Apple II Celebration (was: Re: FS: APPLE IIGS)

["Joseph E. Walsh" <ransom@connect.iconnect.net>]

On Tue, 15 Apr 1997, Eric Jacobs wrote:

> We're here to celebrate the Apple II, folks. Let's get started.

Hi Eric,

Okay, I'll take you up on that.  Hope you're ready for a long-winded, 
breathlessly enthusiastic post. =)

First, I should introduce myself, since I'm rather new to this 
newsgroup.  My primary profession is human resources professional. My 
secondary (but better-loved[G]) profession is game designer.  Er, I 
should clarify - role-playing game designer, as in the paper-and-pencil 
type, like "Dungeons and Dragons."  I do freelance design for a company 
called Imperium Games, which produces the fourth edition Traveller line 
of products.

My first computer was an Atari 8-bit; one of those old 400's with the 
membrane keyboard and 16K. I did some programming on it, and eventually 
moved up to a 1200XL with disk drive (woah, a disk drive; we're really 
living now![G]) and the ol' Okimate-10 color thermal transfer printer.  
Along about..oh, 85 or so I believe..I bought an Apple //c with the green 
screen monitor, external 5.25, and an Imagewriter I. Used that for a lot 
of years, and enjoyed it very much.  I sold that in '90 (including my 
huge collection of software..sigh), and bought an MS-DOS box.

In 1992 I started getting nostalgic for the Atari, so I acquired a few of 
those. First it was just to play some of the old games, but you know how 
these things go. Let me cut the story short by saying that I now own more 
Atari 8-bit hardware and software than I could ever use. :)  Plus, I went 
back and learned assembly language programming again, and produced a few 
freeware programs.

I still use the Atari; I love that machine.  I've added RAM to it, 
clarified its video, and so on (the Atari isn't as user-friendly as the 
Apple - you have to pull out the soldering iron to do any serious 
improvements, such as the above).

Apple?  Oh, yeah, I'm getting to that. :)  Now that I do a lot of writing 
for Imperium Games, I need access to a computer that can do more than 
ASCII - the typsetters aren't fond of importing ASCII and fixing it up.  I 
could use the Windows box, but that's my wife's and I don't 
like to monopolize it - not good for the marriage, you understand. [G] 
Besides, I pride myself on not using Microsoft stuff at home.

So, I remembered the Apple, and how much fun I had with it. Heck, I 
composed my first RPG on it (unsold, of course - just for my group's 
use). And those games (games are my weakness, you may gather[G])...

I checked into it, and as you all know very well, the Apple ][gs is quite 
a computer.  With the right software, that thing can hold its own against 
any computer out there, in terms of functionality.  So I decided to take 
the plunge (this time with my eyes open - I'm not going to delude myself 
that this is just for games or just for word processing, unlike the way I 
got on the slippery slope of Atari products[G]).  I found a nice person 
who was selling a good ][gs system, and another who was selling a //c 
(had to have that, for nostalgia reasons if nothing else).  I got in 
contact with them, and made the deals.

Then, I went whole hog and bought some nifty stuff to go in them.  A nice 
100 MB HDD, an accellerator (8 Mhz!), and so on.  GraphicWriter III, some 
nice painting and animation software (my wife is the artist in the 
family; I figured I might be able to drag her away from CorelDRAW for a 
bit if I bought the right software[G]), and a load of other stuff.  

Now I'm in limbo, waiting for the systems, peripherals, and software to 
arrive.  But I'm looking forward to it.  Fax software that works! Heck, 
even the Windows software we have for faxing doesn't work most of the 
time. And RTF wordprocessing file transfers (with that nice little GWIII 
add-on from Ego systems), which will thrill my editor. :)  Lots o' stuff 
to look forward to, and I'm dying to see it.  

I'll let you know how it goes.  If any friendly Apple folks want to chat 
with me in email, feel free; I get about 200 messages a day since I'm 
also Imperium Games' net rep, so a few more won't bother me. :)

Apple II forever!


-Joe
______________________________________________________________________________
Joseph E. Walsh      |  Atari 8-Bit User and Programmer Since 1982
ransom@iconnect.net  |  Classic Traveller Referee Since 1983
Stuck in the '80s    |  Microsoft-Free and Loving It! :)
       .....Official Reporter of Imperium Games Product Info.....