What is the best Apple II to buy?

[Cory5412]

Well I see a lot more macs out there, so the Apple IIGS may be a better investment.

The only "investment" in this hobby is upgrading a machine you like to a state where you'll like it better or it will meet your needs better.

About the CRT: using an LCD with the IIgs would be painful. Possible, but painful, if you plan on doing any GS/OS. You pretty much have to have the RGB CRT.

From a technical standpoint, the Mac II is a way better computer. The Mac LC is a better computer. Even a plus is faster, and stalls a heck of a lot less than a IIgs, even one with an accelerator in it.

For the OP and others + general repetition of my same thoughts:

A IIgs is an older system that's particularly weird even in its original context and compared to a Mac, requires more background knowledge and more infrastructure on your end. The only reason I was able to get mine going was because I went to a conference with a bunch of people who brought all of their Apple II gear along.

It's not a bad computer, but it's not one I recommend without qualifications to somebody, on a Mac site, who generally shows signs of having relatively little background knowledge about Macs from the '90s, let alone Macs from the '80s or Apple IIs.

If you're into Macs, that's great, I would be careful if you also want to get into Apple IIgs.

In general, the ways to get a good IIgs or IIe with upgrades are to be lucky, or to set aside a few hundred dollars. Even though I got my machine for free, I've got a bit of money into it, buying the RAM card (for 5M total) and the IDE card + CF adapter + CF card. I think all that in total was around $100, not counting the few thousand I spent taking a week off work and going to KansasFest, which was also the most practical way to get it running.

Also remember that while an Apple IIgs running GS/OS may "feel" like a Mac -- it's still gonna be slower, even with a good transwarp.

Honestly, I don't recommend it unless you have a very specific itch to scratch with that one machine, you have a lot of available money, you can make it to KansasFest, you get extremely lucky finding one on the local CraigsList, or you have some other kind of local resource to help setting one up.

And, to really be useful for much more than (slow) HyperCard or a (slow, incompatible) text editor, you will want upgrades. GS/OS barely boots on its own, with drivers, in the RAM on a ROM03.

As Gorgonops says, compared to basically any of Apple's own monitors for 68k Macs, the IIgs is a painful mess. The weird graphics mode just looks bad, especially if you have any of Apple's Trinitron displays, at 640x480 or higher. Although Mac OS feels more spacious on, say, the LC-matching 512x384 color display as well.

GS/OS has a few neat applications, but unless you're in it for Tass Times in Tone Town, there's probably not a whole lot that makes a IIgs a must-have, unless you're in it to catch 'em all. 

To add to the point about the FloppyEmu: I considered it before I got the IDE card I have in mine, but without a driver, that device will slow things down even more. The IDE card itself sped up massively when I installed the driver, so I dont' really know the impact FloppyEmu has on the system's performance.

That said, you may end up spending $100 or so regardless of what storage solution you end up with.

A few of the IIgses I saw at kansasfest were being used as more convenient 8-bit Apple IIs that already had a lot of upgrades installed, just as has been mentioned. For that you can throw a IIgs in your airline carry-on and when you get to Kfest, buy a small television from Walmart and use the first ADB keyboard you happen to find on the give-away pile, without needing to go to an emulator, which some people do.

Perhaps this is because IIgses are easier to find than IIcs.

 

[Gorgonops]

The only "investment" in this hobby is upgrading a machine you like to a state where you'll like it better or it will meet your needs better.

 I suppose there are multiple meanings to the word "investment", but, yes, it's probably worth underlining that the sad fact is that most of this stuff doesn't even remotely count as a "financial investment". To some degree you still see the trailing edge of the "L@@K! ST0V3 J0B3s!" mania in terms of eBay prices for Apple hardware, but outside of some legitimately rare items almost nothing in the antique computer collecting field costs even remotely close to what it cost new, and for most of it I suspect the rate of inflation is going to be tied to the attrition rate more than anything else for a *long* time. Most of the griping you hear about the cost of this stuff going up comes from people that are grumpy because what they used to get for free *as it was being thrown away* now actually has a price attached to it at all.

In other words, unless you're looking at sinking a quarter million bucks into an Apple I buy what you want, not an "investment".

About the CRT: using an LCD with the IIgs would be painful. Possible, but painful, if you plan on doing any GS/OS. You pretty much have to have the RGB CRT.

 To note on this, I have one of those arcade scaler boards to use with my gs with a VGA-interface LCD and I can testify that the GS desktop it totally looks like @$$. Games and other things look reasonably fine but without perfect dot registration the desktop looks terrible. (It's basically a coin flip as to whether it looks worse than the Composite output which also looks terrible on a color monitor/TV.) It's possible I suppose if you had a high-end LCD monitor that could take its RGB output directly it might do a better job than the external scaler... maybe. But only maybe. It's also possible they make scalers better than the one I'm using, it's one of those ones that goes for about $40 straight from China.

Anyway, I suppose the point actually is that to use the IIgs' native graphics modes for "productivity applications" and not go blind you need to have the *right* monitor solution, and good alternatives to the original CRTs are surprisingly difficult to come by.

 

[jhorvath911]

Just curious but why does the iigs look so bad with a more modern screen, I've never tried it since I have matching monitors for all of my iigs systems.

