The Old Days

Oh man! Who remembers the old Apple IIc? Sweet! I remember my family bought one, circa 1986. I thought it was so sweet. The case was really elegant and looked so high tech. I loved the sound of the 5.25" disk drive and it's startup chime. We pretty much just played games on it but man it was cool. We even had the color monitor. Not like this poor fucker with the monochrome. My parents still used that computer through 1999 or so. It was still working when they put it in the basement and it still works today. I pulled it out 2 months ago and it started right up!! Most of the disks still work but not all of them. Amazing. We even had the optional mouse. I remember going with my Dad to buy the whole package. I think it was like $1600 for the computer, color monitor, and mouse. The mouse was only good for Mouse Paint but that was worth it. I was captivated by that program. When I ran it again recently I thought the resolution was total crap. But considering how small the program was and the speed of the processor (a blazing 1 Mhz!!) it wasn't bad. The only downside to that machine growing up was that we didn't have a printer. We bought an ancient used Imagewriter from the local university computer store. It was pretty beat up but it worked. Sweet vintage technology. I always considered the IIc to be much superior to the IIe. I based that mostly on looks because the IIc looked so much classier. The IIgs was much better though. Cool.