Could the Apple IIe be the most reliable machine ever? (Testing 12 more of them)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 ต.ค. 2021
- In a continuation from Part 1, let's go through the rest of the Apple IIe machines I got from AJ up in Seattle. How many of these machines will work properly?
Part 1: • I have a huge Apple //...
Part 2: This part!
--- Video Links
Wikipedia article on the Apple IIe:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_IIe
Information on Apple II disk controllers including the Liron Card:
wiki.apple2.org/index.php?titl...
Liron Card Clone:
www.bigmessowires.com/2018/01...
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Really love this series. I'm probably the only one, but I think the old school branding adds to the ambiance!
I agree. It shows the machine's history, which is interesting in itself.
Old-school school-branding. :D
Hey cool to see you hear i like your video’s
@@GeekmanCA I was going to say the same thing
Such beautiful penmanship!
Fun fact, I'm the author of the Wikipedia article on the Apple IIe (including the Revisions section) shown at 19:23! Also the author of the articles on the Apple IIc, Apple IIc Plus and several sections the Apple IIGS article, including its revision section. Wrote them up back in 2006, as there were no articles covering those machines at the time. Glad to see someone making use of my information all these years later! :)
With regards to the IIe revisions, the presence of a 65C02 does not necessarily indicate an Enhanced machine. While there are indeed four chips making up the official enhancement kit, and recommended they all be used together, it is possible to upgrade *only* the CPU as some people did. I've also seen cases of custom video character ROMs used. Always best to check the part numbers on all four chips: CPU, CD-ROM, EF-ROM and Video ROM. The Platinum IIe came pre-configured as Enhanced, no need to check it.
In schools, or at least my high school, kids would often pull off those "Enhanced" or "65C02" stickers over the power light (the later seen on international machines, such as in Canada), so that's not always the best way to tell if your machine is unenhanced or not. Thanks for the warning about the 'MT' brand DRAMs, turns out my unenhanced IIe is filled with them but thankfully they're all socketed!
I found a IIE on Craigslist for $40 some time ago, it had some broken keys, two drives and a monochrome monitor, rebuilt the power supply, retro-brighted it and I still use it to this day. I love playing infocom games on it 😁 Good work on these, makes me happy to see them preserved…
Props to you and Infocom. Those games are bar-none the pinnacle of Interactive Fiction writing and story path. Also, the Z-code compiler was very early, and instrumental much later with hardware and software virtualization. A brilliant company and product. I always was a major Douglas Adams fan. When I heard there was to be a Hitchhikers game by Infocom, I think I might have pissed myself a little. I did eventually complete it, but the combination of Steve Meretsky and Adams lead to a fiendishly complicated experience. Very rewarding however.
The more of these machines I see with keyboard damage, the more convinced I am that we need to build a modern replacement for the keyboard. Someone did it for the C64 and the results are a keyboard that works far better than the original ever did, though it looks a little out of place with modern "too square" keycaps on it.
Still, so many IIe machines need keyboard repair, and the original IIc keyboard is garbage. Bonus: The original keyboards on these machines lack diodes to prevent ghosting. That's a cheap addition today.
Designing PCBs isn't really something I've done before.
@@knghtbrd Completely agree, fixing the keyboard was the most expensive part. I was lucky and found a caps lock key switch. It’s not a complicated layout, maybe I should bite the bullet and prototype one. I’ll have to dig up another IIE that I can monkey with, I’m not touching this one as it runs so well 🤪
@@ToadSprockett Check for shorts on the prototype before connecting it to the machine. Rows, columns, and rails. It's not a complex layout at all-it's basically a 60% style but with an LED (make it a tri-color model and you can cheat on the power being green and caps-lock being orange).
Note the IIc uses a different matrix than the IIe. Oh, and if you decide to do one for the I/II/II+ (with microcontroller to actually decode the key matrix), remember that the Apple II like many really old machines uses a ridiculously long space bar. Put an extra switch on the left and right, and have some provision for connecting them to the joystick port. Open/closed apple switches!
