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More Macs on the auction block
gleam
sent us this wired article which talks about
more macs on the block
an Apple II with serial number 2, and an early apple I. They
also comment about the earlier auctioned Apple which Woz
confirmed is not really the first Apple.
At my local university they do the same thing...I brought $20, and started putting $1 and $2 bids on everything interesting. Got an Apple IIe for $2. An Imagewriter for $1 or $2 (my current Imagewriter (great workhorse printers...still going after decades of work). An Apple IIgs (sans mouse/keyboard/manuals/monitor...someone outbid me on those...heh) for $2. (with *two* disk drives! I would have *killed* for *two* disk drives a few years back!)
This is still great hardware. My little sister is hardly a computer nut, but I got her programming in about ten minutes on the Apple II. Those were the best programming machines ever made. The environment was always a keystroke away. They were easy to use, lots of source code was available (duh...interpreted language). You can redirect output to a printer with a single command. You have sound, color graphics (with a color monitor), and all sorts of goodies. A built-in debugger. I mean, the II ruled. There was always the "just one more" feature itch you got on your programs ("Gee...I'll bet I could add a scrolling logo here in five minutes"...). I learned to program on a II.
Heck, the II is an awesome machine. Still good. Still usable. *Aaand*, you can get a Power Mac G3, pop an Apple emulator on it, and get an *incredibly* fast Apple II. Yeah!
When built-in BASIC interpreters died, so did most of the programming knowledge (Fresh CS majors are dropping as those who lived through the Apple II heydays are out of college). Hypercard on the Mac was a nice revival of the spirit, but it wasn't maintained (Good ol Hypertalk...all right!). M$ QBASIC never had the fun spirit of the competing Apple products (at least for me). Schools should take every first-grader, plonk 'em in from of an Apple II, and teach 'em to program in BASIC. It'd do the world some good.
Maybe I can unload mine before the price drops....if I can find it in the closet under all the socks and crap.
You'd think the yobbos at La Salle could have done a tiny bit more checking into the origins of the Mac they sold - like asking the guy who built it. Ah well... what's a few facts in the face of $40K?
Hokey statistics and ancient misconceptions are no match for a good thought in your head, kid!
Try to remember that they're not Macs, they're Apple I's and II's. The Mac came in 84 and was based on Motorola 68000 while the Apple II's were based on 6502. I can't remember off the top of my head what the I was using as a processor.
(Happy owner of an IIGS and a whole crapload of programming manuals, including the real gem "Programming the 6502" from Sybex, printed '78.. also got bunches of SCSI cards, turbo card, Z80 card and whatnot..)
for only 20,000!!!! wow what a deal and I tell you what. I will throw in the old tape recorder I used for storage.
Put it up on eBay and see how much it gets. Not even a mint condition Altair goes for that kind of price.
Now the Atari Portfolio, there's a real piece of retro-geekishness.
- Ixbalam =^.^=
Smart moves by Apple, this will generate interest in Mac, and give them free exposure. I may have to donate my Apple ][ for this.
I'd donate one of my Macs, but they are all aquariums now (great Christmas gifts for my geek friends!)
It's a thankless job, but I've got a lot of Karma to burn off
I noticed that URL had "slashdot" in it:
o gy/story/20410.html
/. effect?
http://www.wired.com/news/news/slashdot/technol
Is this something Wired created for slashdot posts to protect itself from the
At our high school we were digging through our computer graveyard and found this old Apple computer that was apparently manufactured in conjunction with Bell & Howell. It looks exactly like an Apple II, but has no markings that designate its model number or anything. Anyone heard of these things, or have any info at all about it? I'm curious to know its history.
"Ahh... The net is vast..." - Maj. Motoko Kusanagi
Woz is one of the pretty darn cool computer figures. He *did* the Apple by himself, from what I heard...Jobs wasn't exactly up to his level.
He made tons of money, and left before things got corporate. So I can't blame him for the change in Apple attitude.
He donates his time and money today to teach kids to use computers at an area school (That would be incredible...I could really go for having Woz as an instructor). Not to get richer, as everyone else from that era seems to do (well, Jobs and Gates, at least). If I had to nominate just one figurehead, one good guy to stand for the computer world...It'd be Woz. With apologies to Torvalds and a bunch of others, Woz rocks.
I love how he says he'll use part of the six figure proceeds to buy a G3. :} The're not THAT expensive any more!
hitchhiker
the other day, i saw an Apple II at the thrift store, although it was probably serial number 2305820548268KCW#ER#@3, so it was probably a good thing that i didn't spend $10 on it. 'Lord knows i need more crap.
Here in at ISU they have a "computer sale" every wensday, they sell the stuff that they would be throwing away *extremely* cheap. I got an appleII+ (I wanted a gs though) for $50, and a funky looking dumb terminal for a qarter.. this isn't really relevant to anything... but whatever
_
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
(The regular Apple II's used snap on covers, so kids in classrooms could open them up, which was not good, generally)
Not good? Hell, it was invaluable! It made it practical to quickly open the case and pull the speaker wire so you could play games during BASIC class!
In the Wired article, Woz says he may have the original Apple I breadboard! Now there's a unique piece of history -- that should go to the Smithsonian. I doubt that any single comparable prototype exists for an Altair because they were motherboard systems. Even if you could find an original Altair CPU breadboard, you'd need the rest of the system, and I doubt that all of it still exists, or even that it ever existed as a single prototype. Most likely some boards were designed and produced before others, so there would be no single prototype system. (The one pictured on Radio Electronics was a mockup, I believe.)