Got myself an Apple IIe (Enhanced) today!

[Nathan]

Yay, finally bought one off ebay after weeks and weeks of watching for something inexpensive and complete which never materialized. Payed a small fortune (~ USD $200), or will pay one in the very near future. Parents are very handy when you haven't got much (or any) money to spare because of one's bad spending habits with anything computer related. In either case I now have 4-9 days to wait for it to arrive. For that scandalous amount of money I will be getting an Enhanced Apple IIe (64k/80 col card, Super Serial Card, Floppy Controller), 5.25" floppy drive, and an apple color monitor. :approve: Hopefully the seller will be sending some games on actual disks as offered and requested. All in all, 53lbs apparently (awfully heavy). Still, I am pleased, in a crazy way . Looking forward to playing with it. I looked at the ADTPro website and am very happy that it doesn't require a pre-existing OS. Anyone want to recommend freely available games and software worth checking out when it gets here?

P.S.

This was the ebay item: http://cgi.ebay.com/Retro-Apple-IIe-Enhanced-Color-Monitor-and-Drive-/220589811131?cmd=ViewItem&pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item335c2d65bb

 

[Osgeld]

first time I used adt pro, I had it sitting in a folder on my desktop (windows) it would bootstrap, it would receive files from the apple //, but it would not send them to the apple //

once I moved the folder from the desktop to c:\ it worked fine

just in case you run into that |)

google macguivault, there is a ton of software on there including apple //

ps: that is a fine looking machine

 

[Paralel]

Man, I wish I'd kept that mint Apple IIe I chucked in the trash 10 years ago...

 

[Nathan]

google macguivault, there is a ton of software on there including apple //
ps: that is a fine looking machine

Indeed it looks quite nice, I'm thankful that it has a super serial card as loading stuff with ADTPro over the cassette interface at 108bps sounds painfully slow. Thanks for the heads up on macguivault, didn't know they had much software on there.

Man, I wish I'd kept that mint Apple IIe I chucked in the trash 10 years ago...

Yes you should have! It would be cool to play games over the internet, pity dial-up is a thing of the past as I have a Practical Peripherals MC144MT / MC144MTII I think. It's a serial modem and might work. Thankfully I've had DSL or better as long as I can remember (modern internet would be unbearable without it), but it would be cool to be able to connect the Apple IIe to the internet.

Can't wait til I get the Apple. Anyone know where to get slot edge prototype boards for less than ~$15; There's a simple 7-chip IDE card someone made online. http://s.guillard.free.fr/Apple2IDE/Apple2IDE.htm It'd be interesting to find out if it works with anything newer than their tiny 170MB drive. Also thinking I might be able to give it limited Ethernet access using my Arduino and it's Ethernet Shield.

 

[Nathan]

Received it today via Fedex. Unfortunately I have a parallel straight through cable and a parallel to serial adapter, but not a gender changer. The adapter has a male DB-9 not a female, so I'll need to get an adapter. Because of that I had to try out ADTPro's bootstrapping via cassette port, a slow but not terribly traumatizing scene. Only the thing is I did that even though, the fact had slipped by me, the seller I purchased it from had included a bootable disk with ADTPro on it. :I How dumb is that... In either case, I have it now. Just need to figure out how to play the games I was sent (Bard's Tale and Prince of Persia), as I don't have a reference for the commands...

 

[luddite]

Because of that I had to try out ADTPro's bootstrapping via cassette port, a slow but not terribly traumatizing scene. Only the thing is I did that even though, the fact had slipped by me, the seller I purchased it from had included a bootable disk with ADTPro on it. :I How dumb is that...

It's okay... that's the Apple II equivalent of killing a bear with a jack-knife – you'll be able to impress the heck out of people with that story for years to come ;-)

 

[Dog Cow]

Make sure that you get a lot of use out of the IIe. $200 is an outrageous price for one.