Back in my early days fixing Spectrum/BBC/Apple/Commodore machines, I used to have test systems where all the chips were socketed for ease of verifying if there was a fault with a chip out of a customer machine. I remember a Spectrum that came in where the ULA had a hole burnt through it, and the circuit board where some kid had plugged in a random PSU to a jack at the back. Didn't take much diagnosis to see what the problem was, and not much chip left to move!
As an electrical troubleshooter, it is very common to have connections like that. Its called galvanic corrosion. Its why you dont put a screw in an aircraft panel that is made from a different material that the screw mount. They must be the same, or they will corrode. Same is true for cards/slots. If the connectors are copper going into aluminum, silver, or gold, it will corrode. Basically two different metals are all you need for it to happen. When the metals are in a humid environment, it happens a lot more. Often, simply re-seating the parts is enough to break the corrosion. But cleaning if off will usually give you years before it shorts again.
Had a ][+ in 81 when i was a kid. 48k baby. This is really bringing back some memories. That old dual disk controller, wow what a trip. I was obsessed with Karateka and Hard Hat Mack.
Steve Wozniak's workmanship is evident.
The “head-seek track 0” sound from the old Disk ][ drives just makes me happy every time I hear it. Those were simpler (and happier) times (except for having to go to school, that kinda sucked)! ❤️🥰😻
I can hear right now the sound of Apple II machines loading various things off various disks as if it was right in front of me. By far the largest such mental library is an old Shugart Disk II. I wish I had one, but at this point I've only got an AppleDisk 5.25 which serves for all necessary tasks.
My old high school had a master switch for all of the bench power points. The teacher would flick the switch and about 20 DIskII drives would do the seek simultaneously. Sounded fantastic!
At the grade school I went to (not Clover Park), I recall we had an entire room of Apple IIe computers next to the school library and every single one of those computers relied exclusively on 5.25" disk drives. No other disk drive at all.
Same here, although many had two Disk ][ drives, and some of those had two floppy disk controller cards. I knew there was a difference because I could type PR#7 to boot from the second drive on those (just a thought I had), while on the others with two drives the command didn't work. I wasn't sure why this was until I learned more about Apple II computers later, though.
Additionally, about half of the Apple IIes were unenhanced with the old style case and key caps with white lettering, while the other half were enhanced IIes with black lettering on the key caps. Most had Amdek Color-I monitors, while the others had Apple green monochrome monitors (I have one of each now because they're so iconic with the Apple II). There was also exactly one Apple IIc with the small green monochrome monitor that was designed for it (need to get one of those, too, but with my Commodores and Ataris and consoles, this hobby of mine is starting to get out of hand!).
The only Apple IIs I ever saw with 3.5" drives at the schools I went to were IIgs machines.
Man oh man, so many memories coming back to me! As a kid, I had a hand-me-down //E that was lucky enough to get the rare GS upgrade kit.
I really wish I held onto that machine, but alas it's long since gone.
Thank you, Adrian. I've learned to appreciate the Commodore content over time, but I really love the Apple ][ videos whenever you publish them.
The lettering added to the sides is beautifully done.
Even more impressive that these units still work for having been used in a school environment. Speaking of that, my theory for the broken speakers are the students wanting to play games on these without the teacher knowing... By damaging the speakers, the teacher could not simply just plug it back in and probably not worth the service call to have it repaired. At least, that would have been the kind of things I did back in the day...
Good theory. They probably snipped the thin wires going to the coil...
Having been a network admin for school districts in the past, this is where my money is. Students did it by jamming something in the slot and destroying the speakers. Either to secretly play games or to just vandalize.
There are speaker holes located in the case? Could a student jam something through there and damage the speaker?
@@colinstu Yes, perhaps scissors...
These computers are pretty robust and reliable, I'm not saying that they aren't, but when I did the inventory for a middle school in the late 1980s, there were plenty of broken ones in storage--more than there were in operation, as I recall. If the 16 that Adrian is looking at here were taken straight out of a classroom when the school stopped using them, then it shouldn't be surprising that all or nearly all of them would be in working order. The ones that broke over time might have been disposed of separately, either all at once if they were kept in storage or one at a time.
Really enjoying this series. I've never owned a vintage apple machine but I am seriously considering adding one to the retro machine collection. Keep up the great work.
