Re: How I got interested in the Apple ][...

[jonnosan <jonnosan@gmail.com>]

I had some friends with apple's in the early 80s, I played on them a
few times but spent more time on my cousins C64 and the BBCs at
school.

I didn't get my first PC (a 486) until early 90s. I spent a few years
getting pretty deep into machine code (demos mostly) and BBSs - a lot
of the boards I was on had old apple cracking files (e.g. the
Krackowicz series) which I found intriguing because the tools &
techniques being used (boot-tracing / modified roms / RWTS tricks)
seemed much more hardcore & closer to the metal than what was required
to crack PC apps (softice).

I never really followed up on that interest because I was more
interested in learning about networks (TCP/IP) and then databases and
that all turned into an interesting career. Then a few years ago I
realised I was making the shift from techie to technical manager, and
that my day job wasn't giving me technical thrills anymore, so I went
looking for something fun I could play with at home, so I got my first
iie from eBay just over a year ago.

I've worked through a few softkeys from computist, plus cracked a few
simple games on my own. I've also learnt a whole lot about the DOS/
ProDOS/Pascal file systems (through working on dsktool.rb ).

project plans:
- build a Senior PROM
- extend dsktool so it can modify dsk images (currently it's read only)