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

[Polymorph <polymorph69@hotmail.com>]

OK...here's my story for the library:

In around 1984, I had my first real experience with a personal
computer. I was in year 5 and went to stay at a friends place who had
a Dick Smith VZ300 (which is an Australian Tandy clone). My friend
didn't really do much with it that I recall, but I was instantly
intrigued by it and its BASIC programming capabilities. I remember
writing BASIC programs in a notebook and taking them to my friends
place to type them in and see if they worked.

Then in 1987, I got my first PC - an Apple II+ clone with dual built
in 5.25" drives and a corded keyboard (ie. not built into the units
like genuine Apple II's). I used it heavily for games, school, and
BASIC programming. I always thought of myself as a kind of hacker,
just because I could use a hex editor and alter the credits in games,
etc.  ;-)

About 2 years later, the drives in my II+ clone started failing (they
probably only required cleaning, but I didn't know this at the time),
so we sold it (I wish we hadn't now it would be interesting to
analyse) and bought a genuine unenhanced Apple //e for about AU$1200.
This saw me through to the end of my high school years. I used it for
school assignments, games, greeting cards (Print Shop), and continued
my BASIC programming exploits. I particularly like messing around with
Beagle Bros. stuff - those guys definately had a kewl sense of humor,
but they also had some exceptionally good programs.

In 1992, IBM PC clones started becoming more affordable and much more
powerful in both graphics capabilities and sheer processing grunt. The
attraction was too much and I jumped ship and left the Apple world
behind when I bought my first IBM clone (a 486SX33 for about AU$1800 I
think). My Apple //e was put into storage - it was moved a couple of
times, but spent at least 10 years in my grandmothers closet.

I since went on to complete a degree in computer science and have a
successful career in software development. I have also been building
PC's since 1995 (ie. buying individual components and sticking them
all together). So my hardware skills were definitely improved since I
had left the Apple world. This would prove to be invaluable as you
will read shortly.

In early 2006 I got wind of the retro scene, and I thought it would be
cool to pull my old Apple out of retirement and see if it still
worked. Upon powering it on, all I received was a puff of smoke and
the rather noxious smell of the mains filter capacitor burning out. I
then borrowed a mate's soldering iron (I'd never done any electrical/
electronics work before), and bought a new replacement capacitor and
repaired the power supply (I've since had this same capacitor die in
another supply, so I suspect it is common when not used for a long
period). This fixed my //e, and I began discovering things like ADT,
Applewin, and the disk archive sites. I was hooked again. This also
started my interest in electronics, and lead to me to building up the
confidence to attempt making my own IIgs sound card from a schematic.

Then a few months later, sometime mid-2006, I placed a rather
conservative bid (AU$76) on an Apple IIgs complete with monitor. I
surprisingly won the auction, and my introduction to the IIgs was now
official. I had never owned one back in the day - a mate of mine did,
but I never used his IIgs much. I enjoyed exploring the possibilities
of this machine, and was amazed at what it could do for a machine that
had changed little since 1986. I have since replaced the motherboard
with a ROM3, and used the original ROM1 board in an old //e case (see
my website for details). I have upgraded it to be a fairly high spec
machine: 4Mb RAM, CFFA with 1Gb CF card, 12.5Mhz ZipGSX (see my
website for details of modding a Zip GSX), a home made stereo card
(see my website) which is connected to the line-in socket on my WinXP
machine (which is hooked up to 5.1 speakers, so I get excellent stereo
sound from my IIgs). The IIgs sits right in the middle of my computer
desk, and gets regular usage.

After translating the TML Pascal II manual, I have recently acquired
all the Toolbox Reference manuals and a copy of Complete Pascal 2.0.
I've released a couple of software demo's/projects already, and have
quite a few ideas floating around in my head for future software
projects. I may one day move over to Orca C, as I have a lot more
experience coding in C than in Pascal - however, for the time being, I
am enjoying the challenge of  re-learning Pascal (I hadn't used it in
over 15 years).

More info can be found on my website which can be found here:
http://apple2.sytes.net/

cheers,
Mike