[CyMonk]

> An Apple II in 1982 has 256 Kb of RAM.

Just to nitpick, because this was my first computer. The Apple ][+ from 1982 featured an 8- bit 6502 processor capable of addressing max. 64 KB. If I remember correctly, the base model shipped with 16 KB and could be upgraded.

[kazinator]

Apple II's could be upgraded up to 48 kB. Then you could have a memory peripheral in one of the slots (I think restricted to slot 1?) that could provide another 16 kB of memory, which could be shadowed with the ROM are that occupied the upper 16 kB already.

(Probably the first card like that was the Language Card which had not RAM, but a 16 kB ROM providing Wozniak's Integer Basic, which would replace/overlay the Microsoft-developed Applesoft Basic.)

RAM cards featured more than 16 kB and could provide access to it via bank-selecting I/O registers.

A friend of mine had a 128 kB card. It was used by disk copying software to snarf floppy into RAM. His board had a row of 3 LEDs on the PCB to indicate the bank currently selected: as the disk copying software was running, you could see the LEDs counting from 0 to 7 in binary.

[marcus_holmes]

nitpick gratefully accepted :) I never had one, so had to look it up and got it wrong. Thanks :)