remembering the Apple IIe AppleWorks & Oregon Trail

Thu Aug 02, 2018

in high school my school computer lab and local library had

Apple IIe



they all had external floppy disks as shown above and a green monochrome monitor. each Apple had its own Apple printer

i don't recall these computers were networked.

instead, each student was given a copy of AppleWorks  on a 5 1/4 disk



we had to insert the disk to boot to Apple Works and then we were only learning how to type on it and print papers. i don't recall if it had spell check. we were told this is how some of our assignments will be done, esp when we go to college


the  Apple Dot Matrix Printer was a pretty good printer



it used special type of paper with holes on both sides. i don't think they make those anymore except perhaps for printing labels

they occasionally jammed.

we were told we need to learn this since once we enter college and the work force, we'll be using computers to do everything.

which was correct, but not the  Apple IIe part.

there was no internet, no email, no instant messages. just pop in that disk and start typing on a word processor.

the one game they had that i got to play was Oregon Trail for Apple II



i found it very enthralling




i died a lot

we weren't taught spread sheets or presentations, let alone email

but we were told to imagine our future of Apple IIe and dot matrix printer, typing up reports on green monochrome monitors

not on typewriters

no mention of buletin boards or web browsers.

iirc we were told our Apple IIe were upgraded with 128 kilobytes of ram. no hard drive.

a couple of my neighbors had the Apple IIe or IIc

i'm unsure where exactly they bought them from. the local mall had a Radio Shack which sold Tandy 1000 and color computers which were not compatible.

i have since learned both the tandy color computer and commodore 64 outperforms the Apple IIe which costed thousands.

there was a local computer world retailer which sold IBM PS/2. i remember i asked about one PS/2 and he told me it was $10,000 I remember being floored by something that expensive. I now know it was the IBM PS/2 model 80 which was indeed $10,000 obviously unaffordable.

again a lot of kids i knew who owned the Apple IIe put it in disuse and a dust cover on it, which struck me as a very expensive toy, more expensive than a transformer action figure optimus prime