My New Old Apple IIe Computer | Hacker News Reader

My New Old Apple IIe Computer

charlieharrington.com

188 pointswhatrocks101 comments

The easiest and fastest way to get software onto your new beloved:

Search the internet for the FTP Apple Asimov server (there are http mirrors if you don’t want you use ftp). This is an archive of many thousands of Apple diskette images and software.

Download stuff from the archive onto an SD card. Then purchase an SD to Apple disk emulator card (plugs into one of those 7 slots and emulates an Apple disk drive). You can load software from the sd card onto the Apple just as if each file from Asimov were a real 5.25” diskette.

Also pick up one of these:

https://www.cbmstuff.com/proddetail.php?prod=WiModem232OLED

You can connect your Apple to WiFi and then essentially telnet to one off the many BBS servers that are still running. Actually you can telnet to anything on the Internet at that point. You just need to load terminal emulation software, like Ascii Express (often abbreviated as AE or AE Express), onto the Apple first.

Wow, I'll definitely be picking up both of those cards. Thanks for the tips. I had a feeling the serial card would be my ticket to the Internet, rather than the impressive-looking, but clearly past-its-prime modem card.

I also suggest the CFFA hard-disk emulator. I always wanted a hard disk for my Apple II.

I have one of the old ones, its good, but the new ones look even better because you can copy images from the internet directly to it.

OTOH, I also have the https://www.bigmessowires.com/floppy-emu/ for that.

The CFFA is better as a HD, while the floppy emu is good for just plugging into random disk ports (IIGS/IIC/laser 128).

There are other options besides the CFFA. There’s a South Korean guy named Ian Kim who makes the awesome SD Disk ][ emulator. Sell it on ebay. It has the best firmware I’ve used on these types of devices. It has an LCD screen and onboard controls and menus with which you can scroll through all images & select the one you want to load.

The FloopyEMU also has an LCD with menus and onboard controls to select images, change modes, etc.

They are out of stock. Do you know how often he produces them?

Floppy Emu is great. I haven't used the CFFA so I can't make a comparison. I never had a hard disk drive in my Apple II days and the Floppy Emu gives a reasonable approximation of using the Apple II w/ floppies.

I have a hard disk emulator and honestly have never used it on the //e. Maybe because very little software back in the day used them.

Thank you for this!! I’ve got a IIe and Classic in my parents basement (where I used to spend a lot of time as a kid...) that I’ve been meaning to have shipped to me. This would be a fun project.

Does anyone have a source for a Super Serial Card, or similar that would work with this? I have had my //e since '83 and deeply regret that I never picked one of those up.

There are a few Super Serial Cards listed on eBay right now. Your deep regret can be fixed for about $20-60.

A cheaper way for him to get started is to use his Super Serial Card with ADTPro (https://adtpro.com). ADTPro can be bootstrapped onto the Apple using just a null modem cable ($5-10) connected to his PC and a couple of console commands. ADTPro can then transfer disk images from the PC and write them to floppy disks. Even if he also has to buy a USB serial adapter ($10) and floppy disks, it will be cheaper than buying a SD floppy emulator like the BMOW FloppyEMU ($109+).

I agree that is cheaper, but it is also more painful and slower. If you want to try out 100 different disk images, imagine writing those to 100 floppies (even if you overwrite and only purchase 10 floppies -- still a lot of time)

I don’t disagree, but there’s something magic about using old floppy drives. Even if you were a bit too young to have used them yourself, you may enjoy the experience. I think it’s worth trying even if you end up buying a floppy emulator later.

For completeness, here is Ian Kim's ebay store where he sells the SD Disk ][ emulator:

https://www.ebay.com/usr/ksd09?_trksid=p2047675.l2559

He doesn't have any left but is making another batch as I type this.

Great piece.

Haven't seen Beagle Bros mentioned. Their awesome catalogs:

https://stevenf.com/beagle/contents.html

Also haven't seen mentioned Pinball Construction Set- an absolutely amazing piece of engineering, by Bill Budge:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinball_Construction_Set

Last I checked, Budge was still working- for Google- on the V8 runtime. Think he is on twitter.

And while there are a lot of 6502 assembly resources around online, fondly remembered books on 6502 assembly and graphics programming (still have em):

https://www.amazon.com/High-resolution-Graphics-Animation-As...

https://books.google.com/books/about/Hi_res_Graphics_for_the...

