New member, bit of a book, Apple content

Introduce yourself. Tell people why you are interested in vintage computers and what (if anything) you've got.

New member, bit of a book, Apple content

Postby Apple_nostelga_trip_ on Thu Apr 14, 2016 9:30 pm

Hi all,

I first got interested in computers at primary school during the mid 80's where we had some Apple IIe's. They were an impressive machine compared to my Father's ZX Spectrum (running through the TV and tape deck). All had 5.25" drives (we got given our very own diskette!) and colour monitors - I was amazed at the graphics capabilities. Some of the software I fondly remember included local made titles by Otakou Software including The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Twist-A-Plot and Easy Logo.

I found a nice website covering the above software, including legit downloads
http://ripples.dyndns.org/cedwards/comp ... /home.html

My Father pointed out that my Uncle had an Apple of some sort. Apparently he had paid $3K or thereabouts for it but I had never seen it because it had been used once or twice and then stored under his bed. It turned out to be an Apple II Europlus. Not as good as the IIe and only a green screen but we ended up 'borrowing' it. Eventually we got our own - an Apple IIe clone, it was called a Spring Circle or something. Instead of the open-apple and closed-apple keys it had circles. I can't remember much of the specs but it did have an 80 column card, probably 128K of RAM. We got a lot of mileage out of that machine, thousands of hours. :o

Eventually we worked our way up the the grand daddy of Apple II's - the Apple IIGS.

The Apple IIGS was a quantum step from the Apple IIe in terms of hardware and software. Our first RGB colour screen, first 3.5" disk drive (800K disks!), ADB keyboard and mouse. Our machine was (2nd hand) upgraded with 2 Meg of RAM (big deal back then), 20MB internal hard drive and sound card. Speed was up from the 1Mhz IIe to 2.8Mhz. It was pretty much the most amazing machine I had ever seen. This was the first time I'd used a desktop/Mac-like system too, with GS/OS 6.0.1.

Eventually the Apple aged and when I started Uni I moved to my first PC, a 486DX-100 from PC General in Wellington (anyone remember them?). I did spend a lot of time in the on-campus Apple store. I don't remember what they were selling, LCII maybe? They looked amazing but were way out of my price range.

I moved on from the 486 through various machines I forget.

Currently I have a self-built Intel i7 266 desktop and am typing this on my 2016 HP Stream netbook. I have an old Compaq dual core in the garage, mainly for music but using a dongle for web browsing. The majority of my PC's over the last 10 years have been running Linux. I have Gentoo on the desktop (KDE4), Mint on this one running Cinnamon and good old Windows XP (POS) on the garage PC (Winamp!).

Anyway back to what people are probably interested in:

I recently got the IIGS back off my Father and unfortunately it has some issues. It won't turn on and the hard drive has died. I brought another IIGS to try and relive the dream but that also has some issues in that most of the time you turn it on it goes into some sort of RAM self-test. Interestingly it passes the test, but it's a pain that it does this. I've pulled the hard drive and been attempting to rescue the data off it but it appears to be a very old 8 bit IDE that's a thing of history.

I brought an Apple Power Mac G3 beige at the weekend that was cheap and local to try the drive in that but again no dice, although the G3 does support ProDOS by the looks of it. I'm now attempting to get the G3 just to boot off a regular IDE drive and having no luck with that so far either (it didn't come with a hard disk). The guy I got the G3 off also threw in two PowerBook 180's. One is dead but the other works. It has the horrible screen tunnelling issue which is a common complaint on the internet so I am going to attempt to make one good machine out of two.

I apologise for the above, which is essentially a brain-dump and probably reads really badly. Feel free to ask any questions and I look forward to being involved in the forum and thank Terry for allowing me to do so.

Cheers
Apple_nostelga_trip_
 
Posts: 9
Joined: Tue Apr 12, 2016 9:07 pm
Location: Raumati Beach, Kapiti Coast

Re: New member, bit of a book, Apple content

Postby caluser2000 on Sat Apr 16, 2016 5:59 pm

Nice background. Wrt PC General my first ever x86 system, a 286/16, was from the Wellington branch. I still have the poorly scanned sales spec sheet. It ended up a P1 something as one does with generic clone systems from second hand parts. I aquired a PC General 486DX2/66 system cw original mouse and keyboard off Trademe a few years ago(bit of a nostalgia thing) That's in pretty good condition with a caddy cdrom drive.
The Acorn never falls far from the tree.. x86 GUI whore.
caluser2000
 
Posts: 341
Joined: Wed Apr 25, 2012 3:32 pm

Re: New member, bit of a book, Apple content

Postby Apple_nostelga_trip_ on Mon Apr 18, 2016 7:14 pm

I remember having to take mine back a few times due to intermittent crashes. Eventually I took it to someone else who upgraded it internally to a Pentium II. That cost me a fair wack and also gave me plenty of problems.
Apple_nostelga_trip_
 
Posts: 9
Joined: Tue Apr 12, 2016 9:07 pm
Location: Raumati Beach, Kapiti Coast


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