Territorial Bloggings

I get nostalgic quite easily. Always have. It’s not all that bad a thing, and probably contributed to my affinity with History & being an History major as an undergrad. That said, I do also tend to get melancholy at times, and that’s not always that good, when combined with nostalgia jags.

Anyway, of late, I’ve been getting increasingly nostalgic about computers. Someday, I’m going to attempt to do a more thorough rundown of the computers I’ve gotten, built, and/or used over the 26 years that I’ve had computers to call my own. The list of what I built & when, however, could be a bit tricky, though, as I’ve started to forget exactly what I built into the various boxes I assembled in the late ’90s.

The first computer that I really felt was mine was the Apple IIc that I got in August 1984, just as I was about to start my senior year of high school. I really, really wanted a Mac, but settled/rationalized that a IIc was OK because I could have a mouse with it, and might even be better because I could do my computer class (BASIC programming & such) homework just like at school (where Apple IIe computers were used). It wasn’t exactly what I wanted (I had bought into the Cult of Mac almost immediately upon hearing about the Mac), but I just wanted a computer with that rainbow fruit on it.

Years later, much to my chagrin, I found out that my father was surprised when my mom & I came home with the IIc instead of the Mac. He expected, and was OK with, my getting the Mac. The thing is, though, I was firmly convinced that he was dead set against the Mac, as it wasn’t as “practical” as the IIc. It wasn’t the first, and certainly not the last, time that I outmaneuvered myself!

That all said, I’m very fascinated by this Flickr photoset of someone unboxing a pristine, never-before-opened, 1988 vintage Apple IIc. Very cool. Very cool, indeed.

Now, I wouldn’t want to have that IIc, as my nostalgia doesn’t extend far enough to want to actually use one these days.

The same, however, cannot be said for the Mac SE that I got in 1988. Over the course of the next few weeks, I’m going to be putting the final touches on refurbishing that SE, so that I can have it up & running again in time for its 20th anniversary. I’m not looking to try and get it online or anything like that (I’m not that much of a masochist, after all…), but I do want to have it working & running just like I did back in the day. I have every intention of keeping y’all updated with all the gory details…

-ghp