I’m Going To Be Bringing A Special 1980s 8-Bit Treat To Radwood And 50 People Will Get To Take Home 143K Of It

Menu Home » I’m Going To Be Bringing A Special 1980s 8-Bit Treat To Radwood And 50 People Will Get To Take Home 143K Of It I’m Going To Be Bringing A Special 1980s 8-Bit Treat To Radwood And 50 People Will Get To Take Home 143K Of It By Jason Torchinsky October 8, 2026 11:06 am 19 Comments You know what’s coming up soon? Radwood. That’s the big gathering of cars from the ’80s and ’90s, a simpler era of answering machines and saccharine in sodas and Reaganomics and cocaine and Joe Piscopo relevance and lots and lots of great cars. I’d even argue that the ’80s and ’90s were the transition eras into what we now think of as “modern” cars. It’s an important automotive time, worthy of celebration, and that’s what we’re going to do! On October 24, in Alemeda, California, and it’s even free to get in. Hot damn.

Now, we mentioned this before, and let you know some of the 80stastic things we were going to bring, which included a real live Vector M12, our fantastic little Autozam dressed up as a Mazda 787B, and yes, one of my genuine, 1984-vintage Apple IIs.

So, that’s two 1990s cars and one 1980s computer. Not a bad lineup, right? Well, I need to tell you more about the computer part.

You see, we’ve discussed the cars pretty well so far – and both will be making high-speed runs at the location with the San Francisco (a town famous for its powerful if baffling association with boxed, high-sodium rice) skyline in the background.

We didn’t reveal what I’m doing with this old computer yet, though, something I intend to take care of right now. So the plan is to have my Apple //c – the more portable member of the venerable Apple II family – there on site, and while it’s there it will be making unique things for anyone who comes by.

What are those unique things? Cars, of course! Randomly-generated cars much like the ones I have my old Apple IIs generate for Autopian Members on their birthdays, but this time with a little bit of a twist: these will be branded with both the Radwood and Autopian logos, and the date range will be Rad-era only, and the car marque and model names will be modified to be more Rad-jargon friendly.

Just for comparison, here’s the normal member car process and result:

A post shared by The Autopian (@theautopian)

… the Special Radwood Edition will look like this:

See? I have the Radwood logo in there, reduced to fit on a 280×192 pixel screen, and I stuck our logo in the corner, too. The cars, of course, are randomly generated, and should be unique; here’s a little screen capture of the program in action, though keep in mind I haven’t had a chance to change the car names/years just yet:

It was a pain getting that logo in there, and I still have a good bit of tweaking to do. Want to see the program listing, fellow geeks? Sure you do:

That’s hand-built Applesoft BASIC right there, by the way. No filthy AI was used here. Just whatever I learned in the 6th grade.

So, people can come up and get a random car made and take a picture of the screen and enjoy that. But! We have one other surprise! We will also have about 50 5.25″ floppy disks on hand, and I will save a copy of your unique randomized car onto the disk! The disks will be formatted with a program that lets you just pop it into any Apple II with a floppy drive, turn on the machine, and it will auto-load your custom car image!

I still have to write the routines that do that and, you know, initialize 50 disks, but I think I can do that. How’s that for an ’80s experience, though, right? A real 143K floppy disk with an 8K hi-res custom car image on it, bootable and ready to enjoy!

Oh one more thing: does anyone in the Bay Area have a color CRT monitor with composite input they would let us use for the event? A CRT is too big to fly across the country with, so I’m just bringing a small LCD monitor, but that’s less fun than a real, old-school CRT! If anyone has one to loan us, please shoot me an email at jason [at] autopian.com.

Please tell me that one of the model names will include “Groadster”.

0 Member LBJsPNS 2 days ago The last decent Apple computer was the II GS. Fight me.

3 Member Spopepro 2 days ago Reply to  LBJsPNS Nah… the Pismo G3 powerbook is the absolute pinnacle of Apple. Swappable drives/batteries, processor daughter board, and the last of the classic os computers. Maybe I should bring my Pismo to radwood. I haven’t fired it up in ages…

0 Member Fineheresyourdamn70dollars 1 day ago Reply to  LBJsPNS Agree. Plus you can’t beat playing Flight Simulator written for 1 MHz but the IIGS set to 2 Mhz. The ‘lil Cessna is almost controllable with that hack!

