I went through the first 9 pages and did not see a topic like the one I'm about to ask. Apologies if it already exists.
What was your first experience with an Apple ][, if you recall? I don't mean hearing about a friend's one, or seeing a picture of one in a magazine. What was the first time you sat down and got hands on with one. I'll post my own experience later, but am opening up the floor to comments 
Ritchie Potter's Electronic Store. My family had just built a new Tackle Shop to service our fishing boats and at the time it was believed that the rest of the building space was better served being rented (eventually the tackle store took over the whole building)
Ritchie Potter supplied and serviced all the electronics for our boats...radios, radars, lorans, etc. So he moved into the unoccupied space to be located close to our boats and all the other businesses he serviced regularly. I know, but I'm getting there!!
In addition to marine electronics he also did all kinds of electronic equipment, parts, etc. as was common back in the 70's and 80's.
One day I came in to see this beige box with a keyboard in it. Had a black and white CCTV monitor on top of it (just like the ones used in the shop to watch the customers) and was just the coolest thing I had ever seen. I was 9 years old and played with it nearly every day I could.
Eventually, he got a bunch of them in (seemed like a lot to me at any rate) and I got my first one. Well, it was my older brothers but the following year he went to college and it became mine!!
Over the next few years I got to play with all the machines that came out nearly as they came out until Mr. Potter died.
Zan
When the DIY clone business was at it's peak in 1980, I bought all the parts to build one. Only I could not afford all the sockets for the chips, so I had to solder all of them directly except the CPU and EPROMS. However, after a full 2 days of soldering, I plugged it in and it booted right up! One of the best experiences of my life!
Back in 1981... Got a new job in Electrical R&D, (TTL mostly) and the department was moving to the Intel MCS-80 series for control. Getting a computer was right in line with my career, so I bought an Apple II with my tax return money, (interest on house loans were high back then, so big returns) and the first thing I did was set up an office with a B&W TV that I converted to a monitor for my Apple II. Could not afford the Disk drives for over a year so I used Cassette tapes which I still have to this day. My older brother and I bought at the same time, but he was richer than me and could afford the drives.
We spent MANY hours working / playing with these things. Our poor wives became computer widows at an early age.
Late 1979....
8 weeks before christmas i recieved 3 big parcels that i had ordered 2 months before.
In that days i just had finished evening school because my grade had not been acknowledged
here in Germany after i had emigrated to Germany 4 years befor after i solved 4 years
of duty in Nam. First 2 years i spent learning German language and after that i solved the
middle Grade just few months befor i prepared to enter next evening school to get German
Grade for University.
In that days i did not have much money and i had to save several months
to set an amount of nearly 3000 German Marks aside for the order and i was forced to
very carefully select the items i wanted to order. The priority was to perform as much
as possible by DIY and only buy that kind of items as factory made parts, that i could not
solve by DIY and therefor a large bunch of the oder have been parts from a German dealer
who imported parts from Taiwan.
So the medium parcel contained a color Matrix printer and several bags with parts.
The smaller parcel contained 2 DISK II compatible Floppsdiskdrives and a complete FDC4
Floppycontrollercard a large bunch of PCB´s, bags with sockets and rest of the parts.
The largest parcel contained a RGB Monitor from Blaupunkt and several bags with parts and sockets.
When the Parcels arrived i first spent 2 days sorting out the parts and PCB´s and
sorting each device to be soldered in it´s own box:
1 Box - all parts for the Mainboard
1 Box for the Parallel Port interface
1 box for the CPM Z80 card
1 Box for the language card
1 Box for the Saturn 128 kB compatible copy cat
1 Box for the Super serial compatible card
1 Box for the RGB Card.
1 Box for the Floppydisks and other parts and cables
After sorting each box contains a photocopy of the related circuitplan and population
guide for making the card and the related parts and sockets.
Besides in the largest Box was a empty clone-case with the related powerunit and
the keyboard inside...
Because of the visits at the lessons of the evening school i only had about 1 1/2 hours
per evening for working on the parts.
The mainboard was a "weekend task" soldering the sockets and parts from Friday evening,
entire night, entire saturday, the entire night from saturday till sunday "high noon".
After final check of all soldering joints i just dropped to bed and slept till Monday
morning and then just left for the daytime job.
After 2 evenings testing the mainboard i built the mainboard into the empty clone case.
Next 2 weeks i spent each evening soldering the RGB Card first, then the Parallel port
card testing the printer, then adding the languagecard after solving it´s DIY task, then
adding the Super Serial compatible card, thereafter the Saturn compatible RAMdisk card,
and then finally solving the task of the CPM Z80 card.
The FDC4 Floppycontroller card was the only one i had purchased as ready to use card.
2 weeks before christmas was the first testing run of the entire setup and checking
for errors and mistakes. Only few may be able to imagine how happy i started dancing
in the room, when it turned out that no mistakes happened in this entire weeks of all tasks.