I'm totally jealous of all this awesome hardware. Great job on these and I love the series
Great work, I admire your patience and attention to detail Adrian!
Even (only) 30 years ago, the company I worked for had the maintenance contract for Apple, exclusive then in this Left-Coast Canadian Island town. Most Libraries/Schools had already started to go away from 8-bit, but there was still a metric shit-tonne of Apple IIe labs. The Cannibalization had already been a thing for years, but at the tail end, these schools knew that modern stuff was soon-coming and I was informed that ALL means should be used to get to the next replacement cycle and nothing more. Hence all the Frankenstein swaps, different key colours, different top plates, etc. I wasn't even authorized to replace all those dead speakers you have found! It was the end of the line at that point. If young Billy didn't get his BEEPS then such it was.
I would, in addition to verifying that all keys on each keyboard work properly, I would also check all expansion slots to make sure that they work. I lover your channel.
Thanks Adrian, your blue tape reminded me that I was looking for mine the other day, then I rememebered I was also missing my liquid flux and soldering sponge water bottles from my desk, which jogged my memory that I tidied up my desk when I got my new monitor at the beginning of lockdown 2 (electric boogaloo), and dumped a bunch of stuff into a box. So I dug out the box and found everything.
I learned alot about my apple II's. thank you for making this series. turns out I have a fancy disk controller card, and it makes sense now why my regular floppies didn't work.
this series is so awesome
What a beautiful stack of Liron cards!
Super nostalgic for me as these were the first computers I ever used as a Child. Even back then they were outdated, but we had a row of these things in the back of most of the classrooms in my grade school.
Great video!
I love the Apple //c, I bought one for $20 in 1997 and Still works.
Loving these long videos Adrian 👍
You should put dummy header pins in the unused pins of the ribbon connector so you can't be out 1 row of pins and blow it up.
I wonder if the enhanced lids got accidently swapped to non enhanced apples.
The way you say Karateka is closer to the way it would be pronounced in Japanese. The word karateka means practitioner of karate.
Yeah, in Japanese it would be pronounced 'kah-rah-tay-kah' (of course with the Japanese-prounced 'l/d' sounding 'r')
I have a Pravetz 8C which is basically a reverse engineered Apple IIe (main difference is that the FDD and Serial cards are build in on the mainboard and you get 2 less expansion slots) and it still works absolutely fine
One of the best games, as far as I know was only on the Apple II line, was EAMON. It was a text only adventure game, much like Zork. But it was all done in Applesoft Basic. It allowed for users to make their own adventure stories. I was big into AD&D at the time, so I learned basic rewriting adventures from AD&D.
I found your channel some days ago as I search for a possible way to fix my commodore 500. And since them I'm stucked, because this is so interesting for me.
Considering these were in schools and the shape most were in when I fooled with them in the early 90s these are in excellent shape. I could only imagine where we would be if Woz kept designing hardware for Apple.
My Atari 800 is 40 years old and it still works flawlessly (quite the reliable machine), even my 40 year old floppy disks still work.
Tech tip, there are two commands that can activate a disk card. You can use PR# or you can use IN#. Let me explain the commands. PR# changes the print output (normally the monitor) to the slot in question. IN# changes the input from the keyboard to the slot in question. These both work as both commands send I/O to the disk card. The disk cards are programmed to activate their firmware and boot the computer off the disk when it receives IO addressed to the slot. Other examples are:
PR#3: This switches output to the 80 column card (either in slot 3 on Apple II or II+ or integrated with aux RAM on //e or //c)
IN#2: Take input from card in slot 2 (typically serial). This is how you boot ADT from the serial port. You can also use this to change the input of an Apple II computer to a terminal on slot 2. PR#2 would also have to be issued if you want to output to said terminal.
The way it works is at the same time both brilliant and really simple (that's the whole genius of Woz). PR#X changes the value of a ZP vector ($36 and $37) that holds the address of the "output a character" routine. It take the value of X, adds $C0 and puts the resulting value into zp $37. It also stores $00 into zp $36. Once it's done, it returns to the calling routine which is the basic interpreter. And guess what ? The first thing the basic interpreter tries to do is to output a "]" as the prompt. Trying to do that, it will just call the $CX00 routine which is the standard initialisation routine for the card in slot X. The same applies to IN#X except it patches the vector for the "input a character" routine ($38 and $39). Woz is not only a genius in electronics, he's also pretty darn good at programming the 6502.
