Mitzi's hosting a brunch here in a couple of hours and I'll have to make myself scarce. I'll be taking the Comcast/XFinity cable box back and cancelling cable. No more local evening news, or network national news, or the Wheel ("Now featuring Ryan Seacrest!") or Jeopardy!.
Last night I sat in the recliner in my office and played old video games on my Apple //c instead! Made it to level 3 in Lode Runner. I'm very out of practice, but also surprised that the "patterns" you have to run to evade the Bungeling Empire guards remain somewhat embedded in my muscle memory. Had to adjust the joystick because it was biased slightly upward so whenever I ran past a ladder, my guy would start climbing it.
Played some Choplifter, and I'm horrible at that now. The plane keeps shooting me down!
Played a mission in Star Fleet 1, which I wasn't sure would work. The original required you to entire a word from a specific page in the (very thick) manual. I only played the training mission, so maybe that kicks in on the higher levels. I hope not. It's a text-based, elaborate expansion on the classic Star Trek game. Well regarded, back in the day.
The IIe is looking pretty good. Got the motherboard cleaned up. Installed the "new" (modern tech) 8MB memory card in the Aux Slot and discovered that I had ordered the wrong card. Well, not really, I didn't know at the time when I was ordering it that I'd be receiving a Rev A Apple IIe. They're relatively scarce in the marketplace, since only a few thousand were produced.
The developer of the board offered to flash it for me to disable the double hi-res graphics feature, which makes it incompatible with the Rev A, but I went ahead and ordered another card because they're fairly inexpensive and I may "upgrade" this machine to a Rev B someday. The disk drive I tested worked, so the controller card works.
It's nice when I feel like I got a really good deal, and this IIe was. I paid $320 for it, which might seem high, but it was a package deal with a number of items that are very pricey bought separately. I went looking for the monitor stand and they mostly seem to be going north of $100! So I'm very happy it survived shipping. Likewise the CH Mach 3 Joystick. There are three up on the auction site right now at $75 a piece and one bargain unit at $45 (plus $15 shipping). The Monitor III is also mostly well north of $100. The Kensington System Saver external fan/surge suppressor is listing between $65 and $100. So, just those accessories would run about what I paid for the whole thing.
We're out of town again starting tomorrow. Headed up to Annapolis for my 45th class reunion. I'm kind of tired of traveling, but it's just a long weekend. I booked the Wednesday flight because of weather uncertainty to give us a recovery day on Thursday if we couldn't get out. Doesn't look like it'll be a problem, but you never know in September in Florida.
When we get back on Sunday, we'll have about five weeks at home before we head up to Georgia for a wedding and another family event with Mitzi's siblings.
Then we have to figure out whether or not we're going to New York in November. I rather expect we are, because it's an opportunity for Mitzi to visit her daughter in DC, where we spend the night since we'll be driving. I'm kind of interested in seeing how the house is doing, sitting empty. I may buy and install a flood sensor as well.
Anyway, staying busy. The beat goes on...
Originally posted at Nice Marmot 07:45 Tuesday, 17 September 2024