A blast from the past! Suddenly I feel like I’m 15 years old again, sitting in my room blasting Anthrax, playing Dino Eggs, and chewing Blueberry Bubblicious!

I used to love that little machine. I had a color monitor. Playing Dino Eggs and LodeRunner were so much more enjoyable in color. I also had an Epson RX-80 dot matrix printer, so it came in handy for a lot of things. I don’t think I ever used it for school work. I used to use the Mac Plus for that. Eventually the floppy drive broke. I held on to it for a while, but I think I tossed it during a move.

The price has really gone up on these. Ten years ago you could find these at garage sales for $10 bucks. Maybe it’s just eBay; people tend to price gouge when they’re selling anything with an Apple logo. I’ve seen system listed for $100 without a monitor or power supply. Are people serious?

Again, I think I lucked out with this bundle. The seller not only included the power supply and monitor, but a whole stash of floppies and manuals. There were also a few other unexpected freebies in there too. I love those! The machine is in good working order and only shows a small amount of yellowing. I’ve seen more expensive machines on eBay that are almost orange. Not bad at all for $150.



It’s a very clean looking unit. No scratches or marks.





There’s no damage to the ports or oxidation.



The only thing is that the text on the floppy drive label has worn off from use. No biggie.



The case badge is perfect.



OK, let’s crack it open and have a look inside. So far so good, looks like a very clean unit.



Very clean unit indeed. I was hoping that the previous owner had sprung for a ROM upgrade. All units with a serial number older than F6051GFA2S4000 can’t access a UniDisk 3.5” drive with a ROM upgrade.



Bottom left, old 342-0272-A ROM. I really was hoping that ROM was upgraded. That way I could read and write 3.5” floppies using a UniDisk.



Such a nifty little monitor, even if it only displays green. The monitor shows a little more yellowing than the //c.



There’s some marking on the base, but it looks as though it might come off with a good cleaning.







The power supply needs a cleaning, but overall pretty good.





There are definitely no shortage of extras. Check out all the manuals.





I like the “Setting Up Your Apple IIc” guide. It’s fit for framing.





The seller also included a 1993 Apple Catalog. These are awesome. I always get a kick out of seeing how much stuff used to cost. $400 for a floppy drive! Wow.





No shortage of floppies here. In addition to the 10 blank disks, the seller also included a bunch of System disks and AppleWorks. Gotta love those Apple-branded floppies cases.



Check out the original invoice with an order date of 02/12/86. Too bad there are no prices on it. I would have loved to have seen how much they dropped on the full setup.



Nice, another freebie! It’s dated 1989. What looks like a little brochure actually folds out to over 2.5 feet.







It looks right at home next to the Apple IIe. Alright, time to fire it up and and see it in action!



Cool. It works.



Just to prove it still has the original ROM, I typed “PR#7” in BASIC. If it had an upgraded ROM, it would return “AppleTalk Offline”. Instead, it tells me to check the drive.



OK, let’s try out some of these free disks!

AppleWorks!





I can’t believe I still remember some BASIC!



Check out those sweet graphics!



I can’t wait to get my hands on some old games from my childhood, like Lode Runner and Dino Eggs. It’ll be tricky getting the files off the internet and onto 5.25 floppies. Another hardware purchase will be required. I might upgrade the ROM so I can use 3.5” disks. I was hoping to get an Apple IIe card for the Color Classic and use that to bridge the gap, but those are getting pretty hard to find. Besides, I just installed a networking card in that.

For now I’ll just have to settle for the games I scored along with the IIe.