Fun fact about ADTPro and the SSC (Super Serial Card). While the SSC has configuration options for up to 19,200, when ADTPro talks to it, it can go 115,200! One of the reasons ADTPro is magic. ;-) Great vid!
13:40 - "Someone decided...to pillage it for all its parts...when the reality is it's a very simple fix." It's a very simple fix NOW. Back in the day, memory chips were expensive, and most people, including the ones working in the computer stores that sold these, had no idea how to troubleshoot a memory problem. So if one were a school district computer systems manager who had plenty of these machines to go around, keeping a malfunctioning computer around in order to cannibalize the parts would have been a completely reasonable decision.
Yup, like the power supply replacements. If a Power Supply goes on our PC, we just order another one.. no-one (even at work or elsewhere) would open up the power supply to find the fault. We do it more now because it's easier/cheaper to find the individual parts then it is to find whole units of things so repair is more the mindset for vintage stuff.
@@brianv2871, that's true as well, but my point was that back when those Apple IIe computers were in use, the tools for doing board-level diagnostics were mostly out of reach, the brainshare for doing board-level fixes was largely nonexistent, and replacement parts were too expensive for experimentation. The manuals that shipped with them were useful, but fell far short of providing detailed information about how the ICs worked together, where to test the ICs for voltages with our multimeters or where to touch the oscilloscope leads to test for noisy circuits. Did I say "our" multimeters? Personally, I was the only person in my circle of friends who had one. And forget about the oscilloscope. That was an expensive piece of scientific equipment back in 1989. I certainly didn't own one or have access to one, and I knew nobody outside of academic circles who did. Even if a school computer systems manager had access to those tools, that doesn't mean he knew what to do with them. The how-to knowledge was generally found at computer club meetings, and unless your computer club members included an electrical engineer or two, or you were fortunate enough to have access to a BBS that offered up that level of information, what Adrian does in his videos may as well have been magic. Nowadays, of course, we can look all this up on the Internet, so anyone with some basic skills in small electronics can teach himself to fix the stuff that we once gave up on.
This is merely my explanation as to how this amazing collection of Apple IIe computers came to be the way Adrian received it. I don't mean to minimize what Adrian does in his videos. To do what he does requires time, dedication and motivation born out of a genuine love of breathing life back into old electronics. I have none of those, so I'm not going to start looking around for antique electronics and teaching myself to repair them. But I do enjoy watching Adrian do it. To me, he is just as much an artist as he is a talented technician.
This is sadly true, especially with Apple who provided less and less straightforward documentation as time went on.
The Sad Mac codes were actually pretty informative, but good luck decoding them in the 90s when few people had internet access, few resources existed on the internet, and even the few off the shelf books that had info on the codes were written by people who didn't really know specifically what the codes were, just what type of failure normally accompanied them.
Even now you have to do some digging to find an accurate sheet that was documented by a tech or developer at Apple, and it gets harder the further into the 90s you go.
I serviced them for a School System. The power supplies were the weakest link. We kept quite a few keyboard momentary switches on hand as well. The other thing I recall is replacing disk drive IC's. The first Apple ever laid my eyes on was a Black Apple which was licensed to Bell & Howell. We had Commodore C64's and Apple's, The Commodore's just couldn't hold up to the rigors of the academic market.
Man I wish I could get one of those type of Apple II machines, I remember using those and the newer apple machines in elementary school.
Sockets make sense. You can continue motherboard production if there's a parts supply issue then populate the chips later
Excellent video and work as always. About the RAM, when you get the binary numbers, face the computer with the keyboard away from you. Then binary numbers match the chips on the board. An opps but the developer. Rifa caps are on those power supplies, so you know what to do next. Also, my rev A unit does take the enhancement chip :) oh btw, on board diagnostics is not fake
I think the only difference between the rare Rev. A and ubiquitous Rev. B boards is the latter's ability to display the newer double-hi-res graphics modes. Either will take the IIe Enhancement Kit (65C02/6503 plus some upgraded ROMs).
