What are your Apple II plans for 2023?

[ColecoGamer]

I plan on upsizing to an Apple IIGS since the market prices seem fair.

 

As for my Apple IIc - Gaming! I’m currently collecting all of Sierra’s releases for the Apple II. I just recently won King’s Quest II and King’s Quest III on eBay.

 

I already have an SD card solution for the IIc, but I’d like to have a physical collection of games too.

Edited February 4, 2023 by ColecoGamer

[magnusfalkirk]

I can understand that. I recently bought the Hesware version of Project: Space Station. That was the version I had back int the day and I liked the documentation that came with it better than the Avantage docs I bought off a eBay a year or two back. Plus the Hesware version has the Challenger and Atlantis Shuttles, while Avantage has Discovery and Atlantis.

[is2scooby]

I am going to play through Nox Archaist and then Wizardry on my //e. Mess with GSOS on my ROM03 GS with Apple Squeezer and do my best to track down an elusive VidHD card somehow. 

[potatohead]

I got a VidHD a few months ago.  Sent an email to the address on Call APPLE.  Paid via PayPal and one showed up some time later.

 

I really like the card.  It's full feature set is not available when using a FastChip on a //e  Basically, that meant not getting spiffy cover art in Total Replay.  No big.

 

I had forgotten that card works with a GS.  Might have to drop it in mine for a while.

 

I also do not always use the FastChip.  Most games and other programming related things I do are fine at 1Mhz.  

 

Nox Archaist is fun.  I need to finish it.   I really love that game.  

[is2scooby]

55 minutes ago, potatohead said:

I got a VidHD a few months ago.  Sent an email to the address on Call APPLE.  Paid via PayPal and one showed up some time later.

 

I really like the card.  It's full feature set is not available when using a FastChip on a //e  Basically, that meant not getting spiffy cover art in Total Replay.  No big.

 

I had forgotten that card works with a GS.  Might have to drop it in mine for a while.

 

I also do not always use the FastChip.  Most games and other programming related things I do are fine at 1Mhz.  

 

Nox Archaist is fun.  I need to finish it.   I really love that game.  

No kidding? Cool! I tried last year and didn’t get a positive response. I’ve just tried again. Thanks!

[potatohead]

Yeah, let's hope you get a reply.  It is worth the money in my view.

[DeathAdderSF]

On 2/3/2023 at 4:11 PM, ColecoGamer said:

I plan on upsizing to an Apple IIGS

 

Not a bad idea. In addition to getting expansion slots, you'll get the option to -- if you so desire -- use a USB keyboard and mouse, via the nifty "Wombat" device. I use it and it's great.

 

The IIc will always be my favorite Apple II, but slots really are a must if you want to dive in to the full experience.

Edited February 11, 2023 by DeathAdderSF

[nick3092]

Everyone seems to pan the IIc for lack of slots. But what part of the experience are you really missing? Growing up with a IIc, mockingboard was the only thing I recall missing. And even that was a stretch considering it was only a very small number of games (compared to the full library of games) that supported it.

Edited February 11, 2023 by nick3092

[DeathAdderSF]

1 hour ago, nick3092 said:

Everyone seems to pan the IIc for lack of slots.

 

Probably because it's the only thing you can pan the IIc for! It's an awesome machine, no question, and built to last.

 

But that being said, even I, as an inveterate IIc lover, prefer the freedom of expandability that slots offer. I mean aside from the Mockingboard and its cohorts, there're neat modern-day conveniences like the Booti card, Yellowstone disk controller, and blah blah et Cetera. And those are just the cards that *I* enjoy. The real big time Apple II maniacs could surely list a dozen more.

 

However to put it in basic terms, what are you *really* missing by only having a slotless machine? Nothing that'll keep you from having a super-de-duper-fun time. I grew up with the IIc, and in all my years of enjoyment with it, I never longed for any hardware add-ons: in spite of being aware of plenty! (Though, a second floppy drive would have been fantastic.)

Edited February 11, 2023 by DeathAdderSF

[Keatah]

I first had a II/II+ with slots, the a //e with slots. By the time the //c was out I was fully vested in a pile of expansion cards. So no need for a //c. And I wasn't interested in consolidating stuff yet.

 

I'm not regretful of having gotten in on the ground floor - the days of when the Apple II was in the same class as single board hobbyist computers. Far from it. It was fun to grow with the system and add new capabilities such as a parallel card, extra memory, clock, music synthesizer. 300 baud modem. 1200 baud 202/212 modem. Serial port and drive controllers. Z80 and CP/M. And more.

 

As far as the early micros go, the A2 was among the simplest out of the box.

