I went to KansasFest recently. This is the second year I've been, and so far, each time, the conference becomes more relevant to my interests and the things I want to do with old computers. It has been interesting because I think KansasFest has really given me some different context to understand vintage computing, and as an interesting comparison to the Vintage Mac and UNIX scenes I've investigated.
This year, I picked up a video cable, a Focus IDE card (and a compact flash card) and a four-megabyte memory card for my Apple IIgs, making it productive with the latest version of GS/OS and able to run some neat applications such as HyperCard and AppleWorks GS. HyperCard and AppleWorks are really just my starting points, to see what day to day use of the platform would've been like.
I have the machine set up on my desk now, I don't totally know what I'll do with it. My first project is to figure out a good way to get my data off of it and then migrate everything from the 32 gigabyte CF card I was able to buy in Kansas City to a much more "reasonable" 2 gigabyte card I have at home. (Consider: I have eight partitions configured, each is 32 megabyte, for a grand total of 256 megabytes of usage.)
The thing that strikes me about the machine is that not only is it a productive desktop computer with a productivity suite and HyperCard on it, in the style of many Macs from the '90s that I love, but it's also got a programming environment built in, in the form of Applesoft Basic. I have the book A Touch of Applesoft Basic on hand, so one of the things I plan on doing with the IIgs is doing some basic programming. I intend to look at HyperCard stuff again, although how far I'll get will depend a bit on what building things on the IIgs is like and whether or not I can find much documentation about it. I have a lot of resources about HyperCard 2 and newer for the Mac, but I just haven't looked for IIgs yet.
The Apple IIgs (and Apple II stuff in general) is weird to me because it's all so expensive. For my "pretty good" 4-meg RAM card and the Focus card, I paid about $150 in total, and I still don't have a CPU accelerator or any of the other advanced options (like a six or eight megabyte RAM card) for the system. I intend to write about that at a different time though.
The dual-system nature of the Apple IIgs makes it a pretty good system for me to play with, just due to my background as a classic Mac user. On one hand, GS/OS 6 is basically similar to using Mac System 6 or 7, which means managing files is pretty easy to do. At the same time, sort of like how you'd do it on a Windows 95 computer, you can drop down into the basic prompt. The IIgs will also boot and run older 8-bit Apple II programs, which means that if there's anything online that strikes my fancy, I can run it on the one system I have. There are other Apple IIs that are neat looking from a practicality or uniqueness standpoint, if I really get into AppleSoft Basic specifically, or if I start using a lot of 8-bit software, I may investigate an Apple IIc or Apple IIc+, as they are small and will easily work with small composite displays. Until then, I don't really have any plans on any different Apple II hardware.
I'll almost certainly post more as I have it. I need to find and install software, figure out what data transfer options are available, and decide on whether or not I should go ahead and buy anything else. There are some other projects I need to work on, like getting a Linux server with Netatalk running, but I've been holding off on some of those while I decide whether I want a physical Linux server or I want it to be a virtual machine. I also need to get my desks in order and ensure that I have enough storage space and places to do these things.