Super cool memories from my childhood.

These all look great (esp. Pinball Construction Set!).

Regarding 6502 programming, I've been planning to follow along with Ben Eater's new course and kit on "Building a 6502 Computer": https://eater.net/6502 (once I finish up his previous kit for building an 8 bit computer with breadboards). Amazing that you still have those books in your library!

Those look very cool! Though FWIW I wonder if there are differences between the breadboard memory space and IO and busses and the Apple II. I recall the graphics screen was fed from RAM at 2000-3fff, with an offscreen buffer in 4000-5fff. And there was a vertical blanking interrupt handler to hook into, so you could organize writes to screen memory when it was not being read by the video machinery, and avoid flicker. Getting that working as a kid- actually seeing butter smooth non-flicker animation in the simple games I was writing- big, big moment.

The Apple ][ hardware did not have a direct way to track vertical blanking. There were hacks that used artifacts in the dynamic memory refresh to sniff out when the VBI was happening.

http://www.deater.net/weave/vmwprod/megademo/vapor_lock.html

Ah, thank you, that's interesting. I don't recall puzzling through that exact machinery.

But I had a IIe, not a II, and looking at resources for that- yeah, I had a rev B motherboard, and remember well working in the double hi res context, both black and white and color:

http://www.battlestations.zone/2017/04/apple-ii-double-hi-re...

So cool.

The catalog looks like Trader Joe's fearless flyer!

Came here to mention Beagle Bros. In particular, for this:

> Other than AppleSoft BASIC (which was written by Microsoft! For Apple!!), which is burned into a ROM chip on the Apple II, there's also some sort of built-in assembler that you can access by typing this into the BASIC prompt:

    CALL-151

> I believe this is where I'll be able to do some of the more Commodore 64-like peeking and poking directly at memory. I have a feeling there's a lot of exploring (and fun) to be done here. I need to read up more on this.

Try the "Beagle Bros Peeks and Pokes Supplement":

https://apple2online.com/web_documents/Beagle%20Bros%20Peeks...

There were collections of cheat sheets, you want the Peeks and Pokes one:

https://blog.codinghorror.com/i-heart-cheatsheets/

Also multiple delightful "catalogs" and tips books:

https://apple2online.com/web_documents/Beagle%20Bros%20Catal...

Unfortunately, I can never find the big compendium they produced, vaguely recalled as a brown legal sized paperback with their logo on the front and chock full of everything.

This is available and good tho:

Assembly Lines

"... designed for students of all ages: the nostalgic programmer enjoying the retro revolution, the newcomer interested in learning low-level assembly coding, or the embedded systems developer using the latest 65C02 chips...

https://smile.amazon.com/Assembly-Lines-Complete-Roger-Wagne...

- - -

EDIT: I FOUND THE BIG TIP BOOK!!!!

https://archive.org/details/Beagle_Bros-The_Big_Tip_Book_OCR...

It's 250 pages, and previously couldn't find it because Beagle Bros wasn't in the name. Brown w/ the logo tho, heh.

Beagle Bros was one of my favorite things when I was a teenager. I had the peeks and pokes poster (http://beagle.applearchives.com/the_posters/poster_2.html) among others up on my wall and used GPLE (an editor) which was really nice. What I alwayss liked was their "Style" (old barbershop) and jokes.

Now I have an Apple IIe right next to my work computer (Floppy Emu). I connected it to a linux terminal and was able to do text Google searches and the SERP still renders fine at 80x24.

GREAT find with that big tip book. Remembering that now.

Oh sweet nostalgia, just give me a little more of your time.

I once was walking in my neighborhood in Brooklyn when a couple doors down from my apartment I saw some beige boxes in the trash in front of a brownstone. Just laying there in the trash was a Macintosh SE, a Macintosh Plus, and a Macintosh (512k). No keyboards, but I still couldn't believe it. I totally forgot about what I was going to do and immediately grabbed them and brought them up to my apartment. They all booted fine. I ended up giving the Plus and SE away to friends, but I still have the 512k in my office and play around with it from time to time. What a great machine!

Some of the software for early Macs is astonishing by modern standards. Clarisworks is an office suite that provides a word processor, spreadsheet, database, paint, illustration, and program that should run on an 8 MHz 68000 based Macintosh Plus. A full installation was about 4 MB, but it could be trimmed down to 600 kB and retain its core functionality.

