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

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

: 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?

Kind of a bizarre story.  I never used apple2s when I was young.  I started
out with a TRS80 model 3 and went directly from there to a Commodore 64, which
I used through high school and college, until I sold it in 1990 to purchase my
first PC.  (that PC has been through so many iterations now that NONE of the 
parts from the orginal machine are present in the machine I'm typing this on.)

So how did I get into Apple2s?  Well, I have to back up a little.  While I was
in college, my father bought his first computer, a 2c clone (Laser 128, if 
memory serves).  He used this happily with appleworks for years to do all his
writing on.  (he's retired, but at the time was stringing for the Billings
Gazette).  Long about last year, the ancient machine started to get flakey
, and I decided rather than tracking down another 2e/2c class machine, I'd
try to bring him a little closer to the modern world of computing.  I bought
him a GS.

Actually I bought 2 of them.  My father tends to call ME with technical 
support problems, and I knew I darn well better have one to look at before
I turned my father loose with one.  One I bought from 
comp.sys.apple2.marketplace, where I got an excellent deal (250 bucks for 
the entire machine, monitor, disk drives, manuals(!) etc.)  The other I bought
for 300 (including a ton of software) from a friend.  Both are ROM01 machines.

I didn't leave them stock, either.  After hitting Nathan's faq pages, I jumped
to Sequential Systems and ordered a 4 meg ram board, a ramfast scsi board, and
for my father's machine, a parallel printer board.  Both machines now have
about 300 megs of hard disk, 4 megs of ram, GSOS 6.0.2, cdroms (which I still
have to figure out how to get to work) and the usual compliment of disk 
drives.

After that, when Tiger Electronics released the "Learning Computer" - their 
2c clone computer for children - I bought one of those - I'm still pissed with
them that they never delivered the internet cartrige they promised.

Last night I took delivery on a 2e, monitor 3, and 2 disk2s.  I have this 
yen to tinker with building my own periperhal cards and I don't want to fry
my GS with untested cards...

So here I am, now with 3 apple2 series computers of my own, and one other that
I support.  Oh yeah, the people I bought the 2e from have a 2c, and are keen
to get online...  and a friend of mine's old GS - which inspired me into this
mess in the first place - is now in the hands of his parents, who would ALSO
like to get online... It seems as though I'm going to be an Apple user for a 
long time to come.

--
Jim Strickland
jim@calico.litterbox.com
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