Re: What happened to the Zip chip?!?!

[jim@calico.litterbox.com (Jim)]

Whoa wait hold on.  If you want to know how the apple2e would do as a kid's 
first computer, talk to Tiger Electronics about their Learning Computer - 
which was a neat little 2e clone.  They didn't promote it well, didn't 
support it for shit, and as a result, it appears extinct now.

I think we're looking at the old 8bit machines all wrong.

Only a few diehards (and/or poverty stricken college students :) would assert
that the apple2 is a reasonable platform as the sole computer you own.  Does
this mean you should throw it away?  Heavens no.

So why own an apple2?

1.  You owned one and cut your teeth in the digital world on a 2e. 
    When you were 14, that machine was your world, but along the way between
    then and now you somehow persuaded yourself you didn't need it anymore,
    and you got rid of it.  Now you've gotten another one just like it, and
    expanded it beyond anything you could have dreamed of back then.

2.  You work with modern computers.  You are sick of the bloated, 
    poorly engineered junk (especially software wise) being foisted off as 
    "the latest thing".  You cut your teeth in the age of text based computing
    and it somehow warms your spirit to go back now and again.  So you bought
    the machine that was the very symbol of the personal computing revolution.

3.  You like to tinker with electronics.  You have the urge to develop 
    something cool, or maybe just practice and expand your understanding of
    computing to a hardware level.  And you don't want to fry your 
    multi-thousand dollar desktop machine, nor do you want to pay the hundreds
    or thousands of dollars for the software and hardware tools to develop
    for modern computers.  So, you bought an apple2e for 40 bucks on the 
    grounds that if you fry it, you'll be sad, but not out a lot of money.

4.  You like old electronics.  You have a small collection of antique phones,
    antique radios, and so on.  You buy these things because you have a deep
    need for things to be *solid* and enduring, unlike the essentially plastic
    and disposable world you live in.  That ancient, solid keyboard somehow
    feels more solid and good under your hands than the modern, ergonomically
    correct board you use for your other computers.  The solid grunt of a 5.25
    floppy makes you smile when it actually does retrieve data in spite of 
    seeming hopelessly mechanical.

5.  (related to #4)  You hate to see tools that still work thrown out just 
    because they're not new.  It galls you to think of all the perfectly
    functional computers that got retired to scrapyards - or worse - landfills
    when they are still just as capable of doing the work they were designed 
    for.  You start to realise just how hard the "latest thing" has been 
    rammed down your throat by Intel, Microsoft (or Apple, for you Mac fans
    but it's much more prevalant in the PC world) and you buy this aged little
    machine as an act of rebellion against them.  Now for spite, you want to
    find something useful for it to do.

I could go on, but this is pages longer than I intended already.  There are 
a million reasons to have a hobby, and if even one of them brings you 
pleasure, then you don't have to justify it to ANYONE (except maybe your 
spouse :) 

Where does that put the companies that support this habbit?  in the same bin
with the companies that sell parts for your koi tank, looms to weave with,
kit aircraft for people who want to fly (but hate Cessnas and Pipers) and so 
on.  

Think about this perspective.
--
Jim Strickland
jim@calico.litterbox.com
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Vote Meadocrat!  Bill and Opus in 2000 - Who ELSE is there?
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