That office suite was based upon Appleworks for the Apple II. While the latter was much more limited (e.g. no graphics), it had to deal with much tighter constraints.

The accomplishments of those early programmers was astounding, particularly when you consider that many of those early programs had many of the features that we take for granted today. For example, both Appleworks and Clarisworks allowed you to share data between modules. I almost lust for the days when we could do so much with so little. Granted, that's not going to happen when a modern display requires pushing and storing three to four orders of magnitudes more bits to represent a square inch of graphics.

You mentioned that your "4" and "R" keys are missing. I have Apple IIe keycaps I don't need, so let me know and I can send them to you.

Amazing! Just followed you on Twitter, and I'll DM you there :) Thank you!

The Super Serial Card is a nice and you don't need any software to use it. Typing "PR#2" followed by "IN#2" (replace the "2" with the slot number the card is installed in) will give you access to a very simple serial communications terminal. Granted, it does take some configuration for both computers to understand each other.

You can also search for scans of books and magazines online. People have been working on preserving these materials since the mid-1990's, so there are many excellent resources.

IIE (//e)? Manuals are available on archive.org. you can browse with their page by page thing, but if you scroll down they're available a pdfs.

and the owners manual, very pracitcal nuts and bolts, but informative (150 pgs).

https://archive.org/details/apple-iie-owner-manual/mode/2up

The reference manual is low level but helps in understanding the machine.

https://archive.org/details/Apple_IIe_Reference_Manual_HiRes...

In 1983 I bought an Apple ][e with a monitor, dual floppy drives (but not the fancy duodisk verson), and an 80 column card. A friend and his father had bought several as a speculative investment, and when his parents left town he needed cash for a party. I took advantage of this situation and got a smoking deal.

A very short time later I bought a Hayes Smartmodem 1200 from someone wanting to avoid advertising in the local paper. Again, a smoking deal. At one point I dialed 60 BBSes a week.

A very short time later I bought a Z80 card so that I could also run CP/M.

It was glorious. I regret selling it.

I learned to type so that I could be more productive on that machine. That, and my handwriting was already atrocious. I programmed Apple Basic, Apple Pascal, 6502 assembly, and C on that machine. I used Apple Writer to transcribe and print a literary magazine for my school. I typeset calculus notes on the machine. I plotted star charts.

So much fun, and, yes, such a wonderfully expandable machine.

> 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.

Modern phone lines are usually VOIP somewhere, and if the codec sucks, it might not be good enough for a modem. OTOH, that's probably a pretty low bitrate modem, so it might work out ok.

If running your own VOIP gateway, g.711 codec is probably the most likely to work for running a modem, but I haven't tried it.

As well as the codec issue, the other problem is that the inconsistent timing of VoIP often upsets modems, especially at higher bitrates.

Pulse Vs tone?

Is that a thing or did my brain just make it up? :/

My experience is that exchanges will still accept pulse dialing, but it's a while since I've had a landline to check

Probably doesn't matter (although that is a genuine Hayes so it probably supports both) because a lot of those old modems were capable of "operator dial". AKA you dial the phone manually then you tell the modem to start negiotiation. AKA ATDT is a tone dial, while ATDP is a pulse dial, or just plain ATD to start negotiation.

Doubtful, some quick googling seems to indicate that the micromodem iie is a 300bps modem (vs the micromodem II, for which the manual pops up right away). Even if its 1200 or 2400bps, its still likely way to slow to be affected by the codec issues/etc that others have pointed out. You have to remember people are still running fax and home security systems with modems in 2020, so the vast majority of VOIP codecs handle that just fine.

About 10 years ago, I went on a modem kick and wrote a software modem, as well as setting one up at work on a real POTs line to dial in from my house using an old external 56k modem I had lying about. IIRC it linked up at 33.6 without a problem even with a VOIP box on my side (I did tweak the codec at one point, but the default with my provider was already reasonable for modems).

So, its true your not going to get "modern" (56k+) modem speeds on a lot of lines, but even when modems were popular not getting full speed was a continual problem due to line quality issues. So most modems would fall back until they got a reasonable lock. I'm not sure but in the early 2000's there was a state regulatory mandate that POTs lines needed to be capable of 19.2 (IIRC). It wouldn't surprise me if that still exists, even over digital lines to assure that said fax, home security, etc systems continue to work.