 

 

[Keatah]

5 hours ago, DeathAdderSF said:

However to put it in basic terms, what are you *really* missing by only having a slotless machine? Nothing that'll keep you from having a super-de-duper-fun time.

The A2 software library remained remarkably compatible throughout the years as the hardware was incrementally upgraded. A state of affairs rivaled only by the PC.

[nick3092]

12 hours ago, DeathAdderSF said:

I mean aside from the Mockingboard and its cohorts, there're neat modern-day conveniences like the Booti card, Yellowstone disk controller, and blah blah et Cetera. And those are just the cards that *I* enjoy. The real big time Apple II maniacs could surely list a dozen more.

I seem to be in the minority as I've never understood the booti craze. It can only handle ProDOS. So you have to use something like Total Replay or one of Peter Ferrie's ProDOS conversions (which ultimately wind up in TR anyway).  The //c has smartport already (255 rom being the exception, but that's easily fixed), so if you have a floppy emu or wDrive, it basically makes cards like booti or Yellowstone unnecessary. Compared to a //c, the only advantage a Yellowstone brings is you can use the slightly faster and generally easier to find 3.5 drive instead of the 3.5 Unidisk. But given that A2 (non IIgs) software was predominantly published on 5.25, it's more of a novelty to use a 3.5 with non gs systems. 

 

While I own several apples (including IIe and IIgs), I use my //c with my floppy emu the most. Which is another reason I prefer the FE over a card based solution like booti or ccfa - I can easily move it around to whichever apple I'm using at the time. The //c is compact and offers virtually everything you need in a single package. Which is nice because I don't have space to really have more than one Apple setup and functioning at a time. 

[magnusfalkirk]

I have an FE that I was using with my //c+, but at the moment is being put inside an old Disk ][ case by the guy from 8BitHeaven. In the mean time I have a FujiApple plugged into it. When I get the FE back I'll prboably just hook that up to my ROM 03 GS. I also have a ROM 01 GS that has a CFFA3k installed in it and an enhanced IIe that has a Dan ][ card in it.

[DeathAdderSF]

The FloppyEmu is def triff. I use it with my Trackstar Plus to convert DSK images over to the device's proprietary APP format. It's a huuuuuge time saver. And, hooked up to "Noisy Disk," it lets me know when each conversion is finished, so I don't have to sit and watch the screen!

[ColecoGamer]

I loved my IIe for its expansion capabilities. Its a beast of a computer that also consumes a lot of real estate on a desk.
 

When I finally bought my IIc, I fell in love with it because of its compactness. I can place it almost anywhere in my gameroom because of its size. Right now, I exclusively use the IIc for gaming. I recommend the computer to anyone who might want a compact Apple II computer to game on.

 

Again, I love the expandability of the IIe; its a great computer.

[Keatah]

7 hours ago, ColecoGamer said:

I loved my IIe for its expansion capabilities. Its a beast of a computer that also consumes a lot of real estate on a desk.

Now add in a printer, monitor, 2 disk drives, a Sider HDD, Graphics Tablet, Mountain Computer Expansion Chassis. And Joystick+Paddles for good measure and you're BIGGER than that infamous TI-99/4A --- S*P*R*A*W*L --- !!

 

I often consider (rightly or wrongly) the II & II+ as pre-consumer hobbyist products. Albeit highly polished and complete ones. The II was offered as a kit where you had solder in a hundred sockets for a hundred chips.

 

The II was special to me simply because it was the first real micro I got almost all by my kid-self and I was just learning about the magic of the Integrated Circuit. These little black parts with "stuff" inside them. No greater mystery existed at that time.

 

7 hours ago, ColecoGamer said:

When I finally bought my IIc, I fell in love with it because of its compactness. I can place it almost anywhere in my gameroom because of its size. Right now, I exclusively use the IIc for gaming. I recommend the computer to anyone who might want a compact Apple II computer to game on.

Yes. Also, add-ons that made the II &  II+ useful were thankfully built-in to the //e & //c. Lowercase, more versatile keyboard, 80-Columns, 64K/128K, some firmware changes, and double-hires graphics. Apple got it right, again, with the //e & //c. Though I always felt they were slightly underpowered for DHGR.

 

When I upgraded from the II+ to the //e I was not disappointed in any way. The //c was not my style of computer. But I have nothing against it whatsoever. I have 2 of them now. I demanded having slots so I could still use my MicroModem II (old timers here know I'm obsessed with it to the point of irrationality that even I can't explain) among other things. And I also had to have the ability to pop the top from time to time to peek inside and see how it all worked. Imagining all the electron flowing this way and that way - not unlike a futuristic Robert Abel & Associates video spot. Or maybe TRON-like.

 

7 hours ago, ColecoGamer said:

Again, I love the expandability of the IIe; its a great computer.