 

[NJRoadfan]

The Apple IIgs outputs not-quite-NTSC video. The 640x200 mode is actually higher bandwidth (higher dotclock) than the equivalent mode on the Amiga. I found this out the hard way when playing with a RGB capture card. Don't ask me why Apple did this, all it results in is a wider border on the sides. Most displays and that GBS8200 series scanner likely don't enough horizontal sampling (they likely do 720 pixels across max). That combined with a crappy scaler to the panel's native resolution results in video that looks horrible. Below is a raw frame grab from a real IIgs captured at 852x200 and resized to 852x400 to somewhat correct the aspect ratio.

The same also applies to 80 column text mode on all Apple IIs. Only the Apple Color Composite monitor (the one with the handy color killer switch) can handle the full horizontal resolution of that video mode, otherwise green screen it is if you want readable 80 column text.

 

[Cory5412]

Ironically and a half, all of this talk is making me want to bust out my own IIgs.

I actually have a Dell 2007FP at work, I wonder what composite input on that looks like with the IIgs. That display (and the U2711 I also have at my desk now, I think) have component video input. It might be interesting to see what they look like. I'll have to delay doing that until after November though, because of reasons.

 

[fimbulvetr]

Heh. All this talk has gotten me to play with my IIc. I won't vote on what is the best II, as I only have experience with the IIc, but I will say it is a very nice computer to use, and it has everything you need built in. The only thing I wish it had was an audio in so I could use that online game server with it.

 

[Elfen]

The best Apple II to buy?

The one you have an interest in that you found and have the money to afford it with as many options in it as possible. To some its a IIgs, others, its a IIc+, and then there are the Apple II, II+, IIe's. It depends depends on you.

 

[EvieSigma]

So far I honestly haven't found any Apple II I can afford...aside from some IIc models that are untested and come with nothing.

 

[sstaylor]

Not to gloat or anything, but I just scored an Apple IIe enhanced with two drives, a handful of disks and an Imagewriter II at the local thrift store for $50.  Happy happy!

 

[EvieSigma]

Hey man, that's one hell of a deal! I ain't even mad.

 

[theslownorris]

IIgs for the most software options, neat sound, computers and extras are spendy.

IIe for expandability (playing with cards.

IIc/IIc+ for small footprint.

It really depends on if you want the 16-bit IIgs stuff. If not? My Vote is IIc/IIc+ (There is a guy making mockingboards for IIc now ) AND a Floppy-EMU. (www.bigmessowires.com) Disks are a pain and the floppy-emu is SUPER!

 

[EvieSigma]

What's a mocking board?

 

[Gorgonops]

Basically the Apple II's equivalent of a Soundblaster card.

 

[EvieSigma]

Sounds pretty rad!

What would be even MORE rad is a C64 with dual SID stereo though...

 

[olePigeon]

You'll want a Phasor and not a Mockingboard if you have a IIgs.  Many games that supported Mockingboard won't work with the card on a IIgs, but the Phasor fixed those issues.  There's a Phasor clone on the market now, too.  I have one.

 

[theslownorris]

I must say this too, though it pains me. I am aware of the reason(s) the IIgs shipped @ 2.8mhz... That being said, it's a wonderful machine, but it's a wonderful machine that is painfully, tearfully, and sometimes disastrously slow. (Think a C64 w/ 1541 disk drive... Frustratingly, "Get up and go to the kitchen," slow).

That being said, I always wanted one as a kid, but would not forsake my Amiga for one... I finally got one. And well, I absolutely love the machine.

 

[EvieSigma]

Well tomorrow I'm going to a store that seems to have a bunch of Apple II stuff, so maybe I'll come home with a IIe or IIc...

 

[Cory5412]

I realize this is a little late, but perhaps it would be wise to cool the jets on buying into too many different vintage computing platforms at once. Having just a little bit of each of a lot of different platforms is a surefire recipe for not being particulalry good at any of them, and also never quite having the budget available for the machines and upgrades that might do best.

It appears that you have no real identified reason why a IIgs or any other Apple II system might be something you want.

If you can, I really would proceed with caution in terms of picking up new vintage computing platforms. I say this both as somebody who has used a few (but not very many) platforms and also as somebody who went throiugh university and ended up having to sell/trash/store everything for most of my time at the university anyway.

If you, as you have indicated elsewhere on the forum, already have a line on an SGI machine (big resource sink), an Amiga (almost bigger), and some Mac stuff, and a laptop for DOS/Win95 gaming... I think you're probably beyond what I would personally recommend as the limit for the number of different vintage platforms you should focus on, especially in a resource-constrained situation such as when you're a student.

The thing about Apple IIs is that although they are also built by Apple, it's a completely different computing platform and it represents the state of the art several years before the Macintosh was introduced. If you want that, then that's great and there's an extremely vibrant Apple II community to be had. I caution against doing it "just because" though, especially if you're strapped for cash and setting aside some money for, say, upgrades to an iMac/G3 or Power Macintosh G3 is something you have trouble doing.

I think you'll be in for a bad time if you set yourself up to need or repairs for a whole bunch of different machines at once.

 

[Unknown_K]

I don't see a problem bouncing around platforms looking for something you like, but you need to research them well before you blow money you might not get back if you dump the unwanted gear.

Computer collecting via ebay and paying somebody else for repairs can be very costly.

 

[EvieSigma]

Yeah, that's why I decided to get out of Apple IIs and SGI stuff...too expensive just to have a full set-up. I could easily fix my C64 for less than what an Apple II and drive(s) would cost me and probably have even more fun with games.

I've decided from now on that if I can't use it as is, then I'm not buying it. Unless all it needs is small stuff like software disks or cables, that is. I should really make myself some 800k System 6 floppies for if I ever get a Plus or SE, and get either a SCSI CD drive or some System 7 floppies for 030/lower powered 040 systems.