What's to become of the Apple II?

[dmanzer@wimsey.com (Doug Manzer)]

The Apple 2/2e was and still is an excellent platform for
experimentation, circuit prototypes, hardware hacking and general
messing about. If you need just a few lines of TTL i/o there's the
game port ready to go, otherwise it's easy to breadboard a plug-in
card or modify an existing one. Mountains of technical books were
published, describing the machine's innards in fine detail. Right
now used systems seem to be in plentiful supply; I've seen //e's in
thrift stores and garage sales for $10 Canadian, and members of the
local Apple user group bring their old 2 plus systems to give away. 

However something about this situation bothers me; a lot of these
machines must be thrown out every day, along with tons of
documentation and software. A pile of plusses and clones had
accumulated in my store room -- I couldn't even give them away so I
had to heave some of them just to make room. But this rate of
attrition can't go on indefinitely; they're not being made any
more, and I think it would be a real loss if the breed disappeared
completely and a new generation of kids never had access to these 
heritage machines. Sure there will be lots of surplus PC's to play 
with, but they can't match the elegant simplicity and friendliness 
of the Plus as a platform for home brewing.

Thoughts, anyone?