I'm guessing the speakers were jabbed by kits with pens or pencils or other implements, either to vandalise or to mute the things to avoid making noise or something...
So you could play "Moon Patrol" (by far the loudest Apple 2 game) while the instructor wasn't behind you 😋
@@brentboswell1294 The loudest Apple ][ game is 'Microwave'.
I received a ban from my high school library in my senior year for playing Ultima 3. I was the only on in trouble as everyone else was playing games on IIc's that had volume controls and I was on the only IIe.
@@infinitecanadian - Nah, I'd say The Halley Project (the intro, with digitized audio of the guy shouting and the guitar solo! Very cool, but VERY loud!)
@@Apple2gs You're right! That's amazing! I don't know why they didn't do that on the Atari 8-Bit, which had impressive speech capabilities.
37:30 Try IN#6 as an alternative to PR#6
It's amazing how much old hardware holds up. 16 machines and most of them work.
I like the ones with the Clover Park School District and 3 circles painted on the case.
awesome - just found this blog - (from just south of the Portland Metro area). I have an old 2e - which works - and an old Lisa which doesn't currently. Love the vids so far. I need to learn more about my old stuff.
-d
There is a LIRON specific 800K 3.5 UniDIsk drive, too. It is not a true Smartport device, but was designed for that drive and has some enables for larger devices. The ProFIle HDD cards also do not autoboot prior to the //e Enhanced.
You could also try IN#6 to boot up the computer. IN#6 or PR#6. Assuming that IN# means interface and PR# means peripheral.
I am genuinely jealous you have that many IIs around. I've wanted a (replica) to chug an ITX build into for years. They are pretty dang rare here in Scandinavia (and usually restored and working), and after the Indiegogo campaign for a replica case where the author did a hit-and-run I get so sad whenever someone shows off IIs.
Do you have a 3D printer? I have some experience and could make you a printable case
7 Liron cards. Wow! Plus a nice stash of Disk II controllers.
Adrian, as FYI, "IN#6" also triggers a boot sequence like "PR#6", for machines like the last one where the "P" key doesn't work.
We had a library full of Apple IIs and Commodore 64s in my grade 1-3 school. I hope at least some of them found a loving home in the e-waste afterlife.
There were two types of Apple serial cards prior to the Super Serial Card which supports being configured to emulate either type.
You can’t argue that they weren’t made with a lot more love back then than they are now!
Lol. I have an old //e clone that my cats use as a perch and stair sitting there all retro-dulled that I'm dying to fire up one day. I think the psu and maybe the monitor will kill the system from running fully after I clean it. Seeing they're so reliable I have to try one of these days. Love these apple videos with vintage hardware.
Cool video, thanks :)
@26:00 you mention the patina of that IIe. That was the color of my IIe when it was brand new.
Ahh, the good old 2e, The first type of computer I used back in 85//86 at school think in first or 2nd grade
Thats because everything was make in US with quality components and the printed circuit tracks were very thick, all golden contacts were real gold. Although my dads apple II needed tinkering many times we used. Maybe the slots are not very good. My dad had an apple II factory in sao paulo Brazil, it was appletronica.. Try some pencil eraser to clean contacts.
Pencil eraser is OK in a pinch, but will eventually wear down the traces. He has DeOxit, so that's a better option.
When I arrived in high school in 1982 they had just installed a new lab of fresh //e machines. I spent so many hours in there!! If you sell these, count me as interested!
A couple of things you might find useful. first, if you can't type PR#6 because the P key isn't working, IN#6 should also work.
Second, the unenhanced IIe ROM looks for a three byte signature in the I/O card ROM to identify a disk drive device. One of the changes the enhancement did was to shorten that signature by dropping the last byte. This allowed the enhanced IIe to identify a SCSI card as a disk device and boot from that.
I am looking for the 5 1/4 inch Disk 2 drive hub white pads. They would go on the drive arm that would move up & down to read the disks. The pads would get dirty.
I had a supply but lost all my spare parts when I lost my storage in the early 2000’s.
