26 Apr
1997
26 Apr
'97
4:01 a.m.
A guy at my
work is supposed to give me his, which he says is a ][, but he's not
always all there, so it could just be a ][+. But I would say a ][ is
probably worth about $100 with some accessories, like a disk drive and
monitor and the language card.
I just swapped a bare II/E for a Bare II. Going price for a bare IIE is about
$20 on the Apple newsgroups. Apple II's don't seem to be valued very much in
the Apple II newsgroup or for sale group.
Lou
26 Apr
26 Apr
4:57 a.m.
On Sat, 26 Apr 1997 BigLouS(a)aol.com wrote:
Well, that's mostly because the machine isn't appreciated yet. Sure a
trillion were made, but has anyone actually ever SEEN one? Yeah, sure,
maybe a few of us, but I'm sure EVERYONE here can say they've seen a //e,
a //c or even a //gs, but not the original, plain old vanilla ][.
A //e would sell because it is still an extremely usable machine. Even
if you added the 16k language card to a ][ and gave it a lowercase ROM
and a shift-key mod, it still couldn't run a good deal of specific
applications that make the apple ][ usable these days. Thus the ][ is
considered a cripple.
Sam
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass
A guy at my
work is supposed to give me his, which he says is a ][, but he's not
always all there, so it could just be a ][+. But I would say a ][ is
probably worth about $100 with some accessories, like a disk drive and
monitor and the language card.
I just swapped a bare II/E for a Bare II. Going price for a bare IIE is about
$20 on the Apple newsgroups. Apple II's don't seem to be valued very much in
the Apple II newsgroup or for sale group. 
7:52 a.m.
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11:01 a.m.
On Sat, 26 Apr 1997, Tim Shoppa wrote:
Yeah, you never really think of the cassette ports having been useful for
anything but digitizing sound and maybe transferring copy protected
games, or piping sound output to an external amplifier.
Sam
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass
Well,
that's mostly because the machine isn't appreciated yet. Sure a
trillion were made, but has anyone actually ever SEEN one? Yeah, sure,
maybe a few of us, but I'm sure EVERYONE here can say they've seen a //e,
a //c or even a //gs, but not the original, plain old vanilla ][.
Actually, I hadn't seen a //c or //gs until just a year or two ago.
But I still have my vanilla II.
Much more interesting to me than the original II are some of the
original Apple II software products. For example, the RAM version of
Applesoft, or some of the good old Integer Basic games like
Apple Trek and Pong, on original Apple cassette tapes. Good stuff.
Unfortunately, lots of these little items got thrown out when users
upgraded to disk drives. 
11:50 a.m.
New subject: weekend additions
I picked up some good stuff today. Here is the haul:
One nearly mint copy of "More BASIC Computer Games" by David Ahl.
One "The Best of Creative Computing V.3" by Ahl and Green.
One boxed copy of Adventure for HP 150 and HP 110. (yes, THAT adventure).
One boxed Commodore Plus/4.
One Sun type 4 keyboard and mouse (not yet classic, but good none the less).
Total: $11.00
I have a few questions:
Can the Plus/4 run C64 software?
In the user's manual there is a picture of a 1541 disk drive which looked
black. It was a black and white picture, but the 1541s that I have seen
all match the color scheme of the C64. Has anyone seen a black 1541?
I now have volumes 1 and 3 of "The Best of Creative Computing", how many
volumes where published?
Anyone interested in a trade for Adventure? I don't have any HP machines,
and would rather this go to someone who could back it up, and get some use
out of it. This is the only piece of HP 150 or 110 software that I have
ever seen.
Happy hunting,
--pec
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
27 Apr
27 Apr
6:07 a.m.
New subject: weekend additions
On Sat, 26 Apr 1997, Paul E Coad wrote:
I picked up some good stuff today. Here is the haul:
One nearly mint copy of "More BASIC Computer Games" by David Ahl.
I have this one too.
