I have one piece of 5.25" floppy disk software from my old Apple II collection. It's Micro Dynamo, a system dynamics simulation language based on Dynamo, which was the mainframe computer model used in the original Club of Rome effort in The Limits to Growth. It was published by Addison-Wesley, and accompanied by a text book for a college level course in system dynamics modeling. I have the book too.
I haven't seen Micro Dynamo "preserved" anywhere in the usual sites on the web. It's written in Apple Fortran, which runs on the USCD Pascal operating system. (Yes, you read that right.) I brought my copy to Kansasfest in 2017 to have Mark Pilgrim try to crack it, but I don't think he was able to get to it during the time we were there.
Anyway, it's copy protected and it requires two disk drives. Real disk drives, not one real one and an emulator. Well, don't hold me to that. It's fuzzy in memory.
Anyway, I wanted to play with it, so I went looking for an external drive for the //c. I could use any of the latter Apple //e disk drives, but I wanted something to match the //c's design. I found two, and each was going for about $120 with "make offer," invitations. I could get an Apple //e external drive for about $60, plus some shipping, so I offered a premium of $15 on the first one I made an offer on, and $25 on the second. The first seller came back with a counter-offer of $10 off. Sorry, no. The second seller just flat rejected the offer.
Ok, no big deal. Patience is the name of the game at the auction site.
You have to be somewhat expansive in your search terms. Many people list things using non-standard nomenclature. While I'm usually careful to type "Apple //c," which was how it was marketed, most folks just type "Apple IIc" (with the Roman numerals). Some people type "Apple 2c," and thereby limit their audience, because the algorithm doesn't pick up necessarily on the 2c.
In any event, I searched for an "Apple 2c disk drive" and found a listing for one. It was a listing for a "disk drive," Snow White design and all, but it also had an actual Apple //c computer in the listing. I don't really need another //c, but there were only three bids and the then-current price was about $67, which was a fair price for the drive alone. They'd also noted $29 for shipping, which sounds about right, given the cpu is also in the box.
Well, I put a watch on it and the auction ended this morning. I waited until 15s before the auction closed and put a max bid in of $117. That's me being competitive. It's more than I would have paid for a disk drive alone, but for a "free" //c thrown in, a pretty good deal.
I figured I'd get sniped and someone would get it for around $125. But I guess the market isn't that hot for retro computing these days. There didn't seem to be anyone actively watching that auction.
The clock ticked down and I won it for $88! $3 more than what I bid on the second "make offer" drive. The whole bill's going to come to about $125.
It doesn't appear as though the unit will ship with the power supply, but that's no big deal. It's a massive brick and it saves a lot on shipping, also making it easier and safer to ship. That thing's a sledge hammer in the box if it's not carefully packed. It's untested (no power supply, probably) but it'll almost certainly work. Seriously, the things are damn near indestructible, short of physically smashing them. Check out this video of four Apple //c "barn finds." Spoiler alert: They all worked. I was surprised.
I've got to reach out to the seller and have him hold off on shipping for a few days. I'll be out of town when it's anticipated to arrive and I'd rather not have it sitting in front of the door until I get back.
Not sure exactly what I'll do with the second //c. I mentioned I'd recently bought one to my son one and he laughed. He recalled playing Captain Goodnight and the Islands of Fear on ours back when he was a kid. Maybe I'll give it to him. It's an OG //c, model A2S4000, so it doesn't have the memory expansion slot or UniDisk 3.5" drive support, but it'll run everything just fine. The keyboard isn't as nice as the 4100, which uses Alps switches, but it's fine. It's not missing any keys.
Anyway, stay away from the auction sites boys and girls. It can become addictive. There's a //e with a bunch of cards, including an Applied Engineering Transwarp accelerator for low money. Won't boot, but it doesn't look like it can't be fixed. I have no room at all for a //e. But, um, there it is...
Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:18 Saturday, 31 August 2024