1 Member Eslader 1 day ago Reply to  LBJsPNS It was both the best and the worst Apple ever made. Came out well ahead of anything else on the market, especially for sound quality. PCs didn’t catch up for years until Soundblasters became common.

But almost as soon as it was released, Apple abandoned it to concentrate on the Mac, which meant there was a pretty limited catalog of software that took advantage of the IIgs’s unique capabilities, and most of us were using stuff that also ran on the IIe/IIc and made you wonder why you bothered spending more for the upgrade you weren’t really using.

1 Member Spopepro 2 days ago Too bad… I have some Apple ][gs monitors that I could bring, but while the //c has a DB15 video port, and the ][gs monitor has a DB15 port… the ][gs is analog video output and the //c is raw. I love computing in the 80s!

But if you’re stuck with the flat panel you can still pass it off! The reason for the raw output is specifically for the //c flat panel display, which makes the //c truly portable. While one of those would be out of this world cool… being monochrome with no backlight and 560×192 (DOUBLE hi rez!) it wouldn’t really fit the purpose.

0 Twobox Designgineer 2 days ago That’s hand-built Applesoft BASIC right there, by the way. No filthy AI was used here. Just whatever I learned in the 6th grade.

It would be pretty funny if, with all the Python, C+, &c coding that AI can do, if it was unable to do Applesoft BASIC because it’s too obscure or poorly documented.

0 Member TriangleRAD 2 days ago Over the summer I was at the Vintage Bazaar at the NC State Fairgrounds. A vendor was selling a working 1983 Apple II with all manuals, no software. He was asking $900. While it did tickle my nostalgia for the Apple II C+ my family had, it didn’t tickle it 900 bucks’ worth.

Also Torch, you know they’ve announced RADwood Charlotte for next April. Maybe when your’e there in Alameda you can work something out with Art and the guys to participate in that event too.

1 Member Parsko 2 days ago I’ll look into it over the weekend. If I don’t, I could swing by the pawn shop and grab one.

I have a funny feeling that my flatscreen TV from 2009 that I daily use may have one already.

0 Member Freddy Bartholomew 2 days ago I can’t help with the floppy drive. Anyone coming to Alameda happen to have a drive (and associated computer) for 128 MB magneto-optic cartridges? We made these about 35 years ago and I would like to know if they still work. They come with a lifetime warranty by a company that went into bankruptcy in 1999.

0 Member Bleeder 2 days ago Reply to  Freddy Bartholomew So they’re warrantied for the lifetime of the company that made them!

0 Member Freddy Bartholomew 2 days ago Reply to  Bleeder Yes! It is like Cobra for health insurance if you lose your job. It goes away if the company went bankrupt. Ask me how I know. 😉 Not the same company as made the disk, but they went bankrupt, too.

0 Member PlatinumZJ 2 days ago Another reason to be bummed that my parents sold our Apple II to some relatives who let it sit in their basement and then did who knows what with it. (T_T)

It had two 3.5″ drives and one 5.25″ drive, all external of course.

1 Member Jnnythndrs 2 days ago I have a couple of OG Commodore 64 monitors with composite input, let me check this weekend that they still work, it’s been awhile since I fired up my 64 or Amiga 500.

3 Member Grey alien in a beige sedan 2 days ago Will this display correctly on my Osborne 1?

0 Member Disphenoidal 2 days ago But what if I don’t have an Apple II with a floppy drive? Is there something I can pick up at the deli instead?

5 Member Brockstar 2 days ago Reply to  Disphenoidal Whats the shelf life of salami stored data vs floppy stored data? Asking for a friend.

1 Member Fordlover1983 2 days ago But the only think I have with a 5.25 drive is a Commodore 64!

0 Member Scott Alan Finkeldei 2 days ago This is f’ing amazing and I want to be there for it!