The Apple Lisa and Apple IIe turn 30

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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May 9, 2000
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If you are the nostalgic sort or just the type who likes to laugh at outdated tech, you’ll enjoy a short trip down memory lane to visit the Ghost of Apple Past. It’s still amazing that so much improvement and innovation has taken place in the span of only 30 years.
 
My first real computer was a IIe. Dual disk drives FTW!

Might and Magic got me hooked on computer RPGs along with Wizardry.
 
robble said:
My first real computer was a IIe. Dual disk drives FTW!

Might and Magic got me hooked on computer RPGs along with Wizardry.
Click to expand...

I also met my SO on a chat BBS. 300baud modem. woohoo.
 
robble said:
I also met my SO on a chat BBS. 300baud modem. woohoo.
Click to expand...

my first modem was 300 baud too, but for C=128 :D we had apple IIe's in our high school that's what we learned coding on.. kids today have it easy
 
Dental_Plan_Lisa_Needs_Braces.png
 
Oh the good old days where you actually had to be intelligent to use a computer; sure miss those days :( I went from a Atari 800xl 4dd 1200bps modem to a Amiga 500 1mb 2 drives and must say the Amiga at the times was one heck of a computer system.
 
Actually used to work on Apple Lisa's
The Dealer I worked for at the time sold several (cost was $10,000 back then)
I remember the huge memory card (512Kbytes), with all the soldered in 64kbit chips compared to the PC's with the sockets for the chips. and the external 5MB drive.

I had to go to the local Apple office for training before we where allowed to sell them, and the traning models kept crashing during the class.


We had on one our sales floor, but after a couple months we started having problems when starting it up. Sometimes it would take over an hour to boot. Finally figured out what the problem was.
Sales would shut down the computer before they left for the day, and then shut off the power strip to turn the printer & other stuff off. Turns out the cleaning people decided to use the outlet strip the computer was plugged into, so they would turn the power strip on, which would cause the computer to start booting. When they where done vacuming that area they would turn the power strip off, causing a hard shutdown on the computer & messing up the drive.
 
RyanH said:
Nothing like a long night of Montezuma's Revenge on the IIe!
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I loved that game too!! Sadly when I finally went back to the game years later it was sort of meh, couldn't hold my attention, don't you hate when that happens?
 
Yeah, I remember when the Lisa came out, big deal in the tech world, everyone loved it, well at least those that could actually afford the astronomical price.
 
That takes me back. Back when Apple had a slightly more legitimate claim to being "innovative"!
 
I remember putting the tv display card in our IIe when I was 8 & enjoying the wonder of a large color display. Good times.
 
I used The Apple IIe in school in a computer class I took as an elective. Never had the chance to use a Lisa though. I was writing programs when everyone else was just learning the coordinate system of pixels on the screen. It was interesting to see the look on my instructors' face as I has my assignments were done in half a second while others took days. What I walked away with though, was a better understanding of trig functions and knowledge That I could apply to programs I was creating for my Tandy Color Computer 2 and Timex Sinclair 1000 back home. It was a fun time for me. Learning how to download things over the phone without a modem at all....just using the "cassette port". Learning electronics (diagrams, semiconductors, breadboards, etc.), ASCII, BASIC, machine code....oh man...things have changed soooo much.

Well, anyway.....Happy Birthday and thanks for the fond memories
 
Ah Wizardry, Archon, Karateka and the days of the IIe.
And the 300 then 1200 then 4800 baud modems. 56k modems were a huge leap at one time.
48k memory and Basic programming. Anyone remember the resolution of graphics back then? There were "hi" and "lo" graphics and 16 colors from what I recall.
140K floppy drives, and yes when you finally got that 2nd one it was a big deal. Remember what they cost? Hundreds of dollars for the drive and I've forgotten how much for a disk. And if you bent a disk in some sibling argument - you lost data.
Green, then amber then eventually color screens. Oh and hardrives starting at 5MB, whoa!
Sound cards added 8(16?) bit sound if you were rich enough to afford them.

Lots of memories
 
Apple invented the "Personal Computer Again" and then HP made the "Computer Personal Again".
hp.JPG


How come there is no lawsuit here??????
 
I remember these Apple II's were all over my middle-school, though that was the mid to late 90's and they were already very old computers by that time.
 
robble said:
My first real computer was a IIe. Dual disk drives FTW!

Might and Magic got me hooked on computer RPGs along with Wizardry.
Click to expand...

There are shitload of IIe's still in use today. The software available is endless.
 
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