Here in Italy the Apple II family of computers wasn’t very common. The Apple II was used by my parents’ generation rather than my own, mostly because it was much more expensive than more “popular” alternatives. The configuration of this Apple IIe is fairly standard for the times: third party Centronics printer interface, Apple 80 columns + 64KB RAM expansion, mouse interface, and floppy controller; DuoDisk and monochrome monitor. Continue reading
I thank Daniele F. for donating this terminal. He contacted me from the donation page at the end of May but I couldn’t retrieve it until the beginning of October, when I passed through Verona while I was going to Brusaporto (a few kilometres from Bergamo) where I attended an annual retrocomputing meeting.
About a year ago I bought this Commodore 64 from eBay US. I got it cheap because the seller didn’t advertise the fact that it was a “silver label”, and there were 4 pictures of the (not so good-looking) box before seeing an actual photograph of the computer. So I was the only person who bid on the item! It’s a bit yellowed on the right side and a most of the hooks are missing on the back, but otherwise it is in good working condition. Continue reading
I don’t usually care about printers: they take up precious space (especially the office/business ones), there are tons of models and most of the times they’re just rebranded items.
But there are a few printers that deserve some care, mainly the early ones or those that made us print the first happy birthday card for a friend. Continue reading
In the previous post I thanked Enrico for the donation of this Macintosh IIfx, now it’s time to show how it’s been cleaned and repaired. A quarter of a century ago this was the most powerful Macintosh of the series II: it was powered by a 68030 processor at 40MHz, outperformed only by the following Quadra computers with a 68040 processor.
Last year I found an online classified from a person in Milan that was giving away for free a Macintosh IIfx, collection only. I called him and we had a nice chat on the phone, and he added a few other items to the lot after asking me if I was interested. But since I live in the opposite part of Italy, I asked a friend (Thanks Daniele!) who lives in Milan to pick up the items and keep them until he was coming back home. Continue reading
One of the few MSX of my collection. The computer was quite dirty, but since the internal components were tightly fitted, I didn’t want to disassemble it completely.
I received this laptop as a gift in 2010. I always liked the Duos, both for their design and the idea of a slim lightweight laptop (remember it’s 20 years old) which, if needed, could be hooked up to a dock to transform it into a real desktop computer.
I thank Chiara M. for the donation.
Items received:
In the mid Eighties I had a Commodore 128 and I sometimes used KoalaPainter – the program that accompained the KoalaPad – with a joystick. Now, 30 years later, I can finally paint with the graphic tablet.