Luck of the Draw
Apr. 17th, 2016 11:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerOn my way into the once-a-month meeting of the local Apple user group meeting, I looked at the table where the raffle prizes are set out only to be hit with a sudden thrill of recognition. Among the assorted bits of hardware and envelopes with software licenses in them, I could see the iconic shape of an antique Apple II computer, complete with Apple-branded monitor and two Disk II drives. It would be a rare and unusual prize, I thought, and yet I was stuck remembering. Every paid-up member of the user group gets one raffle ticket a month, but for all that I have won a software license or two for programs I've found useful I've been very aware of sitting and watching as number after number not my own is drawn and people go up to the front of the room to claim prizes as big as old Power Macintosh G5 towers. (I've seen three of those metal-cased "cheese graters" won, although I have wondered if they were the same computer every time, returned by people who had got to wondering if they really needed another old computer.) This time, I took a picture with my iPad's camera of what I could now tell was an earlier Apple IIe to leave me at least a little proof the prize had been there.
As I asked around, I heard the Apple IIe was being donated to the raffle just to free some space in the home of the donator. There was the thought I might not have that much more space to set up the system, at least, but in asking around I suppose I got the attention of someone else. Just as the raffle was getting under way, he handed me his ticket with the comment a second number would be helpful. Only a few numbers got called before one of the two in my hands was; I handed the other ticket over with words of thanks and made a straight line for the prize, convinced all those times of remembering sitting things out must have charged some karmic account for this moment. It was only after I'd taken the system back, and perhaps after I'd worked out it could still boot up, that I did start wondering about that question that might have turned into something of a cheap joke in the 1980s, "just what am I supposed to do with this?"
For all the interest I've taken in "old computers," by and large I've managed to keep from accumulating actual hardware. My family has kept its Radio Shack equipment, and I once managed to buy an early Macintosh from an estate garage sale of someone in the user group for what seemed a reasonable price, but despite having tried out a few solutions for getting "new" software onto that old hardware there's a certain inconvenience to setting things up on the dining room table, all the open space I have. Working with emulation instead, I have come all the same to have focused somewhat on Apple II software. Despite being told games were better on the Commodore 64 (to say nothing of the even later Amiga), it does seem those emulators are just a bit more tricky to operate on my own computer. Still, as I looked into it, I learned a piece of software that could transfer disk images from a modern computer to the Apple II didn't need the serial port that wasn't part of the somewhat minimal system. The cassette jacks on the back of an Apple II, one of the few interfaces the computer did have "out of the box" (and quickly depreciated with the development of the Disk II, which this system did come with) were slow but, once the audio settings were just right, good enough. In looking into discussions about hardware, though, I saw an awful lot of comments about old power supplies burning out, and wound up spending money to get one of the old third-party fans that clip on to one side of the computer.
This may yet be an interlude before drifting back to emulation. The physical keyboard has its own distinct character, but its squeaky feel may not necessarily be "better" than a modern one, no matter how flat. Still, the feeling an "old computer" is something to be "understood in full" (but only through the much greater capabilities of modern computers) can be added to with hardware.
As I asked around, I heard the Apple IIe was being donated to the raffle just to free some space in the home of the donator. There was the thought I might not have that much more space to set up the system, at least, but in asking around I suppose I got the attention of someone else. Just as the raffle was getting under way, he handed me his ticket with the comment a second number would be helpful. Only a few numbers got called before one of the two in my hands was; I handed the other ticket over with words of thanks and made a straight line for the prize, convinced all those times of remembering sitting things out must have charged some karmic account for this moment. It was only after I'd taken the system back, and perhaps after I'd worked out it could still boot up, that I did start wondering about that question that might have turned into something of a cheap joke in the 1980s, "just what am I supposed to do with this?"
For all the interest I've taken in "old computers," by and large I've managed to keep from accumulating actual hardware. My family has kept its Radio Shack equipment, and I once managed to buy an early Macintosh from an estate garage sale of someone in the user group for what seemed a reasonable price, but despite having tried out a few solutions for getting "new" software onto that old hardware there's a certain inconvenience to setting things up on the dining room table, all the open space I have. Working with emulation instead, I have come all the same to have focused somewhat on Apple II software. Despite being told games were better on the Commodore 64 (to say nothing of the even later Amiga), it does seem those emulators are just a bit more tricky to operate on my own computer. Still, as I looked into it, I learned a piece of software that could transfer disk images from a modern computer to the Apple II didn't need the serial port that wasn't part of the somewhat minimal system. The cassette jacks on the back of an Apple II, one of the few interfaces the computer did have "out of the box" (and quickly depreciated with the development of the Disk II, which this system did come with) were slow but, once the audio settings were just right, good enough. In looking into discussions about hardware, though, I saw an awful lot of comments about old power supplies burning out, and wound up spending money to get one of the old third-party fans that clip on to one side of the computer.
This may yet be an interlude before drifting back to emulation. The physical keyboard has its own distinct character, but its squeaky feel may not necessarily be "better" than a modern one, no matter how flat. Still, the feeling an "old computer" is something to be "understood in full" (but only through the much greater capabilities of modern computers) can be added to with hardware.