My first thought was "OMG he has a working Apple II GS?" and then I realized it was already 4 years old when it was written, and the author was recounting a tale from his childhood.
Lots of Amiga stories from the late 80's early 90's dealing with the fact that the Amiga was a multi-tasking system with an unprotected address space. Great when all the tasks are written by the same group, not so great when they aren't :-)
Of course the notion of anyone being able to write anywhere was the basis for ITS (the Incompatible Timesharing Service) at MIT which was a great counterpoint to Tenex (DEC 10 Executive) which was locked down pretty hard. It changes the way you think when you realize you can tell the computer to do anything you want and it will try to do it, up to and including killing itself.
Daily Apple IIGS user here, with one 65816 project on github. :) There are still a few of us. For what it's worth, mine is stable at 12MHz (hot-rodded Transwarp GS), and is completely solid-state: CompactFlash and LCD only, no floppies or CRT monitors. I may not have used it to write this post, but I'm still busy trying to beat all the games.
Just recently snagged a mint Apple IIGS "Woz Edition" and can't wait to get it set up. Need to figure out how to do this solid-state conversion though, that would be really helpful. Any guides you can point to?
ITS was more intentionally a counterpoint to CTSS (Compatible Time Sharing system, hence the name ITS).
However, it's interesting that you mention that, as I think that Tron was a reasonable allegory for the MIT/ITS crowd's struggle against traditional time sharing systems and/or the "priesthood" that guarded the mainframes.
Having owned an Amiga 1000, I always thought the Apple IIgs was overprice when released in 1986. An Amiga with monitor ran $1300, where as a IIgs + harddrive + monitor would be over $1500. Apple was basically milking the last bit from the II series.
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My first thought was "OMG he has a working Apple II GS?" and then I realized it was already 4 years old when it was written, and the author was recounting a tale from his childhood.
Lots of Amiga stories from the late 80's early 90's dealing with the fact that the Amiga was a multi-tasking system with an unprotected address space. Great when all the tasks are written by the same group, not so great when they aren't :-)
Of course the notion of anyone being able to write anywhere was the basis for ITS (the Incompatible Timesharing Service) at MIT which was a great counterpoint to Tenex (DEC 10 Executive) which was locked down pretty hard. It changes the way you think when you realize you can tell the computer to do anything you want and it will try to do it, up to and including killing itself.
Daily Apple IIGS user here, with one 65816 project on github. :) There are still a few of us. For what it's worth, mine is stable at 12MHz (hot-rodded Transwarp GS), and is completely solid-state: CompactFlash and LCD only, no floppies or CRT monitors. I may not have used it to write this post, but I'm still busy trying to beat all the games.
Just recently snagged a mint Apple IIGS "Woz Edition" and can't wait to get it set up. Need to figure out how to do this solid-state conversion though, that would be really helpful. Any guides you can point to?
ITS was more intentionally a counterpoint to CTSS (Compatible Time Sharing system, hence the name ITS).
However, it's interesting that you mention that, as I think that Tron was a reasonable allegory for the MIT/ITS crowd's struggle against traditional time sharing systems and/or the "priesthood" that guarded the mainframes.
I have a working Apple II GS! I'm pretty sure none of my floppies work anymore though :(
Having owned an Amiga 1000, I always thought the Apple IIgs was overprice when released in 1986. An Amiga with monitor ran $1300, where as a IIgs + harddrive + monitor would be over $1500. Apple was basically milking the last bit from the II series.
Something something old dog new tricks.
Something something John Scully not understanding computers are not soda pop.