Ahhh, such fond memories. My first was an Apple II+ 48K Purchased in 1979 for about $1100.00 I used a tape recorder for about 3 days, that was all I could take. I sprung for a floppy drive ($425.00 at that time) Played with it for about a year then started a BBS in the LA area. (Anyone remember PMS LA?) Of course that made it necessary to have a direct connect modem (DC Hayes Micromodem 300 baud, $259.00) The old acoustic coupler/modem couldn\'t answer an incoming call. And another drive (generic, $200.00) My printer was an old Teletype (ASR 33, or KSR33, the one with the thimble) About 10 character/second, with a tape punch. Really cool, you could run a tape on what you were printing, then run it through again for another copy. Although it took about 5 minutes or more to print one page and would wake the dead. Eventually, I had 6 drives connected to that BBS and it became quite popular. OH the good old days.......................
I still own a Franklin Ace1000, still in working condition too. Remember Franklin? They were the company that copied the Apple II+ and included lower case without having to install the Paymer chip. A clock card for the Apple set me back $120.00 and another $139.00 for a 13\' green screen monitor. Another $120.00 for a microbuffer, so I didn\'t have to wait on the printer before I could use the computer again. Damn, I had it all in those days, and for a little under $3000.00 LOL Hard drive, what\'s that? I had a friend in LA that had one salvaged from a large network, I believe it was 10MB and was about the size of a small washing machine. It would dim the lights while it came up to 3600 RPM. I used to buy good USED Dysan 5.25\" floppies from him for only $1.00each.
Anyway, I love my old Franklin machine and fire it up now and ,just to keep the spiders on the run.
