don@BRILLIG.UMD.EDU (Don Hopkins) (10/16/86)
I've had a ][+ for a long time, the guts of which I transplanted to a wooden box that holds everything but the keyboard, monitor, and hard disk. Now that much bigger machines are sucking up most of my attention, I mainly use it as a terminal. I've got an 80 column card that would not be useful for a //e or a //gs, and a full ASCII keyboard, so it does a good job at terminaling. I've put an enormous ammount of time into the machine, and it still performs useful functions very well. I don't want to 'upgrade' by trading in. If I got a //gs, I would want to keep the ][+. I can do dangerous hardware experiments on the ][+, because I'm sure the //gs will do wonderful things to the used ][+ motherboard market from the motherboard consumer's point of view. There will also be lots of dirt cheap 80 column, serial, and other cards the //gs obsoletes, but which are still useful on a ][+. I will be able to test that software I write for the //e or gs runs on the ][+. (This is NOT something you can do by just following the rules in the manuals...). There still are, and will continue to be, a lot of ][+'s out there. But the time to stock up on used hardware is now. Onward to the hamfests! -Don