thinking about getting into vintage apple/mac

[Emehr]

Soooo, toptenmaterial, did you ever find a classic Mac for gaming?

[toptenmaterial]

Soooo, toptenmaterial, did you ever find a classic Mac for gaming?

 

No. I did pick up an old "fat Mac" (non-functioning) from a friend of mine at work. My building shares space with a local Goodwill depot, and he caught me eyeballing it.

 

As soon as I get some more cash and get some debts settled, I'll be looking into it.

[Keatah]

There's no reason not to enjoy both the //e and IIgs together. Some of the hardware is interchangeable, and certainly a lot of software. At the cost for which the "consoles" are available you might as well throw in a ][+..

 

It generally seems that the most "incompatible" hardware - hardware that was made for one specific model - were memory boards. You have the ][+ 16k cards with address/timing straps, sitting in slot 0.

 

Then you had ones that would go in any slot, making ramdisk-like expansions possible.

 

Then there were IIe AUX-slot cards, beginning at 64k and going up

 

Don't forget the "specialized" cards for the IIgs that give you, what, 8megs of memory?

 

You also have lowercase chips, for the ][+, you're not gonna be putting that in a IIgs. Or a Videx Enhancer ][, that won't go in a //e.

 

Otherwise things like modems, and z80 cards, and drives, and joystick controllers, clocks, sound boards, hard disks, They can all go back and forth in the 2series. And what wasn't directly compatible, usually could be made so with simple connector/cable passthrough adapters.

 

Like I say, with the locals here still managing to throw these things in dumpsters, there's no reason not to pick up all major units of the 2series on the cheap.

Edited December 3, 2011 by Keatah

[almightytodd]

^{I have little animosity against Wozniak and his desires to make the 6502 microprocessor available to the common man in the Apple and Apple II as a means of letting everyone join the computer age. I am bothered by the directions that Jobs took Apple towards the wealthy and the elites with the Lisa and Mac. I feel that to a degree, Wozniak and Bushnell were kindred spirits in the idea that the advances in microprocessor technology should be available to everyone to enhance their lives. I feel like Jobs just wanted to get buckets of money for providing cool computer stuff...}

[+Sauron]

^{I have little animosity against Wozniak and his desires to make the 6502 microprocessor available to the common man in the Apple and Apple II as a means of letting everyone join the computer age. I am bothered by the directions that Jobs took Apple towards the wealthy and the elites with the Lisa and Mac. I feel that to a degree, Wozniak and Bushnell were kindred spirits in the idea that the advances in microprocessor technology should be available to everyone to enhance their lives. I feel like Jobs just wanted to get buckets of money for providing cool computer stuff...}

 

Please stop trolling this thread and get back to the original topic of it, or you'll find yourself locked out of it.

[Keatah]

If you really want to get into early Apple hardware, then the ][+ and //e are the ways to go. Platinum //e and IIgs if you want to experience the declining years of Apple 2 series..

 

The 2series was awesome, and it's hastened demise ended the era of a time when ONE programmer could know everything there is to know about a computer system. She could know sound, graphics, dos, input/output controllers, and all the necessary details of the hardware. It was a one man show back then. Just like the Atari 2600 (and other 8-bit consoles). Remember seeing the title pages for software back then? It was one programmer only. Sometimes two. Today, it is a team of hundreds if not thousands! Don't give me that shit that one guy wrote Office 2010. I argued and argued that same point for many a minute with somebody recently. And as a side note, a lot of people think Bill Gates is like the best programmer in the world since he writes Office and Windows and invented the internet. I digress.

 

I experienced that directly - I found that I could understand the 2series inside and out. When the Mac came out, I didn't understand any of it. And was supremely puzzled by the lack of expansion slots. Perhaps I am biased toward the 2series to begin with. But. I remember getting the Apple ][+ home and I got a cassette player going, and a game or two, and an RF modulator. I'll always fondly remember that the Sup'R'Mod was the first bit of expansion kit I did to my ][+. And it snowballed from there. Next came a Disk ][, and interface card. Then a 16k card. Imagine to my dismay I had to load DOS into low memory and suck up 10k of ram in the process. Then imagine my elation I could load it into HI-MEM (the 16k card). Then imagine my dismay again, when I had to give up the INT FP functionality if I did DOS in HI-MEM. No more Integer Basic speed demon.. Then imagine my elation I could compile shit with The Einstein Compiler. Now my most inefficient programs blasted by with Machine Language speed. I was happy again

 

I learned all sorts of compromises and how to work around them! And it was fun! Then I got a printer Epson MX-80 F/T with Graftrax III in rom and a Grappler+ interface *AND* an external micro-buffer, then a 14 inch Trinitron TV to act as my own monitor.