I’ve looked everywhere & can’t find any.
I have 4 disk 2 drives and 5 Apple 2’s.
I had a Commodore 128 at home but at St. Joseph we had Apple IIe's that were replaced with PC's my senior year.
Hi, Adrian! I have an Apple II/e Platinum, i've bought it from ebay, couple years ago. Yesterday I decided to take it apart, so I can clean it up from inside, and overall to see what's inside after 35 years... So, when I take the motherboard out from the bottom side of it I've found that the three gum pads from the bottom of the case were melted out, and the bottom side of mother board was pretty nasty. So I've Cleaned the mess up, and it turned out pretty well! Before cleaning I've noticed that from time to time on the monitor it was some flickering, when the solid color or white screen was generated, but after cleaning of the bottom side of the mother board the video image on the monitor is rock solid again. So even if all seems to be ok it's not a bad idea to take the machine apart for further investigations. Sorry that I didn't take pictures of the melted gum on the bottom side of the motherboard.
Reminds me of elementary school. Playing Karateka every recess. "memories"
A big hello from Spain Adrian and I am hook to your videos they are great, and for the Apple II series Computers I can say that are probably the most reliable systems ever made 🦾🦾 Apple II forever 🥰🥰🤩🤩
I would say the ][ series is probably one of the best designed computers ever made. There's a reason that line lasted so long from introduction until the IIGS finally phased out (arguably a whole new computer, still the //e and //e platinum were made at the same time roughly). Woz made sure it was a simple construction, easy for the user to fix anything that went wrong, and expandable into the future all in the same computer. His philosophy for building a computer would get an engineer fired these days at most companies.
My //e Platinum and IIGS Woz edition still run flawlessly; both filled with expansion cards. The IIGS is still my favorite computer from that era even if it has quirks just like the rest of the ]['s had when it comes to graphics modes among other things.
At the very least you can mix and match the best cases and covers (i.e. w/o the school logos) and you might have a whole bunch of IIe's without that school lateling. I had bought a Vic 20, but I considered my IIe my first non-tv computer-and miss it so much. I had replaced it with a IIgs in 1986 until I sold it a few years later. An interesting thing with my Apple II compouters was that they held their value, not something possible today (I basically was able to sell my systems for the price of their replacements). For a decade it seemed that so many computer systems (w/ monitor hard drive & printer) were at the 3K price in the 1980's. The Vic 20 and Apple IIe is what started me programming as a child. 8 bit memories.
#7's and #12 PSU is from the older Apple II ( not II+) as parts are hard to come by. No school or school district (in my experience with the NYC School System) had a contract with any company to repair machines and usually had some tech in-house hired as some low level school employee who assisted the computer lab teacher and were forced to cannibalize parts from dead or broken machines or swapped out spares. Things changed after the late 90s a mid 2000s when schools and their districts made contracts with computer companies lie Apple and Dell, but by then machines like the Apple IIe's were taken out of the classes and put into storage basements and replaced with Macs and PCs.
I'm doing laundry while watching this too!
18:06 That test with the high pitched sound is perfectly normal on any Apple ][e I’ve ever used (originals, no numeric keypad.)
One of those socketed machines could be a tester for chips like your ZIF socket C64 just saying LoL :). Love your vids they are entertaining and informative. Thank You!
We had a lab of the Plat //e 's at my elementary school for general use. They kicked butt, took abuse, and rarely ever failed. The games were fun, programming them was easy and right to the point, and most importantly: Nothing any kid did could kill these things. I could get in as much or as little trouble as I wanted, it was all there, and if I screwed up something, it was just a power cycle or reset away from getting back to normal. I still remember the day they finally got rid of them, and it was a huge shame. The deal they made with Apple was that the computers were to all be destroyed after their use, not given away, not resold, not auctioned off and so most of them tragically were. I cannot confirm or deny that some might have slipped through the cracks. We had a commodore 64 lab in the special ed room. So many came dead on arrival, had weird bugs, had keyboards go out, or flat out died/needed service, especially the 1541 floppy drives. You may laugh at this, but I saw a C64 as a elementary school kid, saw the petscii characters on the keys, and thought "Oh, this must be machine language, how does anyone memorize that?' Going off on a tangent here, just that in our school setting commodores were unreliable but the apple II's never faltered.
