Also available at The Book Depository:

http://www.bookdepository.com/Sophistication-Simplicity-Steven-Weyhrich/9780986832277

(Now owned by Amazon), but if you are not in the US, this is a good way of getting books with affordable postage.

Cheers,

Michael

Regarding Apple II (serial 6684) on Ebay.

Although plain Apple IIs were still being produced in 1981, they would have had much later serial numbers. So it is not a late produced Apple II. I think your first impression is right — the original owner replaced the motherboard (now populated w/ applesoft roms) and keyboard at some later date. IMHO, a II+ in a II case. Alas.

Congratulations and thank you for this latest podcast.

About my cassettes preservation project, I wanted to tell that I only own 260 cassettes out of the 600 listed in the website.

I wish I had the 600 ;-)

Antoine

Latest codebreaker code and source here: http://www.applefritter.com/content/codebreaker-re-released-fixes-mess-and-real-apple-1s-noncontiguous-memory

Latest c2t (code to tape) here: http://asciiexpress.net/files

Just a couple of further comments on the A2S1-6684 auction. Andrew above is right. The A2S1-6684 sticker *itself* is very old, but the motherboard that would have been in it originally would almost certainly have had a 1978 date. And in fact, looking at this, there is nothing original on this Apple II except the pan (with the label), possibly some of the RAM chips, and maybe the rest of the case. To be fair, the auction description does lay some of this out: “Looks like the motherboard has been updated and appears not to be original.” It also says that the keyboard was replaced in 1990. Furthermore (not noted in the description), the power supply is essentially a IIGS power supply, maybe also used in the late //es, so it too was replaced. There’s really very, very little that connects this to its standard II roots.

That said, it works, and the disk drive does appear to be original. It has a couple of unusual TG paddles, a little bit of unusual old software, and an accelerator. So, it’s not a worthless system, but it isn’t the kind of thing that goes for $1800. All the mismatching probably hurts the value since serious collectors won’t fight for it. I’d guess in an open auction it wouldn’t get beyond $250 unless somebody’s really not paying attention.

Also, an additional comment about starting up a standard Apple II, since that came up. Without an Autostart ROM (standard in the II+, or provided by a language card or ROM card), the Apple II will either just hang on startup (waiting for RESET) or put garbage on the screen and dump you at a monitor prompt. (The “hanging start” happens under a pretty specific circumstance, it has to be a rev 0 board with no Disk II controller card in it.) The Autostart ROM will display “APPLE ][” and hit RESET for you on power-up, then probe the expansion slots looking for a disk controller to boot from (and will add some editing features as well — ESC-IJKM are provided by the Autostart ROM).

“Get ’em while they’re alive!” – Ken

Sage advice which also got a big laugh here.

+1 with Egan on your shows notes, they are the best out there!