Re: My Apple IIGS - 20 years ago today

["N.N. Thayer" <nnthayer@hotmail.com>]

I still have the same ][+ that helped kick off my father's career in
computing.  Though he'd worked in an incidental fashion with machines
of the previous generation (mostly DEC and Data General), it wasn't
until the advent of personal systems that he really considered
computers as a full-time occupation. He honed his programming skills
on it (it still has notes for command keystrokes for some Pascal
editor taped around the keyboard), as well as his piracy skills (his
cracking handle was Shogun).  By the time he opened his own business,
he'd moved on to PCs and compatibles; the Apple II and PC worlds
coexisted in my mind for a while, each complementing the other.  The ]
[+, and, later, a Laser 128EX, entertained me and my sister for the
better part of a decade with hundreds upon hundreds of pirated games,
the BBSes and cracking groups on their splash screens growing
increasingly irrelevant with each passing year yet retaining an odd
sort of immortality ("One day, one day I'll call the Arabian Dezert!"
I'd think), even as the PC-compatible in our parents' study asserted
itself unquestionably as the productivity machine.  We were way too
young to factionalize over computers, though - each served its
purpose, and that was that.

The internal modem and 80-column card are long lost, but the Language,
Microbuffer, Super Serial, and Disk II cards remain, as well as the
lowercase chip.  This is more than enough for it to be useful, and
it's still my primary Apple II system.  Its proximity to my birth and
formative years yields an intensely personal connection that's nigh-
indescribable.  On top of that bond is layered the machine's openness
and flexibility - the knowledge that I can do with it whatever the
hell I want, and that this design was not any corporate accident but
the intent of a single mind (Woz).  It's truly the most personal of
personal computers, and they can have it when they pry it from my cold
dead hands.