One "The Best of Creative Computing V.3" by
Ahl and Green.
One boxed copy of Adventure for HP 150 and HP 110. (yes, THAT adventure).
One boxed Commodore Plus/4.
One Sun type 4 keyboard and mouse (not yet classic, but good none the less).
Total: $11.00
That's pretty good.
Here's my catch:
Epson HX-20 "Notebook Computer" - this was an auction web purchase ($47)
and is supposed to be the first "notebook". This is an awesome little
gem. It has a built-in thermal printer and micro-cassette port for data
storage. It has a 20 character by 4 line screen and a 16K expansion
module. I was fortunate enough to be near enough to the seller to go
pick it up. When I got to his place, he was about to throw out a bunch
of other stuff, so I told him to use my trunk as the garbage can. This
is what else I came away with:
MacintoshPlus with external harddrive (now I've got two).
Canon "Cat" V777 Work Processor (a standalone 68000 based, GUI-based,
word processor with a 3.5" drive, parallel port, RS232C port and built-in
modem...not quite a classic computer but it is circa 1987 and is neat-o).
Morrow Pivot Portable - haven't had a chance to play with it yet but it
is an early portable (about 12" high by 14" wide by 7" deep) with an LCD
screen, built-in modem, 2 5.25" disk drives, parallel/serial ports and
an expansion bus connector. Don't know what processor it has or how
much RAM, but I was told it was an 8088 based system. Its actually a
"personal digital assistant" with a phone dialer, calendar, calculator
(all available from a front button panel) and I think it boots into
DOS, although I haven't played with it long enough to know. Very Neat.
Also, thanks to Jeff Hellige I was re-united with my boyhood computer
(well, not THEE one but it will do) an Aquarius. Thanks Jeff! Its such
a cool little machine. Now I just need to find all the different
components I had for it, like the expander module, 4K memory carthridge,
Utopia and some other game, the paddles and the thermal printer.
I also got a couple TI/994a's for spare parts/trade and a CoCo2 (which is
a variant from the one I have) off of auction web.
I also scored the original IBM Personal Computer Operations Guide in mint
condition from a thrift shop.
Sam
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass
28 Apr
28 Apr
3:27 p.m.
New subject: weekend additions
The plus/4 could run *some* very simple basic programs from 64/vic-20 land
but even that was a chore if I remember correctly because of the different
ways the computers "tokenized" basic. (some 64 tokens represented
different plus/4 basic keywords, etc.) As fot the "black" 1541, it was
known as a 1551 but was basically the same as a 1541. All it did was
match the color of the plus/4. There was also a "parallel" drive for this
computer (well I think there was) called an SFX-1??? something or other.
Les
1:21 a.m.
New subject: Varieties of Apples, bootleg software, etc.
On Sat, 26 Apr 1997, Tim Shoppa wrote:
Actually, I hadn't seen a //c or //gs until just a year or two ago.
But I still have my vanilla II.
Just as an extra data point, I've only ever seen a //gs TWICE in my life.
Once was at the home of a BBSer whose GT I was attending, and then a
couple of years ago I saw one in a store that has since gone out of
business. For the //c, I had never actually seen one until a few months
ago, and now I have one of my own.
I have seen plain old vanilla ][s around, but not frequently. Most 8-bit
Apples around here seem to be of the ][+ variety, followed closely by the
//e.
I just swapped a bare II/E for a Bare II. Going price
for a bare IIE is about
$20 on the Apple newsgroups. Apple II's don't seem to be valued very much in
the Apple II newsgroup or for sale group.
Well, that's mostly because the machine isn't appreciated yet. Sure a
trillion were made, but has anyone actually ever SEEN one? Yeah, sure,
maybe a few of us, but I'm sure EVERYONE here can say they've seen a //e,
a //c or even a //gs, but not the original, plain old vanilla ][. Much more interesting to me than the original II are
some of the
original Apple II software products. For example, the RAM version of
Applesoft, or some of the good old Integer Basic games like
Apple Trek and Pong, on original Apple cassette tapes. Good stuff.
