I'm always impressed @ the amount of scientists that used Apple II machines

[Keatah]

It seems that the Apple II was a favorite among the technical and scientific community. Probably a lot more than you think. And these science guys tended to make one-hit-wonders in the gaming community.

 

Here's another dude: Paul Lutus

 

http://www.apple2games.com/wiki/Space_Raiders

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppleWriter

http://arachnoid.com/programmable_calculators/index.html

http://arachnoid.com/administration/index.html

[Osgeld]

its a simple machine ... and its nothing to design exactly what you want in terms of hardware and software for it

 

for example you can just write crap and have it talk direct on the io-card bus, vs other machines which were hidden behind a small pile of micro controllers ie C64. A 64 is great when you want to do awesome sound and graphics, but you dont have 7 slots directly connected to a cpu, you have 1

Edited April 6, 2013 by Osgeld

[Tempest]

Hell I can remember back in the early 90's our local planetarium was still running on an Apple IIe. I was shocked when I looked in the conrol room and saw it as I had the exact same computer at home. Man, did that made me all giddy to go home and start doing some serious programming on it.

[bills442]

well, not scientists, but I thought I would add my $.02; memories I had of some local hackers when I was a kid who did some interfacing with the Apple2.

 

This would have been around 1980 I'm guessing. I was about 10, and a friend in my church invited me to "help out" with their volunteer efforts. A local HAM group had created a system of Apple2s that would run photo-sensors to time the races at the local soap box derby. They had all kinds of stuff, I remember. The computers would pipe a composite video signal up to the announcers box with the current heat and the racer info, so they could announce it ... and then the computers would somehow detect the finish crossing, kick off a photo finish and some ladies at a terminal would process the results and enter the data for the announcers again. I remember the "computer room" was hidden under the bleachers and they had lined the walls with foil ( not sure why, to help with heat, or maybe to cut down RF?? ) there was a single air conditioner in the wall and there were several Apple2 all with the top lid popped off. I was in awe.

[desiv]

I think some of that has to do with the fact that the Apple II series was really the first available (commonly) home computer, and scientists were early adopters...

 

desiv

[AtariLeaf]

It is the most funner computer ever.