 

[Osgeld]

all depends, its a nice machine with monitor, a good chunk of that money is shipping, and how much you want it

 

[Scott Baret]

A lot of us put less value on IIes today because of how cheap they were not too long ago. I got three of them for nothing from a schoolteacher nine years back (who had wanted to give me a dozen but I didn't have the room for them). These IIes came with monitors, floppy drives, mice, serial cards, the works. They were enhanced but there was a platinum in there too. I kept one of the enhanced machines and got rid of the others. Around the same time, IIes went for a buck or two on eBay and often went in bulk lots for very little. Shipping was high, of course, but the low cost kept complete systems at $50 or less, usually more like $35 unless there was a printer included.

Once school surplus had been depleted, IIes stopped showing up on eBay all the time. Because of the scarcity, sellers starting raising prices. This is especially true for those selling former home machines, which tend to be valued higher both by collectors looking for examples in nice shape and also by the folks selling them. (Of course, if the machine is from your alma mater, you may value it more, as I do with my Mac Classic). School surplus started dwindling away to nothing about three years ago once all the IIes from schools had been retired (many chugged on well into the 2000s in classrooms, especially in areas such as math support where the large software library worked to the advantage of the teachers--they could find a program that would focus on a particular skill a student was struggling with or wanted extra practice in). There are still a few II series machines in schools today--I saw a IIGS in use in a learning support room last year--but given the small number of these computers you'll never find them in the same number or at the same price level as you did in the early 2000s.

 

[Gorgonops]

A lot of us put less value on IIes today because of how cheap they were not too long ago....

+1 on that, as it applies to just about any "retrocomputer". Up to about a decade ago it seemed like you could get up any Saturday morning and randomly drive around the neighborhood for less than an hour and find a garage sale featuring some interesting piece of 8-bit technology that had been hiding in a closet for a few years. The pickings are much slimmer now. It seems like that they've "all" ended up either in the garbage or in the hands of people who actually think they're worth something. Perhaps estate sales are the way to go now. :^b

As to surplus, back in the early 1990's I used to regularly pick up government surplus IBM PCs and XTs for between $5-$20 a head, depending on what they came with, and set them up for low-income people to use for basic tasks. (An XT with an indestructible surplus Epson printer was a fine-and-dandy word processor and small-business accounting system... at least compared to the alternative, which was "nothing".) Memories of just how cheap and how common they were makes it seems completely crazy to me that people have the gall to ask well into the hundreds of dollars for a "collectors item" example now. But... apparently someone buys them at that price. (Although, come on, you'd have to be certifiable to pay this for one. Sheesh.)

Be thankful that Apple II's are still as affordable as they are, I guess. :^b

 

[Osgeld]

wow 900 bucks for an xt 8-o

 

[Nathan]

Make sure that you get a lot of use out of the IIe. $200 is an outrageous price for one.

I wouldn't say that myself. Although I'll admit it was a little on the pricy side. It was a buy it now though which usually commands a higher price.

That price included $67 in shipping, so it was more like $125 for the computer and accessories. Considering that it included the monitor (apple composite monitor -- color) and a disk drive (with interface card in the computer) as well as 5 or so disks and has the super serial card as well as the 80 column card, then I would say that compared to everything else available it was a decent deal. Especially since I might otherwise have payed ~$50-60 (shipping not included) or $80ish (shipping included for just the computer without the cards, disk drive(s), and monitor, then another $65/$125 before shipping for the monitor and drive really isn't bad.

I could have gotten a monochrome monitor (rather than color) for $35 + $20 shipping ($55 all told) and a drive for $40 including shipping. So add that additional $95 to the $60 for the lone computer itself and having to wait for all to arrive and it would cost ~$160 + the cost of my time and impatience. Also consider that the $67 shipping cost was for UPS Ground from California to New York (basically transcontinental). That and it only took 5 days (4-9 day estimated time). So it was a difference of $40 to keep my sanity (and have less anxiety over possible shipping woes) and get it all here at once, I think that's a fair trade-off.

 

[Paralel]

I can understand that. When I have to source parts from multiple vendors I always get shipping anxiety as well. One item I needed recently for a complex job requiring parts from about 12 different vendors suffered a shipping "exception" (isn't that a nice euphemism for "Oh shit, sorry, we ran over your fucking package!") while in transit with FedEx.

 

[Osgeld]

heh, at my last job we had a very expensive speaker come in in a odd box with fedex repack labels all over it, when opened the normally 10 inch tall speaker was totally flattened and missing its magnet