I nearly jumped to the cieling when i first time booted CPM 2.20B and viewed the Logo at the
RGB Monitor and after starting up the dealers Test Disk and all tests performed without
errors. This promissed to become a perfect christmas holiday....
and that turned out to become true...
Thereafter that system served for next 3 years all my tasks related to evening school and starting
besides to learn all about programming and starting up to learn about electronics.
After 3 months i joined the local Apple User Group and after i solved the evening school
and the grade to qualify for University i started with University for degree as engineer of
electronics.
After half a year i advanced in the local community to the resopnsibilty of service of the
hardware in the community and after another period of 8 more months i have been elected to
lead the local user group and we made workshops about service and DIY projects with the Apple II.
Everything went well till end of 1985. Few weeks before the trouble started i just had purchased
my first Apple //e as original part. Then i got the bill with 10 years delay for the duty in Nam.
Skin Cancer and various versions of other kinds of cancer. The next 5 years i was forced besides studies
in university and jobs besides to struggle along with fight for life suriving the results of being
exposed several weeks in areas contamined by agent orange. But that´s another story....
speedyG
When the DIY clone business was at it's peak in 1980, I bought all the parts to build one. Only I could not afford all the sockets for the chips, so I had to solder all of them directly except the CPU and EPROMS. However, after a full 2 days of soldering, I plugged it in and it booted right up! One of the best experiences of my life!
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What? Homemade Apple II clones? I've never seen or heard of such a thing... Tell more.
well if you want to view a homebrew clone:
http://www.appleii-box.de/H004_AppleII192kBupgradepage.htm
it was the first Apple II clone i soldered...
in 1983 i expanded it up to 192 kB by using a mod that enabled use of 4164 chips instead of the 4116 chips
and the banks were switched by use of the annuciators of the gameport. See explenations at the page...
I even have this board today in my storage.
speedyG
Yep. You could get booth original Apple IIs and II+ clone main boards. Of course all the parts were current at the time, so were easy to get, if not cheap. I worked for company (Extel Communications) that manufactured digital teleprinters, so getting most of the parts was easy for me. I couldn't;t afford the sockets though. They used genuine Augat sockets and they were not cheap, even at cost.
There were a variety of cases available too. I chose one that had room for two half-height floppies and had a separate keyboard (a la PC).
The guy that sold the PCBs, cases and such could supply complete kits, but these were out of my reach financially.
HE also had blank PCBs for 80 c0lumn cards, Z80 cards, disk controllers, etc... ROM/PROM images were easily obtained and I had access to burners at work, but you could buy them preloaded.
JAN-1982.
I was a Sophomore in High School ( 10 Grade ), and I was Chronically Late to my First Period class, Chemistry.. I got After School Detention.
Detention was held across the hall from the Front Office, at 03:30. School got out at 03:10, leaving 20 minutes to Hang Around..
The closest room was one of the Three Business Classes, classrooms, which were connected together by Internal Doors, so you didn't need to go into the Hall to go from room to room.. the Middle Room had just Desks. The First and Third had Office Equipment. Sitting in the Back of the Middle room, by the Interconnecting Door to the Third Class room, I could see there was a few students there after school, but doing something on some Beige Office Equipment.. IT appeared they were doing something "fun", more fun that Class Work.. So I went in, and there were...
Three Apple ][+ Computers with 48K of RAM, with Language Cards, and a Single Disk ][, ( but one computer had Two Disk ]['s ), ALL of the specifics, I didn't know until later...
I found out that "we students", could come in Before School, at Lunch or After School to use these Apple ][ Computers... I came in Early, the next Morning... I don't think I was ever late to Chemistry again....
The next year, they created an Official Computer Lab, and it was restricted to Computer Classes Only...
But for a Half Year, it was Open Season!!!!
Near the beginning of my Senior Year ( 12 Grade ), my friend Randy and I bought an Apple ][e. So we didn't need the Official Computer Lab..
MarkO
Before I turned my Apple iie on, my cousin warned me that it should not be used for more than 15 minutes at a time because of the power supply. I probably inserted the "Introduction to the Apple iie" disk first and went from there. I was in 8th grade at that time, age 14, year approximately 1985.
My dad bought it from Computerland on Queens Boulevard in Queens, Ny where I live. My dad saved up money from tips from the customers.
I loved Applesoft Basic. It fascinated me how typing up these commands got my computer to do all sorts of interesting things.
The part of that disk where you lead the rabbit in the maze was the part that my dad liked the best.
My system was at that time the unenhanced iie with the Apple green composite monitor and a duodisk drive. I later on got the Apple joystick with the orange buttons which had that defect of the buttons not working due to bad springs.
First hands-on experience was at the local Compu-Shop. The guy with the fro sat me down and let me play a pre-release version of A2-FS1. After that I got some books on single-board microcomputers and read the Apple II section till the pages fell out. I just had to have one!
Soon enough I got a II. And the a drive, and another drive, then a Hayes MicroModem II.
I transcribed a bunch of my early experiences and discoveries with the II in a series of text files; some of which I post at AtariAge from time to time.