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Man Finds A Computer That He Used 35 Years Ago, And It Sill Has A Game He Saved
Imagine the surprise you would feel going through your old stuff and coming across an old computer with the ability to resume a game you saved roughly 30 years ago. That’s what happened to John Pfaff, a law professor from Fordham University in New York. In his parent’s house, he discovered an old and dusty Apple IIe computer and, to his surprise, found he was still able to play his childhood games. Apple IIe (the letter ‘e’ stands for ‘enhanced’), the third model in the Apple II series, was introduced in January 1983 and originally sold for $1395. The IIe had a 64k RAM built-in and introduced the ability to use both upper and lower case letters, allowing full functionality of the Shift and Caps Lock keys. The computer also included new keyboard features – directional cursor keys, Tab and Delete keys. The computer used the original floppy disks which had a storage capacity of approximately 80 kilobytes. The Apple IIe served its purpose well and became commonplace in many schools and homes, before all models of this computer were discontinued in November 1993.
More info on John’s Twitter thread.
When John turned on the computer, which hadn’t been used for three decades, the option to resume a previous game popped up on the screen
Image credits: JohnFPfaff
Image credits: JohnFPfaff
Image credits: JohnFPfaff
Image credits: JohnFPfaff
Image credits: JohnFPfaff
Image credits: JohnFPfaff
Turns out, John had saved his progress for Adventureland – a game released back in 1978, which was played by using two simple word commands. Luckily, John was still able to the game, which he must have saved some thirty years ago. ‘Neuromancer’ (a game loosely based on the 1989 book by William Gibson) along with Millionaire (a trivia game) and Olympic decathlon (published by Microsoft in 1980) were also revisited by John. The games were available on floppy discs, about which John tweeted: “My dad typed up labels for all my floppies, which is really sweet to remember. He was so thorough that he even included… who hacked the games. (I’m the only person in my immediate family who went to law school.)” He later added: “Also, in the days before the Cloud, kids, you had to make sure you backed up your backups, [because] those floppies could betray you. My dad wrote a computer financial modeling textbook. He… wasn’t joking [about] backups.”
John was eager to show his kids what ‘retro’ truly meant
Image credits: JohnFPfaff
Image credits: JohnFPfaff
Image credits: JohnFPfaff
Image credits: JohnFPfaff
Image credits: JohnFPfaff
Image credits: JohnFPfaff
Image credits: JohnFPfaff
Image credits: JohnFPfaff
Image credits: JohnFPfaff
Image credits: JohnFPfaff
Image credits: JohnFPfaff
The most important discovery, however, was not the disks but a letter John’s father wrote in 1986, who sadly passed away last year
Image credits: JohnFPfaff
Image credits: JohnFPfaff
John was very happy to find that many people appreciated his post and tweeted: “Ok, my kids won’t care why I didn’t go to bed when they wake up at dawn tomorrow (well, today). I’m so happy that this thread seems to have brought back so many good memories for so many [people]. That’s not how my TL usually is, and it’s been a fantastic chance of pace.”
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Lingon 5 years ago
I remember our first computer. I'm born in 1975 so this must have been 1978-1980 and it had 8 inch floppy disks (bigger than those in the article). I would love to get my hands on it. The games weren't nearly as advanced as shown above, I remember it was a horse race and the "horses" were just green dots going at different speeds across the monitor.
Paul K. Johnson 5 years ago
That is really cool. I wish I still had my first computer (1994) with all the old DOS games I used to play.
Lingon 5 years ago
I remember our first computer. I'm born in 1975 so this must have been 1978-1980 and it had 8 inch floppy disks (bigger than those in the article). I would love to get my hands on it. The games weren't nearly as advanced as shown above, I remember it was a horse race and the "horses" were just green dots going at different speeds across the monitor.
Paul K. Johnson 5 years ago
That is really cool. I wish I still had my first computer (1994) with all the old DOS games I used to play.
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