Anyway they replaced that awesome Apple lab with what I consider one of the most ugly computers I had (and have) ever seen, a desktop style (not tower) compaq presario with a pentium and a quantum bigfoot hard drive. They were slow, unstable and awful, plus they had this big ugly teal "moon" sleep button on them, and if you were a jerk you went down all the rows pressing this button, and windows 95 didn't know what to do, so you'd have to turn it off and on again just to get it to boot back.( I will say though there was one similarity to the old Apple II on the compaq's, you had to reach behind to turn them on/off!). I think they might have had 4-5 of the Apple ]['s serviced in the 15+ years they had them... Yet in the first month of having the compaq's 1/2 of those had failed hard drives.
Anyway back to reliability, every single Apple][ I have come across I haven't had the apprehension to switch on like so many other computers, I figure it'll just work. Once pulled 'grand dad's' Apple ][ out of their attic for a friend so he could grab the family tree stuff, and he was shocked when I just plugged it all together, flipped the switch, everything was good. I did dust out the floppy drive before we used it on anything important, but it was pretty amazing to pull something down that was stored for 20+ years and have it work just as good as when it was stowed away and forgotten about. Even cooler was we then ran ADTPRO, connected it to my laptop and recovered all his actual disks. The Imagewriter ][ worked a treat too, so we made print outs of everything.
I showed him some cool games on it you could play and I think he got hooked. The drive seek sound/bash head sound is so specific, and the Apple 2's beep too. Good memories. WoZ had a touch with circuits and although he would use components in a way they had never been used before, he also seemed to have a knack for how far he could push the hardware and give it overhead. There was so much hack-a-bility (and hacks too) inside that computer for you to be able to go as shallow or deep as you wanted to inside the hardware, and the way so many people made homebrew interface cards was also amazingly cool.
All hail the Mighty Woz!
I like those cards piled up in the end, I might have a collecting problem :)
People suggested you try paint stripper, maybe that can help take off those school logos from the cases.
Looking forward to the repairs! I know it's an easy fix to replace that RAM chip, replacing keyboard stemp and glueing the keyboard back but I still like to see old machines restored.
Yesterday I fixed a Gameboy Color's ribbon cable, something got inside the machine as there was corrosion on the LCD's ribbon cable at the very end where it was connected into the socket on the motherboard. The Gameboy Color didn't even start, when I turned it on it shut off instantly, indicating a probable short somewhere. I took it apart, saw the nasty patina. Took out the LCD and the machine started up, I heard it's working, even loaded games without a problem. Then I cleaned and checked the pins, 4 of them were bad. The way I tested the pins was I gently poked the placticky part with a needle that was connected to one lead of a multimeter and touched the end of the ribbon cable with the other lead. The magnifying glasses was a huge-huge help because the pins are like half a millimeter or narrower. I was able to scrape off some plastic covering the lines inside the ribbon cable and soldered a bodge wire to the ends of the ribbon cable. It wasn't easy because the whole end goes into the socket so I didn't have much room to solder to. I almost gave up at least 3 times on this LCD panel but in the end if freakin' worked! I still need a new polarizer for it though.
28:30 If you fry your Disk ][ by offsetting or reversing the cable, fortunately it's an easy fix (replace a single 74xx IC inside the drive).
I blew one of my Disk ][s about 35 years ago doing this. I went to the local electronics store, bought the replacement, and it worked. The socket melted a little, but otherwise ok. :)
I usually am very careful when connecting a drive cable into the controller card but once I wasn't and blew a cap in the drive (maybe more?). That connector/drive cable implementation was a bad design decision and compounded by the Apple IIe, which doesn't have the open top slits for card cables. This forces you to thread the drive cable through a port knockout, giving you less length to work with and harder to get right.
You can make a non enhanced Apple IIe boot from a LIRON card by patching the EF Rom (I usually use an AT28C64B but any 64Kbits (E)EPROM will do).
