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Hello from the Wet Coast

P

pinto79

Member
Joined
Sep 6, 2013
Messages
23
Location
Delta, B.C., Canada, eh?
Hello all.

My name is Trevor. I've been a computer hobbyist since I was 7 years old. I have spent almost all of that time as a DOS/Windows user with a small foray in OS/2 back in the early/mid 1990s. I actually bought OS/2 Warp 4 in 1996 when it came out and have never installed it...

My interest in old/vintage computers came about recently when, of all things, I got an iPhone 3GS. I started to study the company that made it come to be and became consumed by all things Apple. Sure, I've had my 386 and 486 computers kicking around for a bit of nostalgia, but this little iPhone made me wonder about the Apple side of things that I never really was interested in or cared about in the past...

My high school had a computer "lab" full of Apple ][e and GS machines that didn't interest me, and i was happy to see that they were replaced with PC Clones in my second year there...

So, rewind back to September 2012... I got this iPhone and out of curiosity I started checking out old Steve Jobs Keynotes and new product launches. I became consumed! Despite not having any disposable cash to buy anything at that moment, I started scouring Craigslist for used machines. I wanted to find a Power Mac G5 Quad Core from the last year of the PPC ones... only one popped up and the guy wouldn't respond to my email... grrr... so I kept looking...

One fateful day, I decided to upgrade the CPU in my 6 year old Acer laptop. A friend of mine who is a licensed Avionics tech offered to help, so we go into it. Something went sideways and to make a log story short, we turned a perfectly fine working laptop into a brick. Please don't take it as a sign of my friends abilities in Avionics nor mine as an aircraft instrument tech... it just wasn't meant to be.

In talks with another friend I told him of my laptop woes and my increasing interest in Apple products. He offered me a pair of PowerBook G4 laptops for a song and I took him up on it. I wound up using that aging G4 machine more than my Windows 7 Ultimate desktop that was connected to a pair of 32" LCD monitors...

I'll wrap this up. My Desktop was aging at the time, so I decided to take some money I had saved teaching guitar lessons and part of the extra paycheck in a 3 pay month and bought myself a Late 2012 model Mac Mini. I'm in love. It's such a joy to use.

I have since also acquired a Power Mac G4 (AGP) with matching keyboard, Pro Mouse and Studio Display. It runs OS X 10.2.8 and Mac OS 9.1, so it's great for older software, and the PowerBook that I kept (Gave the second away after making one great one out of the bits from both) as my portable solution.

I still want to get at G5 Quad, a PowerMac G3 and likely for a bit of fun, one of the first iMacs.

Thanks for reading my story. I will tell of my 386, 486, Pentium etc machines in other sections.

Trevor
 
Welcome to the forums! We all have our own opinions on everything so don't take this like a forum opinion but I always sorta thought the opposite of Apple the company. Although like you I dismissed most of them growing up, they seemed on the verge of bankruptcy in my mind for most of their computing career (again, my personal view of not seeing them anywhere other than Apple II systems in higher level schools). Not until later that I realized how pretty cool the Apple II was. Lots of hacker friendly features and openness that you don't get today. So I appreciate Woz but it also seemed like Jobs went a bit nuts with money and the IIc came out, it became a void your warranty if opened system and the charm wore off. So for me I still dismiss the later era and current tech. But that's what makes us all different :) Plus obviously I'm a vintage person.. I like my old stuff better than the new.

You can probably find a Mac Plus for not too much money.. I think the one that tends to have a higher price is the 512, but still would probably be fun for you to see the difference and where it comes from :)

Have you seen the movie "Pirates of Silicon Valley"?
 
barythrin said:
Welcome to the forums! We all have our own opinions on everything so don't take this like a forum opinion but I always sorta thought the opposite of Apple the company. Although like you I dismissed most of them growing up, they seemed on the verge of bankruptcy in my mind for most of their computing career (again, my personal view of not seeing them anywhere other than Apple II systems in higher level schools). Not until later that I realized how pretty cool the Apple II was. Lots of hacker friendly features and openness that you don't get today. So I appreciate Woz but it also seemed like Jobs went a bit nuts with money and the IIc came out, it became a void your warranty if opened system and the charm wore off. So for me I still dismiss the later era and current tech. But that's what makes us all different :) Plus obviously I'm a vintage person.. I like my old stuff better than the new.

You can probably find a Mac Plus for not too much money.. I think the one that tends to have a higher price is the 512, but still would probably be fun for you to see the difference and where it comes from :)

Have you seen the movie "Pirates of Silicon Valley"?
Click to expand...

I have indeed seen the movie and enjoyed it. I went to see the new Jobs movie and enjoyed it too.

I would love to put a ][GS, a 512k Macintosh and an early Power Mac into the collection as well as a NeXT Cube. It would be fun to experience the old Apple DOS, the first Mac System, System 7/8, NeXTSTEP and on to Mac OS 9 and then into OS X... experience the whole spectrum, much like how I have gone through DOS 3.3/4.01/5.0/6.22, Windows 3.0/3.1/3.11/95/98/98SE/ME/2000/XP/Vista/7/8... You can really learn a lot about a company by experiencing their growth steps first hand...
 
Hi and welcome!
Back in the late 90's I spent a week working in Aldergrove. I miss my many trips up to BC, one of my favorite places .
 
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