Apple IIe: A Real Survivor

by , 10:00 AM EST, February 27th, 2002

Observer Alex Allee wrote in to tell us about an interesting experience he had while working on a local recycling event. This, as well as helping out the environment, is a fantastic way to find old bits and pieces for your retro computer collection. Alex takes up the story:

Among the large appliances sat a sad, filthy Apple IIe on top of a rusty clothes dryer. Hanging from a cable was an equally dirty DuoDisk drive. A few feet away, the Apple IIe's monitor lay face down in the dirt. I couldn't stand to see this computer meet such an undignified end, so I stacked it all up, and put it in the trunk of my car.

Later at home, I hooked it all up and turned it on. It happily booted up to the "Apple ][" screen. In playing with the floppy drives, I found that the second slot had a copy of AtariSoft's Galaxian for the Apple II in it. I put it in the first slot, and after some loud complaining from the drive, little aliens started dancing on the screen.

Cool, huh? It gets... better? No, that's probably not the right word.

I shut it down to give it a bath. Opening up the case revealed that it was dirtier on the inside than on the outside. Mud was caked onto the logic board, some white ooze had long since dried up in a puddle near the front, and some leaves and other debris had somehow worked their way in. Worst of all, it was crawling with black widows and other large spiders, who had all made themselves little homes.

If I had known how disgusting the inside was, I probably would have left it outside. But as full of filth as it was, it booted like it was brand new. This thing is a tank! Something tells me cockroaches and Apple IIes would be the only things to survive a nuclear holocaust.

Eeek. Some people will go to all sorts of lengths to secure that all-important addition to their Mac life. The moral of the story here, though, is that some machines are built to last, and last, and last. And I'll leave it to you, Observers, to make the obligatory jokes about buggy machines.