On Jun 11, 2013, at 9:05 AM, Alexandre Souza <alexandre.tabajara at gmail.com> wrote: As far as I can see, that's just on one bank of RAM, which is perfectly sensible, those would have been added later, the sockets would have been empty initially. The datecodes everywhere else are just what you'd expect. The Applesoft/AutoStart ROM chips were swapped in at some point and it doesn't appear that the originals were saved (probably would have gone into a language card which would have been the source of the AutoStart ROM chips), but it's not an insurmountable challenge to find period-accurate replacements if the new owner wants to downgrade back down to the original state.

On Tue, 11 Jun 2013, David Riley wrote: I'm not sure about 1998, but Apple could still service them up through at least the mid 1990s. I worked with a number of educational users who had entire labs filled with Apple II machines and they were still sending them out for service in the mid 1990s under existing service contracts. Those Apple II machines have long since been replaced with cheap PCs though. In that regard, I can't help but wonder what has become of all those machines, which depending on the computer lab, were pretty much everything wish I would have thought to work something out to save a few dozen IIgs systems since I'd love to set up a small portable educational lab today, but I can't justify spending the kind of money that collectors are willing to spend on individual IIgs machines.

I remember people begging anyone to take an Apple IIgs with school markings for barely over shipping costs when there was a glut around 10 years ago, these days those machines actually sell. This is a hobby where todays junk is tomorrows treasure. The only problem is 10 years ago there wasn't an army of scrapper looking at every machine as a gold coin (gold hit $1800 but ten years ago it was $350) so all the "worthless" stuff ends up recycled now and not stuffed in an attic. -----Original Message----- From: Geoffrey Oltmans Sent: Tuesday, June 11, 2013 10:03 AM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: Now might be a good time to liquidate those early Apple IIs you have lying around... On Tue, Jun 11, 2013 at 8:47 AM, Tothwolf <tothwolf at concentric.net> wrote: Well, I don't know about your area, but about 15 years ago there was a spate of Apple II stuff that showed up in area thrift stores... quite a lot, and then those naturally disappeared over a period of a year. 10 years later, there were a lot of early Power Macintosh systems that showed up. In both cases they had asset tracking stickers on the cases from local schools.

On Jun 11, 2013, at 12:07 PM, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote: That, and there's a valley of about 10-20 years where old computers are just "junk" (often rightfully so), especially if they were common. I don't really care to save my old PCs; maybe in 10 years I'll regret having not saved some old original Athlon stuff, but I'm not counting on it. My father used to have a Quadra 660AV. After it "died" (causes unknown, at least at the time, since I wasn't proficient at diagnosing these things then), I parted out what I could (mostly the RAM and full 68040) and tossed the rest. I'm kicking myself now, obviously. But in the year 2000, a 7-year old Mac with a busted power supply just didn't seem like it made sense to save. Most of the old machines I have were saved by virtue of being forgotten about until recently. - Dave

Your office is not the place to store personal collections anyway. -----Original Message----- From: Fred Cisin Sent: Tuesday, June 11, 2013 12:15 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: Now might be a good time to liquidate those early Apple IIs you have lying around... On Tue, 11 Jun 2013, Tothwolf wrote: school administrators? dumpster! They tried to fire one of my colleagues for retrieving stuff from the dumpster. That included a few dozen Hell & Bowel black Apples. And then during the hearings, they gave him 2 hours to get stuff from his office and then dumpstered his entire collection.

Ack, I've got pretty much everything (and it's a LOT) in my office, but I also can't imagine in my case ever being told by the university that what's in my office is theirs to dispose of (and I have tenure, so it's not so likely I'd be tossed out anyway). In an elementary school or business environment, though, where the space is really considered to be more theirs, I can see that would be a problem. Maybe better: A space that is not under your control is not the place to store personal collections anyway. -Paul On Jun 11, 2013, at 1:41 PM, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:

On Tue, 11 Jun 2013, Dave McGuire wrote: Although college profs, with tenure, have reasonably secure jobs, college administrators are the quintessential stupid asshole suits. Q: Should the Computer Science department be allowed to participate in decisions of what computers should be purchased for the Computer Science department lab? Nothing short of defenestration will get them into line.

On 06/11/2013 01:52 PM, Ian King wrote: Well, the guy who lost his collection because it was in his office, I'll bet. Cool. :) -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA