Apple IIe Acquired
Nov 7, 2019In 1994 I gave away the first computer I owned, an Apple IIe, to a friend who was broke and writing a thesis (but I repeat myself). I had a fairly nifty AMD 486DX2 and didn’t have space for saving things I didn’t need. I always regretted that. I had worked a lot of odd jobs to save up for it and a few more for upgrades.
I bid $70 a few weeks ago on an Enhanced Apple IIe in a Goodwill auction. The sale pictures showed a Unidisk 5.25" with controller card, an extended 80-Column card, and a serial card of some sort. It had a broken key and was, like most of these things, as-is and untested. My figuring was that with the $20 shipping and tax if it was unrepairable I’d only be out $100. Locally they’re rare. The last one I saw was more than a year ago offered as-is with two Disk-II drives for $250, monochrome green monitor extra, at a vintage and junk lot dealer.
To my surprise, I won. To my great surprise, it was in good shape and worked out of the box (I’m also surprised that the old LG LCD TV I had in the basement has a composite input and an exceptionally good scaler rendering crisp 80-column text).
I’ll have to replace this key
I’ve never seen one of these cards before
An audio cable and a visit to ASCII Express got me running until I get floppies or other devices
(This game hasn’t aged well but it can be played without a joystick)