Anyway, the point being that at 300bps, your more likely to have problems with the endpoint refusing such a slow connection than having line quality issues.

I had to run my modem at 300bps on my Apple IIe because the built-in serial terminal was "too slow" (scrolling up one line took so long that the buffer would overflow and the beginning of each line would be missing). I ended up talking to the Proterm developer at AppleCon and he said he solved it by using buffers and interrupts, which I knew nothing about.

Would depend on the local loop as far as I know a traditional modem should work on POTS.

I have an Apple ][+ that stopped working a few years ago, and I don’t have the time to fix it up. I don’t want to throw it out, as it seems a piece of history (and it’s the computer I grew up using so there’s some nostalgia...). I have all the original manuals and some floppies with it. Anyone know of good places to find it a home? Any groups of vintage Apple users to post it to, or something like that?

Try your local university cs department. They'd love a piece of history like that. Mine has a few of those pieces in a display case for everyone to come and see.

I would gladly take it and make use of it with my son. I can pay you shipping and even an extra fee for the trouble. gushickens1234 at gmail dot com.

Don't throw it away. You'll regret it, trust me. Donate it to someone who'll love it, get it fixed, anything but throwing it away.

Regarding the games you can type out in BASIC, there's a book called "BASIC Computer Games" I got at the library once, and there's an online page that has a decent collection of them:

http://www.moorecad.com/classicbasic/index.html

They are in MS Basic, but it might be a fun exercise to try to port them.

I recently rescued a IBM PS/1 and a Macintosh Plus from my grandpa's basement, got a similar response from family/friends... "Well what do you DO with it?". I think my wife thought I was crazy when I was trying to explain how powerful and primal a BASIC prompt is.

EDIT: there's a link on the above link that has the original book contents: https://www.atariarchives.org/basicgames/

The applesoft basic manual is on archive.org

This one is a pretty good primer:

https://archive.org/details/ATouchOfApplesoftBASIC/mode/2up

there are others (archive.org is a good resource for these things.)

https://archive.org/details/applesoft-tutorial/page/n37/mode...

And for productivity, there's always AppleWorks[1]. Well, I suppose one doesn't get a 37-year old computer for productivity, but just in case...

[1] https://apple2history.org/history/ah19/

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 may have published books of various quality and you MIGHT be able to but a copy at your book store if you even knew to ask about it.

Or you might connect to knowledgeable people through a bbs or user group to learn some tricks. Magazines helped... a little.

But there simply was a dearth of information as compared to the resources of today.

I'm not sure dearth is the right word here. Sure the total volume of information was less, but the quality was massively higher. Sure, you might get incorrect information from BBS's or friends, but the manuals were detailed, technically accurate, and usually complete. AKA, you didn't get through reading one and go "but what about..." only to discover a dark hole. There was a bit of that, but usually 3rd parties stepped up and wrote books to fill in obvious gaps. The whole "Beneath Apple DOS/PRODOS" series is an example of that.

One only needs to spend about 10 mins on stack overflow to see that much of it is the blind leading the blind, where most of the answers are incomplete, biased, outdated, wrong, etc.

That was our point... manuals were better. Dearth is correct only if you compare those manuals to today’s resources... YouTube videos? Can you imagine Ben Eaters videos in 1983? We both would have killed for something like that!

Hmm, maybe. I find the technical depth lacking in those videos. Hooking something up, or writing a couple lines of basic/assembly isn't anything compared with the list of peek/poke/call addresses in the back of two or three books books from the 1980s. I have the original apple ][+ manual with the assembly listing for the ROMs. I will put that manual up against every youtube video I've seen for technical depth (it also has schematics).

It was a different place and time, for sure. Many of these products were made by random small companies around the US. They sold through other small computer shops.

I often envy my friends 10 years younger than me, but at the same time, I am glad I got to experience the small B&M computer shops. I even went to an oldschool computer show at the fairgrounds once... and got ripped off on a tape drive that didn't work with my 286 lol.

Also the joy of buying random obsolete junk at mac frugals/big lots/99 cent stores when they'd get surplus. I got quite a few games that way!

The closest equivalent I can think of is my Asus motherboard. It came in a fancy box with a lot of stickers, and most importantly, a big manual of all of its features. Sure it doesn't give me an in-depth diagram, but it's better than nothing.