 

Next up was some stuff from Mountain Hardware, like the Music System, and a RomPlus, and a multi-function board. I got a Z-80 CPU card too. I liked the printer setup a whole-lot, but I was quite annoyed I couldn't submit my homework because it was shit dot-matrix. Then I discovered how to advance the paper by 1/216th of an inch - or one pulse of the paper advance stepper motor. That, with doublestrike I could get near daisy-wheel printout quality. I was rolling! But then they quickly complained everything was in upper case. I got a Beamon Porter POWERCASE rom to get me lowercase. I was rocking! Somewhere in there I discovered pirating software and warez. I immediately got a 2nd Disk ][ drive. And you can guess, BBS'ing and modems weren't far behind. I was hot shit with a Hayes MicroModem II, the one with the little black box called a MicroCoupler. Frustrated with me tying up the phone lines for 3 hours at a crack, I leveraged and blackmailed my parents into getting me an Apple Cat II modem.

 

But going to back to the Micro-Buffer from Practical Peripherals.. It was da'bomb! I could do marathon printing sessions, dumping 30K and bigger AppleSoft listings in a few seconds and while it was printing I could then get to work on modifying a line or two, then dump it again! And again. I'd go through cartons and cartons of fanfold paper in a week! We once had a special recycling truck come by to take what must have been 60 or more bags of printouts. Programming was intensive. And we did it all!

 

Along the way I opened up my BBS and it ran for several years. In order to stay "elite" I got a 212 card with all the trimmings, and a firmware chip and touch-tone decoder, expansion module, external handset, BSR X-10 stuff. To help with programming all this shit, I got a Videx Enhancer and Function Strip. My BBS grew by leaps and bounds. I got TimeMaster II H.O. clock card, a Mocking Board, and a SIDER 10megger. Somewhere along the way I acquired a prototype card and built an extra 3 slots. But that wasn't enough. I eventually got 2 Mountain Hardware Expansion Chassis, but only used one of them. Somewhere else in there was a 3.6MHz accelerator card, Transwarp. And of course, all sorts of cables and a Kensington System Saver, and 4 or 5 sets of paddles and joysticks were acquired along the way. A ZipChip and RocketChip are among other bits of hardware I "evaluated" on a permanent basis. And of course the obligatory serial and parallel interface cards, the first early ones. And later a SuperSerial board.

 

Not only was I accumulating mass amounts of hardware and software I also racked up a $1000+ phone bill which my parents and the court agreed to let much of it slide. Determined to still connect cross-country, I learned boxing and phreaking. Wargames dialing was in there too.

 

I briefly farted around with the Gibson Lightpen System. But I never took an interest in it beyond the novelty. I was more interested in speech synthesis and recognition. Like with the Votrax Type-N-Talk. And soon I was taken by the wind with a KoalaPad. It almost threatened to derail my BBS; I used it so much. I built up a nice lovely collection of "hi-res" pictures, the popular ones of the time, and of course my own. I got a real Apple Co. Graphics Tablet, but it sat in the corner, un-used. I was more interested in RF communications and Radar Dishes and big-ass antennas at that moment.

 

My main problem, still, was memory expansion. The //e was announced and I had to have it! I hated giving up the type-ahead buffer in the Enhancer. But, like I learned from day one, compromises and exchanges were part of the early computing experience. Most of my hardware transferred over, except for the 16K card (the first Microsoft consumer product!) This was one of the first with an S/N of about 400 - 450 or so. With the //e we put dos way up high in AUX-MEM, or rather, on a different page and banked it in and out when we needed disk access. This allowed me to have like a 93K-byte MONDO-SIZED BBS program going. It just grew and grew! We even got around to doing Hi-Res graphics on-line, but it was rudimentary and more or less a see-if-we-can-do-it sort of thing.

 

There were other bits of hardware and I didn't even mention my software adventures or Voyager-2 odyssey in this post. But suffice it to more than say - the Apple II was the best for playing with expansion boards and building your own "Add-ons". It was just so cool.

 

And then that asshole jobs came by and killed off the 2series. I never could understand how an Apple computer could not have expansion slots. It seemed bastardized and raped. But for the likes of the C64 and 400/800 and Trash-80's, slots or no slots, it didn't make or break the deal. I was alright with them just as they were. But to rape the 2series of the slots, that was bad. I have a //c and //c+, but I hated them at the time. And that Mac thing, yech.. I suppose I didn't like giving up my big monitor and color graphics at the time.

 

I never did the Mac thing, not even till today. I neither like nor dislike Apple products today. I use iTunes for my digital music needs. It's cool and it works.

 

As far as expansion slots in machines today, I prefer systems with as much integrated on the mainboard as possible. Things just seem to work better and there's less hassle. I suppose I am biased again from the days of the 80486 - Pentium II. I hated adding hardware because there was always conflict to solve either in Autoexec.Bat or Config.Sys or the Bios or even Win95 itself. In many ways it was easier to set up 2series hardware than it was PC-386-486 hardware.