The //e was just as inspiring as my II/II+ were. For a while I found a renewed interest in BBSes because of the easily accessible extra ASCII characters. And of course there was the bigger memory capacity and the 65C02's extra instructions. Beauty part was I could segue right into it and not give up my existing software I laboriously collected over the prior years. So huge huge benefit there! Same with most of the then-expensive hardware cards I had.

 

[Geister]

If the deal doesn't fall through, I'm going to be getting an Apple II with 2 drives in exchange for an Atari 800XL and 2 1050's.  Since I have a lot of software and joysticks I threw in a Pole Position cart and a replica Atari joystick to sweeten the deal.  I won't be getting any software or manuals with the unit but I'm hoping there are sources or that the fujiNET can help with creating DOS diskettes, etc.

 

I know nothing about the Apple II series as I grew up on Atari computers.  But I've always wanted an Apple IIGS and this is as close as I've found so far.  I hope I can find a compatible monitor.

[Keatah]

Far be it for me to rag on the A2 series. But the A2 has always been a rather plain computer with very simplistic hardware. Very much like the single-board "microprocessor trainers" of the time. AIM-65, KIM-1, that sort of thing. The Atari computers are so much more rich and complex internally.

 

But A2 has a voluminous software library with a ton of practical-use software. It's also a high quality machine (similar to Atari 400/800) that's easy to work on if needed.

 

Internet Archive and FTP Asimov have tens of thousands of disk images and original manual scans. So no lack of support there. There's BMOW's flashdrive floppy emulator. AppleWin emulator, Copy II+, ADTpro, Ciderpress. All tools worthy and useful.

 

Since I don't have fujiNET I can't comment on it.

[DeathAdderSF]

On 2/21/2023 at 11:32 AM, Keatah said:

Far be it for me to rag on the A2 series. But the A2 has always been a rather plain computer with very simplistic hardware.

 

That's not so much ragging, it's telling the truth. When I was a kid, I wanted for nothing. All the Apple II software I had was great, and I loved trying any new programs.

 

It wasn't until I got older and had experienced several other computers of the same era, that I began to wish the Apple II series had better hardware, particularly in the audio department. Conversions of late '80s arcade games, for example, were often quite disappointing.

 

But as long as you stay with some of the core classics from the earlier days, when programmers really put their passion into what the Apple II offered instead of trying to make it something that it very clearly wasn't, there's still heaps of fun to be had.

[potatohead]

On 2/17/2023 at 1:51 AM, Keatah said:

Though I always felt they were slightly underpowered for DHGR.

The //c+ is solid for DHGR.  4Mhz is more than enough to deliver a great experience.  Wish I had one because it is compact.

 

I have to agree for the other machines, including a stock GS.  1 mhz is just not quite enough.  A FastChip or other acceleration device works just fine to solve that problem on older machines.

 

 

[potatohead]

On 2/12/2023 at 10:25 AM, magnusfalkirk said:

In the mean time I have a FujiApple plugged into it

I have been using a FujiNet with my 800XL and the thing is awesome!  Been watching the Apple efforts with Interest.

 

What "FujiApple" did you get and how is it working out for you?

 

[magnusfalkirk]

21 hours ago, potatohead said:

I have been using a FujiNet with my 800XL and the thing is awesome!  Been watching the Apple efforts with Interest.

 

What "FujiApple" did you get and how is it working out for you?

 

I got the one that Materies was selling. After hooking it up to the //c+ it's been fine, though I think I need to get a signal booster for my internet. The FujiApple sees it but won't connect.

[cbmeeks]

I plan is to actually use them more.  I have many Apple II's of different models and yet they don't see the light of day as often as they should.

 

I plan on doing some programming for them as well.

[cbmeeks]

On 2/10/2023 at 10:56 PM, nick3092 said:

Everyone seems to pan the IIc for lack of slots. But what part of the experience are you really missing? Growing up with a IIc, mockingboard was the only thing I recall missing. And even that was a stretch considering it was only a very small number of games (compared to the full library of games) that supported it.

My IIc has an internal Mockingboard. 

 

 

[DeathAdderSF]

Found a scrap of time to get my PC Transporter set up with a 32 MB hard drive partition, but have to come back to it later to FDISK and FORMAT it, and install good ol' MS-DOS. Then my IIgs can be a PC... too!

 

Actually just getting a display out of this gizmo was a trial in itself. The RGB -> VGA adaptor I'm using doesn't support the Transporter's PC video feed, so the ColorSwitch device was out of the question. So instead, I had to have a custom CGA cable built, which I hafta feed through the CGA2RGBv2 device. Whew! So, a ridiculous solution, but it works quite well.