C64 Spartan Apple II emulator box

[bradhig1]

Anyone use one of these and know how much apple II software works with it?   Makes me wonder if they got sued by Apple.

[carlsson]

Apparently it was advertised back in 1984 but didn't hit the market until late 1985, early 1986. By then it had become obsolete, both because the newest Apple software required a //e or IIc rather than the ][+ this box emulates, and because the library of native C64 software - even productivity - had grown. Also there were other Apple ][ series clones far cheaper than the Spartan, even if you already owned a C64. One of these linked stories suggest that the president of Mimic Systems may have written himself a big paycheck and left shortly after the system had been launched.

 

It would seem they decompiled the ROM, rearranged instructions so it would not be binary identical which proved more difficult for the original copyright owner to win a lawsuit against. The same thing kind of happened to Commodore with all those 1541 clone drives that do the same thing - take Commodore's ROMs, reshuffle instructions or entire routines while maintaining external entry points and you need stronger evidence to convince the court, which probably isn't so technically advanced, that your copyrighted material has been reused even if in a slightly modified form.

 

https://www.applefritter.com/node/229

https://dfarq.homeip.net/ode-to-the-spartan/

http://www.mos6502.com/friday-commodore/strange-peripherals-meet-the-spartan/

[motrucker]

I remember seeing a demo of the Spartan at our old Commodore User Group, in about mid 1986. It had all of the updates, and even had the 1541 board. Very interesting bit of hardware, if some what expensive. It did a very good job of running Apple ][ software, although IIRC they could not get the 1541 to work 100%. It took so long to be released, it was being referred to as vaporware back then.

Here are some more thoughts on this add on;

 

https://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=44617&start=0

 

 

 

 

[motrucker]

On 2/3/2020 at 5:51 PM, motrucker said:

https://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=44617&start=0

https://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=44617&start=0

 

Here's the link that should work this time. My apologies for for including a link that didn't work.