Re: Complete Basic?

[Michael Kent <michael@syndicomm.remove.this.com>]

Jeff Blakeney <jeff.blakeney@a2central.com.remove-vw4-this> wrote:

> I went the upgrade path and had my IIe converted into a IIgs by my local
> Apple dealer and for the first couple years I used it as an souped up
> IIe but with extra capabilities that I could play with too.  I did all
> this using DOS 3.3 and ProDOS 8 because I didn't have a 3.5" drive for
> booting into ProDOS 16.  Nor did I have a mouse with which to interact
> with the IIgs' GUI.  I was still able to play with the graphics and
> sound capabilities of the IIgs and having a RAM disk and an accelerator
> was very handy.

This is pretty close to my experience.  I started with an Apple II+ my
parents bought me for Christmas in the 8th grade.  When I went away to
college to study aeronautical engineering, my II+ went with me.  I did
all of my papers freshman year in Word Handler on the II+ and printed
them on an Imagewriter I wide carriage.

Sophomore year in college I stared to put together my IIgs system.  I
bought the CPU (which for me included the keyboard and mouse) and used
it with my Monitor /// green screen, Disk II, and Imagewriter.  I up-
graded my word processor to Appleworks and got online with ProTERM and
a school datalink -- a 9600 baud modem that tied into the dorm's digital
phone system and allowed calls to be made without logging off.  So my
GS skipped the BBS scene and online services and went straight to the
Internet in 1988.

As money because available that year and the next I got a GS RGB moni-
tor, a 3.5" drive, a 1-Meg RAM card, a high-speed SCSI card and 100-Meg
hard drive, a 2400-baud modem, and a StyleWriter inkjet printer.  The
modem was so I could connect to the internet while on co-op and the
StyleWriter was a graduation present I bought myself.  While on campus
I wrote most of my papers with AppleWorks GS and printed them to a Post-
Script file with the LaserWriter driver which I then uploaded to my Unix
account and sent to the campus laser printer with an "lp" command.

So while my dorm-mates laughed at me the first week when I unpacked my
Apple II, they and their PC's, Macintoshes, and Amigas all turned green
with envy when I turned in papers printed by lasers, and theirs still
were made of dots.  Good times!  :-)

> If the Apple IIgs had not been released, I doubt I would be an Apple II
> user today with the exception of playing some of my favourite games with
> an emulator.  Without the IIgs, I would have jumped to the PC world much
> sooner than I did.

Without the GS I would most likely have bought an Amiga until the color
Macintoshes came down to PC-level prices.  The black-and-white boxes
just didn't do it for me.  The Amiga was the only other computer that
had the same coolness factor as the IIgs.  The main difference being
that the Apple IIgs can trace its lineage back to Wozniak's garage.  :-)

Mike