 

Today, I think USB rocks and is one of the key technologies that took computers from being technically complex to simple. USB obfuscated all that interrupt and com-port shit and DMA. One should think of USB as a modern-day expansion slot. And you can get an expansion chassis for $7.99 if you need more slots.

 

And there you have it, a tiny glimpse into the variety of 2series early expansion options.

Edited December 4, 2011 by Keatah

[cncfreak]

I would have to agree getting an Apple IIgs. Great machine and can also play the Apple II/e/c stuff as well. Also i would look at getting an earlier mac (mac II / LC II/III). I just put around 100 games on my Power Mac 6116cd with 24 megs of ram, 700 meg hard drive and OS 8.1 and had a lot of fun with it. I will be installing Vmac on it to catch all the older B/W earlier mac games as well.

[Emehr]

I just put around 100 games on my Power Mac 6116cd with 24 megs of ram, 700 meg hard drive and OS 8.1 and had a lot of fun with it.

That was my first Mac that I got in '96 and I still have it set up. Played a lot of games on it, from Spectre Challenger and Eric's Ultimate Solitaire (which came with it) to LucasArts games (TIE Fighter and X-Wing Collections, Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, Fate of Atlantis, etc.), to flight simulators (A-10 Attack and A-10 Cuba) to Blizzard games (WarCraft II and Diablo) to Tomb Raider, which was free with the purchase of Mac OS 8.5. Not to mention all of the fantastic shareware and freeware games courtesy of my subscription to MacAddict. I have a lot of good gaming and programming memories on that computer. A few years ago I added a 250MHz G3 upgrade so it's nice and peppy.

 

I have a 'Woz' (ROM 01) Apple IIgs that I bought to relive my BASIC programming days from high school. I had also intended to explore gaming on it but never got around to it and I'm not sure if I ever will. I'm thinking about selling it off but I haven't decided yet.

 

I also have a Mac Classic that may be good for B&W gaming. It needs to be recapped and it recently decided not to boot from the hard drive. You can boot from ROM but the OS doesn't even see the HD so I'm not sure what's going on there. I had put Mac Draw and Mac Write on the HD but never got around to trying out any games.

[toptenmaterial]

The most common deal that I have seen in thrift shops around my way is the first gen iMac for $50.

[desiv]

I was an Apple II series fan back in the day.

Friend had a ][+, and it was great. Slots, industrial.. It just "felt" like a computer.

Cost reasons, we went Commodore, which was still fun...

When it came time for 16-bit, I went Amiga. My roommate had a Mac (512k, single floppy) and I hated that.

(Except for Continuum!!!) It was painful to use (disk swaps), the OS was still crashprone, and it wasn't "as fun" as the II series.

I really wish Apple would have continued the II line, but oh well..

 

Since then however, I have picked up a classic (with a hard disk) running system 6.

It's not bad.. Still sluggish (it's a 7mhz Classic).

But it has a certain "appeal" to it...

 

I have more fun with me //e and IIc, but I still like the Classic.

 

And if you get an old Mac, get Continuum!!! Man, I love that game..

 

desiv

[toptenmaterial]

How does the Apple IIGS stack up, in terms of fun, with the later Atari computers?

[Keatah]

How does the Apple IIGS stack up, in terms of fun, with the later Atari computers?

 

What later atari systems?

[toptenmaterial]

How does the Apple IIGS stack up, in terms of fun, with the later Atari computers?

 

What later atari systems?

 

ST and Falcon, never played either.

[madmax2069]

What i would do is get a IIgs because you get the best of both worlds (Apple II 8bit backwards compatibility). I would also get a Performa 475 (pizza box Mac) and find a full 68040 (has a FPU) CPU to replace the 68LC040 CPU (no FPU) that comes with it so that it can run software that requires a FPU (a few games require this), I could not be more happy with them. and just for extras i have a Beige G3 AIO for older PPC software (its rather big so the mini tower or desktop versions might be better for space limitations) .

How does the Apple IIGS stack up, in terms of fun, with the later Atari computers?

 

What later atari systems?

 

ST and Falcon, never played either.

 

You can have just as much fun with the IIgs as with any other system thats around its time frame, but you cant really compare a falcon to a IIgs because the falcon is in a higher class (way more powerful and capable), you could say the same thing about the ST as well. but i can't say you can have more fun on any one of the systems then the other because each person has different tastes and what they want to do or play. with the IIgs you do get a combination of systems, The 8bit apple II and its own library of software which adds up to quite a bit of games and programs to play and use.

 

but this is just my 2 cents.

[JamesD]

The standard IIgs clock speed wasn't fast enough to keep up with a Falcon.

As far as speed goes, even the ST may be a little faster than the stock IIgs.

If you can find an accelerator board for the IIgs, they can be pretty fast for the day.

A lot of games will look and play similar on the IIgs and ST, but the IIgs had a much better sound chip, probably the best built in chip of the day.

 

The IIgs has more applications/games overall when you count older Apple software. But if you only count software that takes advantage of the new capabilities, the ST has more software.