Apple IIgs

Ok, nostalgia has been something of a

That said, I had a piece of nostalgia of my own that's been taking up some time and energy as I've been casting around to find one.

For history:



Anyway, my school had an entire computer lab filled with these damn things (I'm becoming convinced that only public schools actually bothered to buy the things) and I've been hoping to find one either being given away or sold for a pittance. What can I say? I'm a weekend warrior with these old PCs, not a hardcore collector.

Few things would please me more than getting my hands on one of these, inviting a few friends over (ideally with application of beer) and playing Oregon Trail or some other stupidity for a few hours.

Anyone else on here got history with these weird, beige boxes?

My experience with those computers would be earlier and later models than that one. In high school (1985 era) we had one in the "gifted class" that was primarily used for either word processor usage or to play some games.

Fast-forward to college in 1995 and I re-encountered Apple because we used them to run Pro-Tools in the recording studios and Avid in the video production studios. No idea what the current model was at that point.

Mid-'90s might have meant one of these:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Macintosh_6100
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Macintosh_7100
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Macintosh_8100

These were far more advanced than the machines I was using at the time.

A friend of mine had an Apple IIe in about 1983. He also had a modem! Super high tech stuff at the time.

Witchfinder wrote:

A friend of mine had an Apple IIe in about 1983.  He also had a modem!  Super high tech stuff at the time.

I had a friend who had one too. I had a Commodore 64 (games were more plentiful and easier to get for the C=64). I also had a modem. A 300 baud modem and it took YEARS to download files. Then around 1986 or 87 I got a 1200 baud modem that was lightning fast as it only took 6 months to download files.

A friend and I half-joke that one day the sound of a dial up modem will be some weird nostalgia trip that few will actually remember.

LOOK AT THOSE GRAPHICS!

My uncle had a IIe that my cousin hated since all I did at their house was ignore him and play games.

Mike, the C64 was my first computer. Still have one too. A fond memory: loading up Thing on a Spring, then going to play my guitar for an hour until the damn game loaded up.

I have fond memories of the C64. My alltime favorite computer game was Archon: The Light And The Dark and my friend and I would play that on his C64 for hours. It was a great game; basically it was chess with various mythological creatures for pieces and to take a square from your opponent, your piece had to kill his piece in an arena.

tohostudios wrote:

I have fond memories of the C64.  My alltime favorite computer game was Archon: The Light And The Dark and my friend and I would play that on his C64 for hours.  It was a great game; basically it was chess with various mythological creatures for pieces and to take a square from your opponent, your piece had to kill his piece in an arena.  

Archon was one of the greats! Banshee and Phoenix were my favorites.

corplhicks wrote:

tohostudios wrote:

I have fond memories of the C64.  My alltime favorite computer game was Archon: The Light And The Dark and my friend and I would play that on his C64 for hours.  It was a great game; basically it was chess with various mythological creatures for pieces and to take a square from your opponent, your piece had to kill his piece in an arena.  

Archon was one of the greats! Banshee and Phoenix were my favorites.

I hated that stupid phoenix especially since his dark counterpart the Dragon was a killer piece.  My favorites were the unicorns;  I was deadly with those. I was pretty good with the Manticore too but their bullets didn't pack as much oomph as the unicorn's.

I really enjoyed anything from Epyx. And yes, Archon was great as was Wolfenstein. And I could play Impossible Mission for HOURS



One of the very last games I had was the 3 Stooges. At the time it was the coolest graphics ever, however it would take over 5 minutes to load each section that only had about 30 seconds to 1 minute of play.

Watch the first minute and remember this was from 86 or 87. Pretty good graphics for the time.

As I've been digging back into gaming from my youth, I'm actually struck by the originality the limitations of that old hardware inspired. I mean, prior to everything being literally-rendered photo-realistic 3D models, people tried going stylized, cell shaded, and all points in between to create a compelling experience BECAUSE they couldn't make it look real.

While I dig my hi-def modern games, I kind of miss that inventiveness and yeah, we get fits of it in indie gaming, but a lot of that is trying to mimic the old stuff, not creativing new stuff in the spirit of the old stuff.

Ah well, maybe that's what makes eras like that special - they happen once and then you're hoping you're paying attention when the next one rolls around.

I think this does a good job showing how far we've come in the last 30 years.

http://technabob.com/blog/2009/02/21/apple-ii-disk-drive-mac-mini-casemod/

As far as the Apple II, i'm also looking for one, i think it'd be fun to mess around with.  I started a bit later though, mid-90s before my family got a computer.  I don't even remember the model, but it had Windows 3.1 on it.

I'm an IT tech and I just dug up a few nice relics today actually that had been stash away in my office by previous techs.  







Keyboard works! I'm actually using it as my main keyboard, funny stuff!

In the the early to mid 80s we had one of those old apple computers at my elementary school.We got to go in there from time to time and play Oregon Trail.By the time I got in high school in the late 80s and early 90s we had a whole computer lab full of them.I remember playing Montezuma Revenge,Larry Bird vs Dr J etc.

I had one of those old ti-99 at home as a kid.Anyone remember those? Decent graphics for the time.

Chairman_Smith, please tell me you didn't toss those discs. You think they're junk until the one time you actually need to set up Windows or DOS on old hardware.

I'm still trying to track down a viable copy of Windows 95. Hard to believe that came out 20 years ago now...

And I'm immersing myself in my reminiscence of the soothing sounds of hardware switches on keyboards. If the sound of multiple people typing resembles early industrial music, you know you're dealing with quality!

Runicen wrote:

Chairman_Smith, please tell me you didn't toss those discs.  You think they're junk until the one time you actually need to set up Windows or DOS on old hardware.  

I'm still trying to track down a viable copy of Windows 95.  Hard to believe that came out 20 years ago now...

And I'm immersing myself in my reminiscence of the soothing sounds of hardware switches on keyboards.  If the sound of multiple people typing resembles early industrial music, you know you're dealing with quality!

Not only kept, but thinking about throwing onto a virtual machine!

Chairman_Smith wrote:

Runicen wrote:

Chairman_Smith, please tell me you didn't toss those discs.  You think they're junk until the one time you actually need to set up Windows or DOS on old hardware.  

I'm still trying to track down a viable copy of Windows 95.  Hard to believe that came out 20 years ago now...

And I'm immersing myself in my reminiscence of the soothing sounds of hardware switches on keyboards.  If the sound of multiple people typing resembles early industrial music, you know you're dealing with quality!

Not only kept, but thinking about throwing onto a virtual machine!

YES!

Chairman_Smith wrote:

Not only kept, but thinking about throwing onto a virtual machine!

It is not physically possible for me to approve of this idea any more than I already do!