New York Man Discovers 30-Year-Old Apple Computer Still in Working Order - Including a Saved Game

ktla ^

[BenLurkin]

Pfaff restored the saved game of Adventureland, a text command game released for microcomputers by Scott Adams in 1978.

“This is tricky, because three decades later I can’t quite remember where I left off this round of Adventureland.”

Pfaff found floppy disks with several different games of the time including; Millionware, Neuromancer and Olympic Decathlon.

Besides finding games on the floppy disks, Pfaff came across saved copies of his high school assignments and a note from his late father.

“Just found this letter my dad typed to me in 1986, when I was 11 and at summer camp,” he tweeted. “My dad passed away almost exactly a year ago. It’s amazing to come across something so ‘ordinary’ from him.”

Pfaff showed off the vintage system to his own children and their reaction is what you’d expect from a generation that has moved on to an iPhone X.

[for-q-clinton]

Almost exactly is really almost.

[Texas Fossil]

Yes, it was a Model 1, Boards only, reconstruct. Stacked Mem chips on top of those on mother board and used wire wrap to strobe the pins so no expansion inter-phase was necessary. Had a full complement of memory, 64K (smile). Only way you could get more memory then was bank switching.

My, what a RF noise generator. Could not run it anywhere near my radio equipment.

So I later bought a Hal TTY, Badot/ASCI keyboard. It worked quite nicely. But it never was the TTY demodulator that the Fleisher TU-170 was. Wished I had not sold the Fleisher. Amazing sensitivity and selectivity for TTY.

[SunkenCiv]

:^) Good times, good times...

[SunkenCiv]

Heh... eventually I got the ext-80 upgrade, and a really nice, cheap ($79 I think) 300 baud internal card modem, a really cool multifunction card (clock, serial, parallel, somethin' else I can't remember), a regular slot memory board, an enhanced slot memory board, and a bootleg version of the enhanced IIe upgrade. Yes, the e in IIe was for enhanced, then Apple came out with a kit to enhance the IIe, and called the original unenhanced. :^) I never wound up getting an accelerator, but I did wind up with a PC Transporter coprocessor I picked up used.

[HeadOn]

“...just played text based adventure games like Zork...”

LOVED Zork. My wife and I would play that game every evening after we got off work. We got all but 3 points, I think, from Zork I. Never could get the thing (key?) out of that egg without breaking it, and losing the egg points.

[wardaddy]

My girlfriend in Manhattan back then was a Columbia phd candidate and bought an early Mac in 1986 I think

It wasn’t cheap even with school discount

It was basically what DOS like software Macs used then

I never messed with it but she was enamoured

[HeadOn]

On our first Christmas together, my wife and I (both Engineers) got a Commodore 64 from her parents. We took the minimal BASIC programming skills we had, and programmed a ball (PET symbol) to go across the screen, and reverse both x and y direction when it got to the edge.

I think we stayed up till about 2am to get it finished. We had to wake up my inlaws who were asleep sitting on the couch to show them - since we didn’t have a storage device, and when we turned it off, lost the entire program.

So cool - so fun. We knew we’d lose it when we started, but we just had to make it happen. My wife has made a career of computer software development.

[wardaddy]

My first computer as well

[Larry Lucido]

I wonder how many of these 1989 tip calculators are still around and working?

[Joe Brower]

I spent a lot of time on Apple //e's when I was first starting what ended up being a lifelong career in programming.

Lots of good memories.

[GOP Poet]

Wow. Impressive. :D

[GOP Poet]

haha. Remember those. ;D

[Buckeye McFrog]

Still in Working Order - Including a Saved Game

[Tell It Right]

When my C-64's CPU chip burned up the 2nd time and it was hard to get a replacement, I threw it away along with my 1541 floppy drive and my tons of 5 1/4 " floppies with tons of software I made as a teenager. I thought I'd be virtually impossible to one day have a machine to read them. Besides, I was working full time and working on a computer science degree and had zero time to play with it.

Of course, now we have emulators for the C-64. I'd do just about anything to have not thrown away my hobby work as a teenagers so I could show my now grown "kids" what they could do if they put their minds to it.

[Tell It Right]

Way cool for your wife!

I'm fortunate my father bought me a 5 1/4 inch floppy drive on day 1 or I might have gotten frustrated immediately.

[central_va]

I think most women find a 5 1/4 inch floppy very frustrating.

[nesnah]

I think most women find a 5 1/4 inch floppy very frustrating.

---

Why do you think they invented the hard-drive?

[Texas Fossil]

Yes, great OLD memories. smile.

[Hot Tabasco]

I might as well be talking about farming in the Dust Bowl during the Depression.

Back around 2000 I was on a pheasant hunting trip in N.W. Kansas and on the first night rented a room of a house owned by a 94 year old widow. She lived there her entire life and her stories of surviving the great dust bowl in that tiny little town was like listening to a living history book.....

That house was actually built by her father outside of town then eventually brought in to that lot pulled by mule train and rolled over logs......

[Billthedrill]

“My oldest, who is 9, exclaimed “that’s a computer?!” in genuine surprise, and then pointed at the floppy drives and asked “what are those?”

The "File Save" icon still present on current apps is a bit of a mystery to people who've never seen a floppy disk. Before long the little cylinders representing a spinning hard drive will be as well.