I remember in 1983-84 in grade 6, everyone our math class got 2 30-minute sessions per week where we could go to the library and program our math assignments (simple Applesoft programs). And play games when we were done. Hard Hat Mack was the first game I played. It took me a long time to figure out how to advance to the next level. I just liked to keep jumping up and ringing that little bell in the upper left corner. My older brother got his own Apple IIe around the same time, and I spent HOURS per day on it, and paid my brother one dollar per use (it cost him $2000 back in 1983), and I eventually inherited it after he left for university a couple years later.
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I wish I was old enough to get to use Apple IIs in school. I do remember using many different Power Macs which must have been running System 6.
I can also remember going into class one morning to find the teacher playing a music CD through a Power Mac 5000-something and we all though that it was the most amazing thing that you could do! Oh, how times have changed…
The last Mac to ship with System 6 was the Mac Classic in 1990 (System 6.0.6).
Any Power Mac would have to be running at least System 7.1.2 (Power Mac 6100).
The teacher's Power Mac 5xxx would be running at least System 7.5.1 (Power Mac 5200).
... was an original Apple ][e (not the enhanced version), which my family bought in 1983. I still have it, and it runs perfectly to this day. I got Woz' autograph on the top cover when he was in town speaking at an educators' conference in 2007.
My first memory is from 1983 (not sure of the exact year but close enough). I was in junior high and I went to buy a "computer" with my parents at the mall. We went to Radio Shack first. The TRS we looked at was okay but boring and luckily we kept searching. Younkers had the Apple IIe for sale. Younkers is a department store in the midwest, the computers were near the bedroom sets and kitchen appliances. Needless to say, the Apple blew the TRS away. We bought the Apple IIe with one Disk II drive, a green screen Monitor III and a couple games. The rest is history. That Apple IIe has lived in basements for most of the years since high school but it is in my living now along with a few upgrades thanks to Ebay and other sellers.
Ugh, I still have not beaten the first level of Hard Hat Mack! :x Those darn bouncing things!
I could only ogle at the ads and articles in computer magazines.
Didn't see one in the flesh until the middle 80s. And didn't get my first Apple II (a 1978 non-plus) until a couple of years ago. My first impression was how beautiful it looked and how well put together it was. That beep when you switch it on....mmmmm.
My first memory of the Apple II was great actually.. I got an Apple II+ at xmas time when it first came out , along with every other kid on my block LOL. I did alot of tinkering with it to make it do things that it would not normally do .. For instance I really got into learning 6502 and wanted to badly to be able to break into any code at will. I was introduced at an early age to the world of Piracy with the Apple. Some of my friends back then were some of the best in the business when it came to Cracking [deprotecting] Warez [software]. A good friend of mine took a normal Rom Dump of an Non-autostart F-8 ROM simular to what you would find in an original Apple II with integer basic. But he went a step further and changed the bell sound to sound alot nicer! He even made the machine language dump much better , his version allowed him to view not on Hex but Binary as well! This ofcourse aided the user when going through 6502 and seeing where the protections were put into place on software! So.... I ofcourse put that one in my II+ Then along came time for a better looking Font for my II+ A radical Charactor Generator Chip started floating around called Pig Font , which was amazing actually .. Not only did it have all the Upper/Lower Characters but 3 extra charators onboard! One was a Skull & Crossbones , one was an Apple , like the one you would see on any Apple Add , with the little bite taken out of it! The others were cool little piggies that looked Left , Right , and Center ! Then it was time to rig up the Disk ]['s , I put toggle switches on all my Disk ][
s so that I could over-ride the Right Protect Switch to allow my drives to write to any non-clipped Diskette! Which really looked nice when I wanted to keep something for along time and made a nice looking label for it , somehow it just looked more professional!
Then ofcourse came the cards! I had experimental board that had Apple Soft basic burned into the roms on this particular board , as soon as I would boot up my II+ it automatically had Basic loaded! I wish I never got rid of that card! I had a great Eprom Burner card that I did alot of burning for people that wanted Pig Font roms or lower case roms..... Then came time for my life in the bbs world , I got a great Apple Cat Modem W/212 Upgrade Card! And Touch Tone Decoder Chip ! This modem was so much fun , it did so many illegal stuff that I won't mention , but trust me it was great....
Any how that's my walk down memory lane about the famous Apple II+
See ya
Patrick.
A24ever.
