Hi all,
Sold my dirtbike and cut lawns all summer for my first used Apple ][+. Ultimately got a 300bps modem and ASCII Express, once "online" my interest grew rapidly. Upgraded to an Apple //e as I learned more, and met more people online. Ran my first BBS ("Networks ][" BBS software) on my duo-disk and as things grew purchased a Sider II 20MB hard drive-- was so large at the time, and fast! ha..
We would get all the latest warez, play games, learn... The AppleCat // from Novation was the modem of choice for most warez sites as it would do 1200baud half-duplex when connecting to another AppleCat //. Catsend, Catfur, all great apps.
I just bought a used //e from eBay and fired it up. The reliable "beep" is displaying the Apple ][ at the top of screen, and the duo-drive activated-- hungry for some media. The problem is, I don't have any :)
This forum looks like home, and people doing a LOT of cool advanced stuff with this older tech! Any resources of where to get some media like DOS bootable disks, etc. I would like to build up my collection like back in the day, some fun games and utilities like Beagle Bros, etc. I found a BBS in Canada that runs GBBS accessible via putty from my laptop, pretty cool. Some of the best apps back then were written by the people cracking the warez. I have an old Applecat // modem and wondering where I could get some of the cool apps from back then. There was an app for the Applecat // that would do text to speech, it was pretty amazing especially for the time.
If anyone has suggestions on other resources in addition to this site to obtain media, download and create media, access to manuals, etc. that would be appreciated. Also, if anyone has contact info for "Herb" from "The King's Lair BBS" from the 80's, drop a DM!
L8r
https://mirrors.apple2.org.za/
https://asciiexpress.net/
Appreciate the reply and URLs, I'll check them out! Thank you
Get yourself a Super Serial Card, a Wimodem-232 from cbmstuff.com, and call a few Apple II BBSes. https://www.cbmstuff.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=113
We are still around!
https://www.telnetbbsguide.com/?s=Apple+ii
You didn't mention it, but since you touched on some ot the other "questionable" uses of the computer and modem....
If you're not awere that Apple Cat II modem, at least in my opinion, is the greatest expansion card ever made for the II.
That is... if you understoond its not well publicized secret powers of the tone generator to interact with the back-end systems. But, I suspect you too may have looked into that. =)
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Nice! Com-Ware, seeing the disk took me back. When I was 14-15yrs old we had so much fun with the //e , phreaking, etc. If I recall there was an app called The Cat's Meow or something and it had all the tone emulators and other tools. It was such a great time in computing, a much smaller community where even the "l0sers" were actually "Elite", heh...
Bought an old //e off ebay along with an Applecat 2 mainly out of curiosity. My 1st computer was a TI99/4A I used with a Panasonic cassette recorder, and it was really cool... but when I got my first used ][+ and modem (110/300bps) I made my first ASCII Express connection to another computer and was hooked. Led to a 30+ year IT career. I will tinker when I can, looks like a lot of fun projects out there for Apple // enthusiasts which is awesome. Some of the BBS's at the time I frequented were The Curse (Pete/Incog), The Arabian Desert (Alibaba), Thieve's Den, Trader's Post, Sherwood Forest, King's Lair, The Clinic, etc. Cat-Fur was a great app to transfer warez. I recall some would need to be "sliced" into multiple files then spliced back together after download.
At this point I have no warez at all, not a single floppy. Will have to find some 5.25" diskettes and get some DOS and games rolling at some point. Curious if the duo-disk I bought works, it makes all the right sounds but have not inspected condition internally with heads, etc. Fun projects ahead.