Unfortunately, lots of these little items got thrown out when users
upgraded to disk drives.
Actually, this is kind of funny. When my family first got a 'family
computer' (i.e. one for the whole family to have access to, instead of
just my older brother) we bought an Apple ][+ clone. The company was
pretty seedy, and not only did it sell what was basically rip-off hardware
with only a few slight modifications from the real Apple machines, you
also got bound photocopies of Apple's manuals with it, plus a couple of
cassettes with software on them.
I still have the cassettes. They've GOT to be some sort of bad bootleg
job. The cases say "APPLE SOFTWAR" on them (note the missing 'E'), and
apart from the descriptions of the actual keys to press, all other writing
on the cassettes and on the cases are in Chinese (or some oriental
language).
The cassettes I chose from their large supply were Star Blazer and
Sabotage; Apple Panic and Gorgon.
The same company ran a 'software evaluation club' with a huge library of
Apple (and, later, PC) software, whereby one would pay $10/disk (or was
it $5? I never bought any, but a friend did) for whatever software they
had. I think the deal was that you were paying for 99 years rent on the
disk or something.
The company also sold pirate versions of popular Apple expansion boards,
and kits so you could build your own. (I think they had clone Apple
][ motherboards as well.)
Looking back, the place was thoroughly evil. :)
Anyway, the company eventually got shut down by the RCMP, but I've still
got these old tapes. I wonder if oriental bootleg software has any
collectors value? ;)
Tim.
Doug Spence
ds_spenc(a)alcor.concordia.ca
26 Apr
26 Apr
12:12 p.m.
On Sat, 26 Apr 1997, Sam Ismail wrote:
On Sat, 26 Apr 1997 BigLouS(a)aol.com wrote:
I remember seeing Apple II's (vanilla) for sale. The salesman told
me about how much better this other machine (II+?) was since the II
only had integer BASIC and uppercase. This was not too long after I
had my first exposure to computers and was dying to get one of my own.
I also remember seeing Apple III's and Atari 800's on sale at Weinstock's.
There was a strange time for a while in the late 70's and early 80's when
many department stores had a "computer department". This was the case
in Sacramento, was it like that in other cities?
--pec
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
I just swapped a bare II/E for a Bare II. Going
price for a bare IIE is about
$20 on the Apple newsgroups. Apple II's don't seem to be valued very much in
the Apple II newsgroup or for sale group.
Well, that's mostly because the machine isn't appreciated yet. Sure a
trillion were made, but has anyone actually ever SEEN one? Yeah, sure,
maybe a few of us, but I'm sure EVERYONE here can say they've seen a //e,
a //c or even a //gs, but not the original, plain old vanilla ][.
A //e would sell because it is still an extremely usable machine. Even
if you added the 16k language card to a ][ and gave it a lowercase ROM
and a shift-key mod, it still couldn't run a good deal of specific
applications that make the apple ][ usable these days. Thus the ][ is
considered a cripple.
27 Apr
27 Apr
6:09 a.m.
On Sat, 26 Apr 1997, Paul E Coad wrote:
I also remember seeing Apple III's and Atari
800's on sale at Weinstock's.
There was a strange time for a while in the late 70's and early 80's when
many department stores had a "computer department". This was the case
in Sacramento, was it like that in other cities?
It was like that in southern California as well. I remember going into
Sears and Montgomery Wards and another department store all the time and the
first place I would head to would be the computer "department" where I
would play with the TI99/4a's and the commodores and the TRS-80s and wish
I could have one. This was around 1982.
Sam
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass
10099
days inactive
10101
days old
9 comments
6 participants
participants (6)
-
BigLouS＠aol.com -
dastar＠crl.com -
ds_spenc＠alcor.concordia.ca -
more＠camlaw.rutgers.edu -
pcoad＠crl.com -
shoppa＠alph02.triumf.ca