[peterevans]

Ah-ha, well! There are actually two Apple IIe models. (Well, there was a third "platinum" one too, but let's not talk about that.) One would have shown "Apple ][" at boot time, and this was the original model with a 6502 NMOS-based chip. But they later released an "enhanced" model, which had a 65C02 CMOS chip. You could tell the difference because the later model would have instead shown "Apple //e" when booting.

It's quite possible (perhaps because you typed it as Apple //e!) that you were actually working with that 65C02 variant, and thus, your janky stuff was forgiven by the Gods of Early Personal Computing (blessed be).

(See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_IIe)

[ci5er]

I did not know that! I think it said //e on the case and ][ when booting, but I'll have go dig it out of storage. (You'd think that after spending thousands of hours in front of the dang thing, that I'd remember...)