Man Shocked To Find His 35 Year Old Apple Computer Still Works
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Most electronic devices don't last more than half a decade if you use them all the time.
Sure, you might have some people still rocking an iPhone 5 without any issues, but with wear and tear, you usually have to get a new computer, TV, camera or phone every five years.
So, you can imagine the utter delight and joy that one bloke experienced when he found his old school Apple computer from 35 years ago.
Oh.
My.
God.
An Apple IIe. Sat in my parents' attic for years. Decades.
And it works.
Put in an old game disk. Asks if I want to restore a saved game.
And finds one!
It must be 30 years old.
I'm 10 years old again. pic.twitter.com/zL7wWxOo36
- John Pfaff (@JohnFPfaff) February 17, 2019
While many of us have found stuff when digging in our parent's basement or attic, there's not much that still works after gathering rust and dust, losing battery, or having electronics fried.
But this guy's three decade old computer still worked just like it did in the 80s and 90s and even played a few games.
Professor John Pfaff uploaded a bunch of photos to Twitter over the weekend, showcasing his incredible find.
He wrote: "Oh. My. God. An Apple IIe. Sat in my parents' attic for years. Decades.
"And it works. Put in an old game disk. Asks if I want to restore a saved game. And finds one!"
My kids thought things were insanely retro when my wife and I played NES Super Mario on the oldest's Switch.
Tomorrow morning their definition of retro is going to shift significantly. pic.twitter.com/cwpMyvCoYw
- John Pfaff (@JohnFPfaff) February 17, 2019
That's pretty incredible.
The Apple IIe was first released in 1983 and was the third personal computer that the company sold to the public.
It cost about $5,018 (£3,885) in today's money, so it's good to know that electronics like this have always been bloody expensive.
If you want a reminder of how ancient these devices are, it had a RAM memory of 64KB, compared to some laptops now that boast a whopping 32GBs.
Of course, there is the downside. Here's everything I wrote my senior year in high school, unreadable thanks to the absence of the necessary program disk (AppleWorks).
That, though... may be for the best. pic.twitter.com/u2XGStvWQU
- John Pfaff (@JohnFPfaff) February 17, 2019
Professor Pfaff was able to play One on One, which looked like a basketball game, Adventureland, Neuromancer, Olympic Decathlon and The Quest. He also showed off his floppy disks which contained the games as well as files from his high school days.
He added that one game had a particularly funny stab at banter.
"Wow," he wrote, "So this was an old trivia game I loved (Millionware). This screen gets to the point where it says 'Say Hello to our contestants Donna'.
"And then the disk drive whirs with its little red light. Then you get 'Thank you, Donna'."
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The 80s seem rad.
He also said it was an interesting conversation with his kids, who struggled to understand some of the add-ons to the Apple computer.
"No, look, kids," he said on Twitter, "This computer has. no. hard-drive. The reason those giant disks say 'Disk Side' 1-4 is you had to keep flipping them over as you played.
"Also, in the days before the Cloud, kids, you had to make sure you backed up your backups, because those floppies could betray you."
Imagine if you found something like this in your basement or attic.
Featured Image Credit: John Pfaff/Twitter
Topics: Awesome, Nostalgia, Technology, Apple