The wonderful part about this is the continuity — the childhood drawings, the original disk initialization date, the packaging & stickers, and the manuals. Amazing to have held onto it all this time.
Btw, not a typo above. Not ][+, not //, not //e. Apple ][, serial number 79. IIRR, it even has the floating point ROM card in one of the slots. :-)
As my HN username suggests, I spent a lot of time on the Apple IIGS with nearly the same experience as the author. The article brought back a lot of memories.
I kept my IIGS for 15 years, but need money for school. In 2001 I put it sale on eBay. Someone from Apple bought it off me as gift to a colleague who was retiring. I was happy for it to go to someone who worked on it at Apple. Now I’m wondering if it’s still around too.
They paid me something like $600 for a 15 year old computer plus another $700 for shipping (from Canada to California).