I was most disappointed by my newest video card. It came with.. absolutely nothing. I think it may have come with a folded piece of paper about how to install it?! The damn thing cost $500! The cheaper MSI ones come with a friggin comic book with a cute dragon in it!

Edit: The MSI comic book: https://www.geeks3d.com/public/jegx/2018q4/msi/msi-graphics-...

Nice, the MSI instructions aren't even right if your assembling a PC that doesn't have a motherboard/existing graphics card. /sigh

Yah, I don't get it for many things. Windows, should come with a basic users manual on paper. It should include the global keyboard shortcuts in the back too, but it doesn't. I'm not sure anyone at MS could even write them all down at this point.

Besides that, what kills me are all the completely insane things like the xbox (which has a terrible UI) games that come on bluray, but then require internet access before you can start playing so that they can discover they need to download a 10G patch. Its like they said "hey we are going to release this game to retail channels, but we know it doesn't work so the first thing its going to do is call home to download itself" or something equally stupid.

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

Used to work at Logo Computer Systems in Montreal, Papert was chairman, he visited from MIT from time to time. Spent the first few years of my career remotely diagnosing problems with Logo on //e, PC, Atari, C64 (arggh), Japanese machines (MSX), and Mac (hardly any Mac copies were sold, but we tried), and even DEC pc (I don't think that they sold any copies of that one). The big hits were the //e, C64 and PC versions.

Also, there's a goofy clone called "Organ Trail"[1] on Steam which adds a zombie apocalypse theme to the original. The look and feel is quite similar.

[1]https://store.steampowered.com/app/233740/Organ_Trail_Direct...

Awesome find. I grew up on the Apple IIe at school. I'm trying to do something like the author's rediscovery with a cheaply-found "luggable" 386 over here: https://justinmiller.io/posts/2020/04/26/project-386-part-1/ So far, it's proving much more difficult.

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.

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.

I would recommend Lode Runner as well!

I had hundreds of (mostly pirated) games for my II and Lode Runner was my favorite. Also, Karateka, Pinball Construction Set, and Zaxxon. May as well add Choplifter, the original Ultima, Wizardry, and Castle Wolfenstein.

Hey this is a former coworker of yours from GU back in the day. Nice post! Hope you're doing well and congrats on the IIe. I grew up coding on one of these as well. :)

My first paid job was writing educational software for Apple II's. Those were pretty awesome machines for the time.

That was my exact kit growing up. My mom was a freelance translator for a time before working for data general, and she bought this for working. Like our school machines but more memory and less color..

When she wasn’t working my brothers and I could use it write papers / software and play games.

A joystick would be a helpful addition. Apple joysticks are really analog (basically two game paddles together) which make them interesting.

I still remember (I think) how to get the screen to cycle colors.

10 hgr

20 For I = 1 to 7

30 hcolor = i

40 hplot 0,0

50 call 62454

60 next I

The Apple II time warp podcasts is not often updated and kinda fun too

https://appletimewarp.libsyn.com/apple-time-warp-podcast-epi...

yes, this works. it fills in using the weird apple row addressing and everything.

If you've got time and want to save a little money, there are several guides on how to turn an esp32 or esp8266 (either < $10) into an rs232 to wifi bridge.

http://www.retroadventures.net/apple-iic-and-the-d-i-wimodem...

https://github.com/bozimmerman/Zimodem

Even simpler (though not necessarily a great interface, but it's sort of a Hayes AT command set) is the TCP232-T2, which can be had for about $10 off of eBay. I wrote up my experiences with it on my VIC-20[0]

[0] http://obsolete.site/?p=39

Amazingly, this is exactly how I acquired my SE/30, sitting on the side of the road in a pile of other junk. Had the keyboard and trapezoid mouse! I was still at university at the time and took great joy in writing an essay about wiretapping on it, then spending nearly a week trying to get the floppy drive working to get said essay off the machine...

So.. back in the day, I used to do random PEEKs, POKEs, and CALLs, and there was one particular call that I stumbled upon that could quickly render a disc unbootable. Two questions:

1. Can you give it a try? It's CALL -20480

2. Anyone know what in the hell that one actually does?

It takes about a millisecond to render the disc useless.

Without spending much time on it, you probably jumped to DOS's RWTS or similar and wrote a track out (or something similar). That appears to be 0xAFFF which doesn't ring any bells but is roughly where DOS might load depending on machine/etc.

Try https://github.com/iKarith/beneath-apple-dos/blob/master/ch0... for more info.

