Reply 20 of 82, by BeginnerGuy
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wrote:wrote:Apple doesn't seem to big around this board but I recently passed on an Apple IIGS (looked like a ROM1 with a RAM upgrade board) at a garage sale complete with a printer, disk drives, games, rgb monitor, etc because I wasn't carrying any cash. I wish I had gone back for it, the IIGS was the computer I learned programming with and would be fun to revisit.
For some reason, I've never had much of an interest in messing with Apple computers. It could just be my perception of them, but the constantly changing yet proprietary nature of Apple's computers means you have a huge number of different models with parts that aren't interchangeable... it seems like each system may have some variation in parts and some accessories, but the vast majority would be stock systems, all the same. Plus, lets face it, this is VOGONS... other than the educational games I played on an Apple II in grade school (Oregon Trail being the most memorable), Apple's aren't exactly known for their extensive gaming catalog.
I haven't been interested since the IIGS, but back then (The apple ii) DID have plenty of expansion slots and just about anything you can imagine was made to work with an apple 2. This was a Steve Wozniak era machine, he knew people wanted expand-ability and an open system. The IIGS had color graphics and fantastic (if you could figure out how to program it) wavetable synth. The only issue is the CPU (65816) was gimped to 2.8MHz when it was able to run way faster, in order to keep the Mac as the "high end" system. There are CPU upgrade cards (TransWarpGS) out there but I never cared to have one, not sure they can be had for a sane price anymore. It did have nice OS options (GS/OS), and a massive following. Tons of games exist for the Apple II, magazines used to be chock full of type to play games, etc. John Carmack and many other 90s household PC programmers started on the Apple II. Apple committed suicide as a PC option for programmers and gamers with the Mac and never redeemed itself (in my opinion) until OSX, which is basically just a super luxury priced version of Linux now.
Anyway, check out some Apple IIGS videos, you'll be pretty impressed (if you have never seen it). This was Apple at it's best, before the closed platform nonsense.
wrote:Probably should qualify that the Mac doesn't have a wide catalog, but the Apple II sure did! 😀 don't know the current state of Mac gaming, has anything changed?
Anyway, not a funny story, but about two years ago I picked up a huge amount of gear, at least two SUV loads. I had the chance to take two Compaq Alpha workstations that were destined for a presumably sad fate, but passed them over as I feared that fixing any problems would be expensive. Given that the bulk of the machines and gear I took worked, I wish I had just done that third trip 😢
You can grab Steam on OSX now, there is a wealth of games that will run on it now that they use an X86 platform, but it doesn't stack up to Windows or just a Linux distro + Wine, though it could. Unfortunately DirectX still has a big grip on the gaming market. Apple still shoots itself in the foot by trying to keep a closed market, a half decent system is extremely expensive. It's WAY cheaper to just build a hackintosh, but your average Joe can't or wont do that. I've been looking to buy a 2010 era Mac Pro (dual 4 core Xeons) to toy around with, but really just for compiling and toying with my programs, not for gaming.
Sup. I like computers. Are you a computer?