Does anyone collect vintage Apple computers?

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The fastest Apple II computer ever produced was the Apple IIc+. It had a 4mhz processor and a built in 3.5" 800k floppy. It was also marketed as a ProDOS machine and came with MenuWorks if I remember. Also the PSU was integrated, and it used the smaller DIN8 Mac style serial ports instead of the standard IIc's 5-pin and also supported the newer 800k "dumb" drives as opposed to the UniDrive system that the previous model relied on. 4mhz is crazy fast on an A2, luckily it has a "turbo" switch that throttled it back down to 1mhz. A good compact and versatile system for the Apple II lover, very portable and fast. The RAM as I recall was upgradable in this machine as well, although I never tried to open mine up.

I also REALLY like the keyboard on these and the later Apple IIc's, they have a nice solid travel and firm stop. The original 84 edition IIc had this strange keyboard on it with metal retainers that caused the key to click. Apple had introduced the Dvorak keyboartd layout on the original IIc, which one could select with a button near the reset button. The thought was the click-clips and Dvorak would promote touch-typing skills by only requiring a certain amount of force to actuate a key. Problem is the clips would get old and some buttons would get harder than others to press. Apple fixed this in the 85 versions and the keyboard no longer had the IBM-esque click that caused so many issues. This revised keyboard would be what Apple based all of their future A2 and Mac keyboards on until the end of the ADB run in 99 or so.

What have you started? I've been getting my old computers out and looking at my old books and manuals. :) I love old Apple stuff, it was built very well and at the time, very innovative yet simple. The are diehards on both sides, but to me these old things have so much more soul than a Compaq from the same era. A friend of mine that I learned a lot of Apple stuff from once said "An Apple is not assembled, it's engineered", I have been inclined to believe this over the years. To me, they are the Maytags of computers.

-Tim
 
Tim--I long ago suspected your screen name was inspired by the IIsi. I also have an old IIsi lying around--I bought it around 2000. It was fun buying a $3,500+ computer for only $15. I used it heavily for word processing for at least 2 years. (Even now, I do a lot of writing using an old Mac. They seem to do a better job of staying out of my way when I work than modern systems. If nothing else, there is no Internet distraction!) My only complaint with the IIsi was the amount of noise the cooling fan made--which may have been a factor of age and wear.
 
Good eye, Dave, on the foreign market IIgs keyboard. My current Extended II has been through the dishwasher several times now, once it gets flakey.

Tim- did you know the IIc+ had been engineered to have special circutry to support timing on the 800k drives, and i believe at some point they abandoned it in place when they decided to go with a 4mhz CPU.

My IIgs is a ROM 03, with a Applied Engineering TransWarp GS card taking it to 8mhz, crazy fast when you consider it was supposed to run at 2.8. I snagged a NOS 1.44mb SuperDrive and controller a while back, and an Apple High Speed SCSI Rev C card. I have a RAMFast SCSI card that was too fussy to use. Also had an Apple HDSC20 case with a 230mb hard disk, and a matching Apple CDROM drive, the one with the caddy. My main issue now is that the display has died, and I have nothing to hook it up to. Its been ages since I had it out of storage.

Jax- the G4 you are using may be 7 or more years old now - absolutely vintage in the computer world. I have lots of G4 iron still in production here at work. Good stuff.
 
Apple IIc+ Disk Controller

Yes it was called the MIG or something similar. I USED to have a bunch of old Apple II mags on disk and this was one of the things they talked about was the disk controller for the IIc+. It makes me think that the 4mhz was much an afterthought.

My main Apple II is the one my late grandfather gave me shortly after I got into computers. It's to the gills for an old IIe. It was a rev A but I swapped a newer Rev B board in it with the 65C02 and MouseText ROMS in it. The unit started it's life out as a 1st gen Apple IIe, 82 model. It has the old resin case that the ][ and ][+ had, within months Apple has switched to a molded plastic for the IIe, which discolor badly in heat. It also has the rare white lettered keys and lighter tan buttons that were only around for the 1st 6 months of production. On the inside i've got: 1MB Meg80Z/80 Col. card, Apple Mouse // adapter, Disk ][ interface w/2 original Shutgart style drives, Apple Parallel Card, Apple Super Serial card, Echo+ Soundcard, and an old FCP Sider 10mb hard drive and controller (s7). That thing is akward in slot 7, but in boot order starts at 7 and goes down, so if you want to bot from the HD you put it in 7. It is a DOS 3.3 based disk with ProDOS partition support and I love it. I run AppleWorks and neat little desktop published called PublishIt! 4. It's slow, but it can actually turn out color newsletters with an ImageWriter II. The HD and RAM make this possible. The IIc+ can burn it up though, I still love the old dinosaur A2e though. I also have a serial connection setup to it with an old Toshiba laptop with ADT for disk images, I have the entire Asimov archive on the hard drive of the laptop. I need a new enclosure for the HD. The disk drive is fine, but the PSU in the housing is dead. I need to find an old SCSI 5.25" housing and modify it. I will get some pics of the Apple IIe for you, it sounds like you may enjoy it :)

Most of my stuff was forced into storage unfortunately except for the Apple IIe, and heat had turned everything yellow, which is a horrible shame because many things were near mint when they went in there. It all still works though.

-Tim
 
Whirlcool--USB Apple keyboards should work with XP. The one word of warning is that if you like Apple keyboards because of the way they were like in the 80s, you may be disappointed now. I think the 80s ADB keyboards were much better for typing than anything I've seen from Apple in recent years.
 
Last call for Apple stuff!!! Due to the shipping disaster involving some of the laptops, you must come in person to collect these machines/parts. By next Wednesday this stuff will be gone!!!
 
Tim:
Thanks for getting those computers. It's good you are able to keep them alive. Thanks for the info on the continuation of the Pentium III, did not know that. Now only if I can talk you into getting a vintage Milnor...
 

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