We walked over to my Apple II.  It
really looked good sitting there.
I turned it around and said...
^
"Now, Ms. Novice, you've got a bird's"
eye view with the keyboard on the left.
And since this is a special Apple II
with a transparent top...
^
you can actually see the LOGIC BOARD
inside.
^
"That's really impressive, Mr. Capslock."
It looks pretty complicated.
^
"Well, it is.  But we'll take it step by"
"step, and you'll catch on in no time."
^
That's fine.  Go ahead.
^
"First, notice the DISK DRIVE.  It takes"
information off a floppy disk or puts
information on it.
^
But the real action goes on here with
"all the INTEGRATED CIRCUITS, called"
chips.  They're silicon wafers with
electronic circuits etched inside.
^
"And this is the big guy, the boss, the"
MICROPROCESSOR--the brain of the whole
system.
^
This bunch of chips over here is the
"read-only memory, or ROM for short."
^
The guys at Apple put information in ROM
"that stays there all the time, whether"
the power is on or off.
^
What kind of information?
^
"Oh, things like the Applesoft BASIC"
programming language.  But don't worry.
You don't really need to know much about
ROM.
^
Last but not least are the chips that
"make up random-access memory, or RAM."
Now RAM is nothing to sneeze at.
^
Why? What's so great about RAM?
^
That's where your information was when
you had trouble this morning.  Let me
show you what happened...
^
"When the power is ON, your information"
is in RAM.
^
"But if the power goes OFF, all the info"
goes away.
^
"Oh, so I've got to make a permanent"
copy of my work on a disk.
^
Right.  You're catching on.
^
"Yes, I think so.  But I still don't see"
what all this has to do with the
Apple II and me.
^
Ms. Novice was with me all the way so
far.  But now I had to take her a little
deeper...
^
Press RETURN for the rest of the story
"                 or"
"     ESC to go back to the menu."
^EOF