So -20480 works out to be 0xAFFF.

My trusty copy of "What's Where in the Apple", which includes a catalog of where everything is in memory, says that the routine to write the VTOC from its in-memory buffer to disk starts at $AFF8.

The VTOC is the volume table of contents (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AApple_DOS#Volume_Table_...), so calling into the middle of that presumably ends up overwriting the VTOC with junk, which would indeed make the disk useless.

Lovely. I love this kind of computer archeology posts.

I'm still sad my dad sold my C64, back in the day, in order to buy me a PC XT clone. I want to travel back in time and tell my dad to keep the C64, that future me would love it. Emulators just aren't the same :/

I still dabble with electronics, read paper books, drive a car (even have flown small airplanes) etc., but after having spent countless hours playing first-person computer games, using simulators, and reading text on the computer screen my perspective has gradually shifted and I now can't help seeing many artifacts (and not only) as poor incarnation of their ideal selves that live in a virtual world.

It's crazy the value of vintage computers. My dad gave me an IBM XT 286 he got for nothing in the late 90's. It was for me to take apart and destroy so I could learn a bit about computers, which I did.

Now just the keyboard is worth hundreds of dollars. I was frustrated to see LGR do a repair video of the exact model I had, and the same model can go for thousands of dollars.

You might want to check this out - https://www.kansasfest.org/

Thanks for the writeup. This is a great trip down memory lane for me. The very first computer I put my paws on was one of these in kindergarten and ended up learning BASIC on it through 10th grade. I loved these machines so much and they hold a dear spot in my heart--it's what got me into the career I'm in today.

Ha ha that SIN function on the screen reminded me of how slow operations like SIN and COS were on the old BBC Computers. You had to think before you did stuff like that. I remember figuring out that using pythag x^2+y^2 =1 therefore y=sqrt(1-x^2) was a much faster way to draw a circle than SIN/COS.

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.

>Odyssey (text based adventure game)

Wow that was awesome

Archon was fun. Also recommend Elite (and google the history- it was quite a programming feat at the time).

Elite was impressive. The whole "universe as a random seed number" thing. Some years later I was impressed by Frontier, the sequel, where you had seamless takeoff from planets into space, no transitions or loading screens... this was very impressive back then, in a way gamers today possibly cannot understand.

Wizardry and Bard's Tale.

I spent a few thousand hours on each.

I’d strongly advise against retrobrighting. It usually vastly speeds up the deterioration of the plastic such that it could start turning to powder in just a few months, from my understanding.

And the keyboard works! My MB Pro's keyboard? Not so much.

Those Alps switches were great.

Send it in. The butterfly ones can be fixed under warranty. It's not going to be perfect but will solve the sticking key issue. I just use a Magic keyboard with an external screen 90% of the time though.

So cool and very well written! Makes me want to buy a vintage computer and try it out. Maybe I'll try to get the BBC micro :O

To me, the most surprising thing about this story is that Steve Jobs allowed a device to be made with lots of expansion slots!

$95 for a new power supply?

Should have shelled out for a soldering iron or station, pliers, new caps, which might have ended up cheaper in the long run (or not)

Yeah, I acknowledged my shame with this decision in the post. I did buy this $15 radio kit to "practice" soldering: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004YHZE0G, but I've already somehow oxidized my solder iron's tip to the point that it won't heat the solder anymore. I would love a dummy's guide to soldering (YouTube or books) recommendation if you have one! (Although, I'm sure practice, practice, practice is going to be the top suggestion).

Besides the soldering iron, what you'll want is those desoldering tools (just an example, but yes, both of them): https://www.amazon.com/Desoldering-Solder-Sucker-Length-Remo...

(Also a cleaning sponge, and new solder but the above is very helpful for a good maintenance experience)

I recommend getting a brass wool tip cleaner and using it often while soldering. Also some good quality flux will really help. I recommend Amtech for the flux, and the tip cleaner I use is Hakko branded. You can find both on Amazon and elsewhere.

https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-guide-excellent-solderin...

The video is good basic intro, though it has a slightly strange vibe.

> (Although, I'm sure practice, practice, practice is going to be the top suggestion)

Start with traditional 60/40 tin/lead flux-core solder because it's much easier to work with. Once you have a feel for how soldering is supposed to work, you can then start experimenting with the often finicky and hard-to-use lead-free solders and fluxes.

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