Ringo Langly wrote:
Hi all, After doing some web work for a friend of mine, he gave me an old Apple II as 'payment' with two working floppy drives and a TON of software. Based on the dates and serial number this is an original Apple II from around 1979, so now I'm trying to decide what to do with it :)
[snip]
Ringo
Welcome Ringo!First thing you should be aware of is the high and growing market value of your friend's gift. Consider wrapping it up and storing it in a cool, dry, dark place (as Vince Briel is considering doing with his). If it's truly an Apple ][ and not a ][+, it's a rare beast indeed. Is yours in good shape, or is it beat up with gouges, dents & broken keys?
Then again, there are some vintage car enthusiasts who like to keep their Model T clean and running, and take the family for Sunday drives in it. This might appeal to you more. But just be conscious that it's a valuable vintage classic you have been entrusted with. Look after it! :)
If you want to play around in the AppleIIverse, you could source an Apple IIe and/or a IIgs from ebay quite easily. They are very cheap and common, and you get a lot more software and hardware options available to you than with the early model. For example, an Apple II can only go up to 64K RAM (48K on main board + 16K plug-in RAM card (aka Language Card). An Apple IIe can get up to 1MB of bank-switched RAM in its auxiliary slot without much trouble or expense, plus an 80 column upper/lower case display and cool things like double high resolution graphics with 560x192 monochrome or 140x192 in 16 colours vs. the standard 280x192 in 6 colours.
Since I started raiding eBay about a year ago I have assembled in my basement 3 IIe's and 1 IIgs. I play games, I'm teaching myself 6502 assembly language, I'm learning about the low-level capabilities of the machines, I tinker with Pascal programs. I hope to find the time to attempt linking them together into a NadaNet (http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/) and then think of something cool to do with the resulting array. This is my model train set equivalent. Utterly useless and totally fun.
Other people have their Apple IIs linked to Macs and PCs via serial, AppleTalk, LocalTalk, and all sorts of bizarre variations. The IIgs even has a limited internet capability with an ethernet card, Marinetti and the Spectrum Internet Suite. Also, the Contiki OS is being ported over to Apple II, which supports TCP/IP and internet access, I think.
There is an annual gathering of Apple geeks called KansasFest (http://www.kfest.org) which has been running for 15 or 20 years! I have never been but I hope to make the pilgrimage in 2005.
I am amazed by the enormous wealth of software and information about my favourite personal computer on the web. I have a s***load of bookmarks that I'd be happy to share with you.
There are even people who still develop new hardware and software for this venerable old system. Rich Dreher made a card that puts a Compact Flash card or MicroDrive inside any model of Apple for oodles of "disk" storage. Bill Garber and Vince Briel have built a 4MB RAM card for the IIgs.
Sorry for the big ramble. Glad to have you with us. Martin