My earliest memory of Macs is around 1990 when our family bought a Mac II. I remember Sub-battle being played quite a bit on it.
I didn't really get to use 'em much until around '94 or '95 when we got a hold of a Performa 460. I actually played around a bit with Hypercard on there too. Later, we played around 'online' with AOL on it.
1979. Playing games on a friend's Apple II with cassette.
Heh...likewise, including the year.
The game was a Space Invaders knock-off, and the Apple had a green phosphor screen.
Back in 1986 I was appointed ADPO (automatic data
processing officer) for my fire station at work and
we were issued a bunch of old Apple //es and I was
told to "make it work". After cleaning, testing,
assembling (with NO paperwork and with NO training)
and adapting the software wo our purposes, I ended up
with some VERY NICE and BULLETPROOF computers with
VERY SIMPLE software to make forms, do word-processing
and report-writing.
The machines are very stable and even the most computer-
illiterate among the staff were able to use them with
minimal instruction.
I liked the systems so much that I procured one for my
own use at home and the bug bit!
I now own several complete Apple II and // systems and
a stock of backup parts to support them. Also have a
fair library of software.
I have since retired and the Apple systems are long gone
having been replaced by other newer hardware and software.
But my Apple home systems are still here and are still in
use for my personal projects! I use them to keep inventory
of my various other hobby projects (toy trains and antique
real fire trucks). I also like to do the "mad scientist"
thing and play around and experiment (hack) the hardware
and software to try to "hot rod" them.
It's a shame that Apple doesn't support the old II and //
computers as the "erector sets" of the new age! Good way
to train kids into becoming the next techs!
So true Woogie..... I still have a good collection of Apple II's here in the Garage... I still play around burning Eproms for them , turning II+'s into kick-ass Non-Autostart II's! Something about being able to RESET into any portion of a program is awsome to me and learning about 6502 is kewl also :O) Tricking my II+'s out with awsome Lowercase Roms are neat also! But for the most part I mostly just use my //e Enhanced and have a II+ hooked up for projects . I have a excellent condition IIC+ but it's put away , in hopes that some day it will be worth something , it has all it's original manuals and disks ...... But I just can't get enough of the hacking of the II's :O) So much fun , just wish those awsome BBS'S were still up and running , those were the days :O)
Patrick.
i was 4 years old in 1987 and i was in school the first time i used an apple. i have no idea what model, but the game was just identifying shapes i saw on the screen. i didnt get to use a real "mac" till i was 9, and that was a MacII (aka TANK)
I bought my first Apple ][ Plus in about spring 1982. That was when Apple had the "no mail order" edict. I drove 200 miles to LA to save a few hundred $$ over the local price, having got a contract job rebuilding some AMF pinsetter electronics to pay for it.
It wasn't long at all before I got a Disk 2 for it, having gotten thoroughly honked off at the cassette interface.
The first program I bought was probably Data Reporter, a database program. We used it to manage all of the minutia of our upcoming wedding: guest list, invitations, RSVPS, gifts, finances and thank-yous.
I built a lot of cards for it, including the Lis'ner 1000 text to speec/voice recognition card.
My favorite modem was the Novation AppleCat. It had an X10 interface and DTMF decoder on it. I used the modem, speech card, and Blankenship Basic to make a home control computer. Call it, it answered with voice, enter touchtones for an X10 unit, it responded by voice with what that unit was connected to, enter a command, it repeated the command and sent it. Very cool for the 80s...
That ][ Plus still works and is connected to our home phone system on one of our extensions.
I had to learn enough assembly language to relocate one of 2 subroutines that wanted to occupy the same memory space. I tried a couple of times to make that program voice capable (replacing the touch tones) using the speech recognition side of the Lis'ner 1000, but that was always a little beyond my abilities
Another cool thing I built was a graphics pantograph with 2 pots plugged into the game paddle port, one mounted to a board with an aluminum arm on the shaft, and the other on the end of the arm with an identical arm on its shaft, and a pencil on the end. There was a separate button to hold down to make a line. Then I wrote an Applsoft program to read the button and pots and do the math to linearize the pot readings. Even without the math, it would make recognizable lines on the screen, but with curves in them.
I probably have half dozen ][ Pluses and maybe a //e in the garage, 3 GSes, and a newly inherited GS that I fired up last night. I've got the bug now to fish out some more parts and bring one to work to show the kids what computing used to be like.