• Tag Archives Franklin Ace 1000

  • The Bottom Line (Apple II)

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    Source: inCider – Issue Number 1 – January 1983



    This particular ad is from the premiere issue of inCider from January 1983. inCider was a magazine dedicated to the Apple II line of computers. Back in the day, there were tons of computer mail order places advertised in computer magazines. I’m more familiar with those specializing in Commodore 64 related items but many of these places sold systems of all types. “The Bottom Line” is not one I recognize but this is a few years before I got my first computer and obviously in this ad thay are pushing Apple II related items.

    The price for the Apple compatible Franklin Ace 1000 was $1549. That includes a disk drive and amber monitor. That sounds like a lot (and it was) but it’s a bargain compared to the price of real Apple equipment at the time. But who wants an amber monitor? Not much good for games…

    It’s amazing how much a dot matrix printer cost. The Star Micronics Gemini-10, quite a popular printer at the time, was $419.88 in 1983. That number already sounds expensive but adjusted for inflation, that would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,300 today.

    Modems weren’t much better. An abysmally slow 300 Baud modem was $239. A more respectable 1200bps would cost you $569. And that was about as fast as you could get at the time.

    But for a real demonstration of just how far prices for technology have fallen, take a look at the hard drive prices. A whopping 5 MB would cost you at least $2000. That’s more like $5,400 in today’s dollars. For some more fun, take a look at the RAM prices…


    📂This entry was posted in Apple ][ Computer Arcana 📎and tagged

  • Franklin Ace 1000

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    Vintage Franklin Ace 1000 Apple II Compatible Computer System

    http://darth-azrael.tumblr.com/post/164351679535/monochrome-monitor-vintage-franklin-ace-1000

    The Franklin Ace line of computers were clones of the Apple II+ produced by the Franklin Computer Corporation. Ultimately, they were sued by Apple and by the time everything was resolved, Apple II compatibility wasn’t as important. Franklin wasn’t sued because of the hardware they produced but because they copied Apple’s BIOS (even the copyright notice). Early PC clone makers avoided this problem by reverse engineered IBMs BIOS for the PC instead of just copying it outright.

    The Franklin Ace 1000 was introduced in 1982. It used a MOS 64502 processor and had 64K of RAM as well as 8 Apple II compatible expansion slots. It featured near 100% compatibility with Apple II software. I’m not sure the Franklin Ace 1000 had any big advantages over the II+. My expectations are that it would have been much cheaper but it really wasn’t, at least not at introduction. The II+ was introduced in 1979 at $1195 while the Franklin Ace 1000 was introduced in 1982 at $1100. It did have 64K of RAM while the Apple II+ only originally came with 16KB. Also, the II+ needed an expansion card to reach the full 64KB. Other than these relatively small advantages, I’m not sure there was a particularly good reason to get the Franklin Ace over a real Apple II. It is possible the price of the Franklin dropped more rapidly and was a better deal later in its life.

    At the end of the day, the Franklin Ace 1000 is a neat computer to have in your collection but if I had to choose between it and an Apple II+, I would probably still pick the Apple. The Franklin just doesn’t offer enough that is better or unique to prefer it to the real deal, however it is far more rare.


    📂This entry was posted in Apple ][ Computer Arcana 📎and tagged