Thursday, January 31, 2013

Dr Benjamin, I found your Apple II

What do I do when you see this an ad like this on Craigslist ? Well, I email immediately and hope for the best. The Apple II was introduced in June 1976, so 1978 is still pretty early and has a chance to be an original II, not a IIplus or a IIe.

I got in touch with the vendor in a few minutes, he sent me more pics, showing an immaculate Apple II cover, now I was sure it was a real II. Phone call, made an offer high enough so he would accept, low enough to not break "my computer museum in my garage budget" then I drove to meet the guy hoping that now one else would call offering many hundreds of dollars for the machine.
Excitement when I got it, touch it, then drove back home to see what treasures was in there.
It is an actual II from the second week of 1979, it was somehow upgraded to the Applesoft ROM and the autostart ROM.It could have been more vanilla, but I am happy as it is.
It looks very nice, and works perfectly. It also came with some docs, various cards and software that I resold for more than what I paid for, to replenish the "my computer museum in my garage budget". I also got my first pair (2 actually) of original Apple controllers, very cool.

A few pictures below.

Original Apple II running Wizardry

Original Apple II quick doc


Original Apple II A2S1-14645 serial number
7902 production date of my Original Apple II


MicroSoft Ram Card for 16 extra k bytes.





Original Apple II side view with a II green minitor

Open it up

Original Apple II motherboard

Original Apple II illuminated power key

Original Apple II
Price list, with motherboard version
Dr Benjamin from Seattle Orthopedic Hospital ? I have your Apple II from 1979 .....



Another Heavy Sixer on CL in Renton

Some guy apparently found his old Heavy Sixer and putting it for sale on Craigslist for $75


Monday, January 21, 2013

Commodore SX-64 Party picture

It happened !!

Sadly I was not able to Joy, but Hans a co worker went and sent this picture. Way to show hipster what a real machine is, guys.

Commodore SX-64 Party picture Seattle 01/20/2013

Saturday, January 19, 2013

What's in my garage

At the moment in my garage, I have these systems out


You'll find from left to right:
Koala Pad
Tube TV, small and great for vintage gaming
Atari 800
Original GameBoy on the Atari
a SpeedKing, king of joysticks
Atari STFM with HXC Floppy Emulator
Multi input LCD Monitor
Dell laptop
Japanese Nec Duo
Tons of boxed C64, Intellivision, Vectrex games on the wall or on the workbench
Atari 410 tape recorder
An Amiga power adapter, the amiga was just moved away
a 1084S Commodore monitor. Great for 50/60hz gaming, Amiga, Atrai, Nex Duo etc..
Apple IIe with color monitor and CFFA3000 card to emulate disks on a CF / USB drive

and on the floor

Another small tv
a 1010 Atari Tape Recorder
Another Apple IIe
Complete year of Playboy magazine 1984
Boxes of disks and carts

I love my garage


Friday, January 18, 2013

Look at me playing with a Silver Label C64

Silver Label Commodore 64 playing Ocean Ranger.

Silver labels are somewhat uncommon, the icing on the cake here is the also pretty old Vic 1541 disk drive. Everything works fine. I found it with an Amiga 500 and tons of disk on Craigslist, a guy with a new baby was getting ride of his old life.


Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Tacoma loves Heavy Sixers

$50 Heavy Sixer in Tacoma.  Dusty, but the price like likely go down.

It comes with Space invaders, target fun, combat, Pac-man, Asteroids, Amidar, and 51 blackjack 
2 paddles, 4 joysticks, and the cable hook ups. Get it now for cheap!

Commodore SX-64 Party

Commodore SX-64 Party

To celebrate the C64 turning 30, the community of SX-64 owners in the Seattle/Portland area is going to meet at the Houghton II Starbucks at 10:00 a.m this Sunday January 20, 2013.
Bring your SX-64 and show these hipsters what a real machine is. There will even be Internet connection to post from your SX-64