII. Unitron used a copy of the Apple's ROM translated to Portuguese. The operating system was Apple's DOS 3.3 translated to Portuguese. During this period, it was illegal to import microcomputers in Brazil, and buying those (illegal) clones was one of the only ways to have a microcomputer. (Another approach was to purchase a legitimate Apple II, disassemble it into parts (i.e. keyboard, power supply, motherboard, case), which were legal to import into Brazil, and reassemble them in country.) Unitron stopped manufacturing the ApII a few years after the introduction of IBM PC clones in Brazil.

The Ace clones from Franklin Computer Corporation are the best known and had the most lasting impact, as Franklin copied Apple's ROMs and software and freely admitted to doing so. Franklin's argument: a computer's ROM was simply a pattern of switches locked into a fixed position, and one cannot copyright a pattern of switches. Apple fought Franklin in court for about five years to get its clones off the market, and was ultimately successful when a court ruled that software stored in ROM was in fact copyrightable in the U.S. (See Apple Computer, Inc. v. Franklin Computer Corp.) Franklin later released non-infringing but less-compatible clones; these could run ProDOS and AppleWorks and had an Applesoft-like BASIC, but compatibility with other software was hit-or-miss.

Apple also challenged VTech's Laser 128, an enhanced clone of the Apple IIc first released in 1984, in court. This suit proved less fruitful for Apple, because VTech had reverse-engineered the Monitor ROM rather than copying it and had licensed Applesoft BASIC from its creator, Microsoft. Apple had neglected to obtain exclusive rights to the Applesoft dialect of BASIC from Microsoft; VTech was the first cloner to license it. The Laser 128 proved popular and remained on the market for many years, both in its original form and in accelerated versions that ran faster than 1 MHz. Although it was not 100% compatible with the Apple II, it was close, and its popularity ensured that most major developers tested their software on a Laser as well as on genuine Apple machines. Because it was frequently sold via mail order and mass-market retailers such as Sears, the Laser 128 may have cut into the sales of low-cost competitors such as Commodore Business Machines as much as it did Apple's.

While the first Apple II clones were generally exact copies of their Apple counterparts that competed mainly on price, many clones had extra capabilities too. A Franklin model, the Ace 1000, sported a numeric keypad and lower-case long before these features were added to the Apple II line. The Laser 128 series is sometimes credited with spurring Apple to release the Apple IIc Plus; the built-in 3½-inch drive and accelerated processor were features Laser had pioneered. The Laser 128 also had a IIe-style expansion slot on the side that could be used to add peripheral cards.

Bell & Howell, an audiovisual equipment manufacturer whose products (particularly film projectors) were ubiquitous in American schools, offered what appeared at first glance to be an Apple II Plus clone in a distinctive black plastic case. However, these were in fact real Apple II Plus units manufactured by Apple for B&H for a brief period of time. Many schools had a few of these Black Apple or Black "Darth Vader" Apples in their labs.

ITT made the ITT 2020, a licensed Apple ] The ITT2020 produced a PAL video signal for the European market, where the domestic US market used NTSC. Software using the BIOS worked correctly on both the Apple and ITT, but software written to access the Apple's display hardware directly, bypassing the BIOS, displayed with vertical stripes on the ITT 2020. The Apple itself was later introduced in the UK, and both the Apple ][ and ITT 2020 were sold for a time, the ITT at a lower price.

Syscom 2 Inc (from Carson City, NV) created the Syscom 2 Apple ][+ clone. The case looked nearly identical. They had 48 k RAM and the normal expansion capabilities. These clones also supported lower case characters, toggled with a ^O keystroke.

An unknown company produced a clone called the RX-8800. One new feature it had was a numeric keypad.

Although not technically a clone, Quadram produced an add-in ISA card, called the Quadlink, that provided hardware emulation of an Apple II+ for the IBM PC. The card had its own 6502 CPU and dedicated 80 K RAM (64 K for applications, plus 16 K to hold a reverse-engineered Apple ROM image, loaded at boot-time), and installed "between" the PC and its floppy drive(s), color display, and speaker, in a pass-through configuration. This allowed the PC to operate in a dual-boot fashion: when booted through the Quadlink, the PC could run the majority of II software, and read and write Apple-formatted floppies through the standard PC floppy drive. Because it had a dedicated processor, rather than any form of software emulation, this system ran at nearly the same speed as an equivalent Apple machine. Another company, Diamond Computer Systems, produced a similar card called the Trackstar, that had both a 6502 and a Z80, allowing use of software for both Apple DOS and Apple CP/M. The Trackstar also had a connector allowing use of an actual Apple floppy drive, which enhanced its compatibility with software that took advantage of Apple hardware for copy-protection.

Because the Apple II used so many unique concepts, many of them patented as well as copyrighted, Apple Computer was able to work with the U.S. Customs service to stop the import of many of the clones into the United States.

Most of the clone manufacturers chose to stop production on their own once the IBM PC became popular because it was possible to make legitimate clones of the PC which wouldn't violate any of IBM's patents or copyrights.