Re: You are Here! So: How did you get into Apple II Computing?

[mark.REMOVE.percival@videotron.ca (Mark Percival)]

On Thu, 21 May 1998 15:36:57 -0500, Rubywand <rubywand@swbell.net>
wrote:

>The May FAQs release has led to an email discussion about various
>lead-ins to becoming an Apple II user. So ...
>
>How did you get into Apple II computing?

In the summer of 1979 a friend of mine purchased an Apple II+ with 32K
RAM, an old 14" B&W TV and a Radio Shack cassette tape recorder.  We
spent many a late night hacking around with the games that came on the
cassette tapes that came with his machine.  These were indeed the best
of times.

It took me two years to save enough money to buy my own Apple.  In
November 1981 I picked up a 2nd hand Apple II (integer basic) with 48K
RAM, a single Disk II drive and his original AppleDOS 3.1 disk.  All
this cost me a mere $1,200 Canadian.  That would probably be close to
$5,000 US in today's dollars (maybe more).

After a couple of years my machine started to show symptoms of
overheating and in 1987 it finally died.

In 1993 while BBSing I stumbled upon an Apple II emulator for the IBM
PC.  It rekindled my interest in the old machine and I started one the
road back.

I now have 4 Apple II's with my main system being a Platinum IIe with
576K RAM, 2 Apple 5.25 drives, a 250 Meg Focus hard drive, Super
Serial Card (null-modem to my PC), an Apple Mouse IIe and a monochrome
monitor.

Note: I know that the topic of A2 emulators isn't popular with
      certain people here but they were largely responsible for
      me getting back to the Apple II.  I know a few people who
      have followed the same path.  I don't think you can understate
      the importance of emulators to this group.


Mark R. Percival
Montreal, Quebec

An Apple II fanatic since 1979.