After waxing rhapsodic about the Apple //c, I went looking on the auction site, just to see what they were going for these days.

For those just tuning in, for a few years, about 2014 to 2019, I was into Apple II retro-computing. I spent a small fortune buying hardware and software, enough ultimately to entirely fill a Ford Explorer, leaving only room for the driver. We were moving into this place, and I didn't have any space for all the stuff I had. So I gave it all away to the first guy on Facebook who could show up to collect it. (I got a little grief from one guy because I hadn't thought of "the community" and given more people a chance.)

I kept a lot of the books, because I planned to keep playing with an emulator.

Later, I got into collecting calculators, because they're smaller. So I'm surrounded by calculators now. Mostly HP, mostly vintage, but some new ones and re-creations. A few TI models and Casios. But I also enjoy messing around with Applesoft in an emulator (Virtual II).

There are some reasonable prices if you just want the computer and power supply. The A2S4000 is the original model, I was looking for a later one, the A2S4100 with the Alps keyboard and a memory expansion port. I found one.

I don't want to get back into the 5.25" floppy business anymore, so I needed some sort of mass storage. Big Mess O'Wires' Floppy Emu is the solution. This will be my second. (Gave away the first one.)

I also got a USB-C adapter for the power port and I can run the thing off a USB power adapter and not have to screw with the brick.

The //c is a good choice because it's small enough to sit on my little lap desk when I'm in the recliner. I have a composite video port on my 32" TCL TV. Right now it's hooked to the HP 82163A HP-IL Video Interface. (Basically a little bit of RAM and a video generator that'll display 24 rows of 32 characters. Don't quote me on that, I could be off a bit.) That's hooked to an HP-75C computer that I dusted off yesterday. Batteries were still good!

Something about fools and their money...

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 11:01 Saturday, 17 August 2024