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My New Old Apple IIe Computer

charlieharrington.com

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Re: My New Old Apple IIe Computer

#11

Post by whatrocks »

bitwize wrote: post #7

It's not an Apple IIe without MECC software! Including that most famous of MECC titles, The Oregon Trail , which is about as synonymous with the Apple IIe in xennials' minds as Super Mario Bros. is with the NES. I also recommend Terrapin Logo for more programming fun.

Definitely need to get a copy of The Oregon Trail. And, yes, I've been reading up on LOGO! I just read a great book called Mindstorms written by Seymour Papert (inventor of LOGO and the Turtle robot) about his educational theories behind LOGO and using computers to help children learn how to learn. I highly recommend checking it out - here are my book notes: https://www.charlieharrington.com/mindstorms

Re: My New Old Apple IIe Computer

#12

Post by mappu »

whatrocks wrote: post #5
StanislavPetrov wrote: post #4

You mention that you don't have any games for your Apple II. If you go the used game route and want to get the full experience be sure to check out Wizardry and Zork!

Will do! Someone also just turned me onto this site: https://asciiexpress.net/diskserver/ where you can connect your laptop or phone's headphone jack with a 3.5mm audio cable to the Apple II cassette-in port, and just play the audio files to transfer over games and other software. This is the magic I was hoping for.

I've done this recently - It really does work (playing audio from a cellphone); if you run into any problems I recommend the slower file versions and maybe retry a few times in case of interference/noise on the cable.

EDIT: I also had a similar smoky experience with the original CRT (maybe a bit less safe to repair), luckily my modern TV could connect directly by composite.

Re: My New Old Apple IIe Computer

#16

Post by squnch »

bitwize wrote: post #7

It's not an Apple IIe without MECC software! Including that most famous of MECC titles, The Oregon Trail , which is about as synonymous with the Apple IIe in xennials' minds as Super Mario Bros. is with the NES. I also recommend Terrapin Logo for more programming fun.

Don't even make eye contact with me in public unless you've scored 8000 points in Oregon Trail.

Re: My New Old Apple IIe Computer

#17

Post by squnch »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #9
user_0x wrote: post #6

I totally agree with you about the awesomeness of the software manuals from the time. The whole aesthetic is so much warmer then it is now.

Because there were no websites, blogs, podcasts, or other sources of information about these devices, the manuals had to be thorough. You should see how amazing the manual for my Amdek monitor is, or the Grappler + graphics card for the Apple // (allows you to print graphics from your Apple // to a dot matrix printer): https://apple2online.com/web_documents/Orange%20Micro%20Grap... If you were lucky, other authors ma…

Ugh, I remember trying to get two-player Doom set up over a modem while my mom kept picking up the phone to make calls. Spent 2 weeks with a friend trying to get it work and achieved a total of 1 working session, in which I blew him to bits in the first 5 seconds, causing him to be furious with me since he thought we were going to play co-operatively. We tried many times after that and never got it working again.

Re: My New Old Apple IIe Computer

#18

Post by hossbeast »

andrewstuart wrote: post #15
hossbeast wrote: post #14

Two game recommendations Odyssey (text based adventure game), and Archon (kind of like chess).

There was a really great 2 player game on Apple 2 called "Swashbuckler". Well, great for 1983 anyway. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyR3tou4tdM

I also remember Swashbuckler! Another recommendation for OP.

Re: My New Old Apple IIe Computer

#19

Post by mjg59 »

> Some wizards at work told me that I probably cannot just plug this into a modern phone line and expect it to work, though.

Is this true? I can't think of any immediate reason it would fail, but finding something to actually dial into seems like a harder problem.

Re: My New Old Apple IIe Computer

#20

Post by toast0 »

whatrocks wrote: post #5
StanislavPetrov wrote: post #4

You mention that you don't have any games for your Apple II. If you go the used game route and want to get the full experience be sure to check out Wizardry and Zork!

Will do! Someone also just turned me onto this site: https://asciiexpress.net/diskserver/ where you can connect your laptop or phone's headphone jack with a 3.5mm audio cable to the Apple II cassette-in port, and just play the audio files to transfer over games and other software. This is the magic I was hoping for.

This one is even more magic: https://www.adtpro.com/

Although with exactly zero disks, it's only somewhat useful. Bootstrapping it is fun though; it's got a ramdisk feature you might be able to use for some disks, though?

If you're still looking for disks, be sure to get Double Sided Double Density. High density disks will not work well in an Apple II. If the disks are unlabeled, look for hubrings; if they've got hubrings, they're more likely double density.

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