Here are the patch offsets :
00001ABB is 07, change to 05
00001B08 is 3C, change to 3E
The first byte modifies the routine that checks the signature for a bootable device card firmware. The second byte is required in order to have the ROM checksum correct so the autotest works without issue.
in 2000 I worked at a school that had a 1.5mtre area under one of the building and had IIe's stacked on unused desks, there must have been over 30, I dealt in second hand hardware but did not take them when they were offered to me as there was excessive humidity as the area needed ventilation and the humidity was bad, looks like they may have survived.
My IIe quit working right before I needed it to recover some documents for someone, so I got a IIgs before the Retro boom caused prices on nice retro computers to skyrocket. I'll have to get it out someday and see if I can't figure out why it won't boot anymore.
All of them work (beside the one with bad RAM, relatively easily repaired). We can only postulate Programmed Obsolescence had yet to be conceived back then.
Hey Adrian, as you look down on top of the motherboard, what is that three pin edge connector in the far upper left corner of the A2 Motherboard?
looking forward to a keyboard marathon, figuring out the best way to clean them etc
The very first computer my family had when I was a kid was an Apple //e. I was born in 87, and I think we got it when I was about 5 or 6. Ours had an Amber monochrome screen though.
The school district where I attended my last seven years of school had loads of early Apple IIes. All of them had the early cases which carried over from the II+ and had the old Disk II system and Monitor III displays. I don't think any of them had the Enhancement Kit installed.
I have one of those early Apple IIes (with a Rev. B board like most have and keys with the original white lettering), and I even got a vintage Enhancement Kit for it, but I still haven't installed it because I haven't had to--works fine with the software I use.
my iie enhanced is from 86 and it has the rockwell 6503
The 65SC02 is actually a stripped down 65C02. It's missing bit operations.
If a key is missing on an Apple ][e (I only have experience with the originals, no numeric keypad), then the most ideal keys to be broken and/or missing are Escape, Tab, Return, and the four arrow keys. All of them are duplicates of Control + another character.
Similarly, the open and closed Apple keys are duplicates of the 2 joystick buttons if one is attached.
Definitely glad I wasn't playing the drinking game this time! Would've ended up pretty blotto after all that deoxit action!
I am incredibly jealous of your Apple II collection though. The extent of mine is a single IIc that I got cheap because it's missing the internal floppy drive. I was going to pick up a spare from Apple Rescue of Denver, but I was putting it off until the end of lockdown 2 (electric boogaloo), since international shipping from the US to Australia was pretty dodgy. However between then and now their one drive sold, which unfortunately leaves me with zero options. I do have an external drive, but AFAIK that requires some mods to the IIc to get it working as drive 1 to boot off disks.
Anyway, hope you can get the machines working and find something cool to do with them I'm sure by the time you get around to working on them you'll receive some spare parts in your mail call videos!
I always wanted an Apple ][e but in the UK they cost ridiculous money. I ended up with the British Apple, the BBC Micro. The only failure on mine was the RIFAs in the power supply. I recapped it. I bought that machine in 1982 and 40 years later its still going strong.
Unless you want to find parts. The disk drives are modified so you can't just use off the shelf drives !! And the list goes on !!
They were great machines to learn how to be a hacker. Current generations aren't so lucky to have something that you have complete low level access to and complete control of the hardware & software. Loved the Apple ][s.
Also... not like you'll ever need to know this now, but MOST of the time for a disk device "IN#6" will also reboot when your P or R key isn't working. :)
Technically, the Apple SSC CAN do 115200 baud by manually setting the lowest 5 bits of the ACIA CONTROL register to 0 ($C0AB if your SSC is in slot 2). This tells the ACIA to divide the external 1.8432 MHz clock by 16 to determine the baud rate. However, it's unable to use any other divider when using the external clock like this, so it won't support baud rates between 19200 and 115200. ADTPro uses this technique.
37:46 An ugly workaround for certain letters that don’t work would be to PRINT CHR$(num) either with the specific ASCII value or do so in a FOR - NEXT loop. Thankfully you could get by with using the ? character in place of PRINT. Then you’d used the Escape key then arrows (or certain letters), back up to the needed character on screen, press Space bar to begin input at that spot, arrow over the printed P, then type the rest of the needed command.
Wait for summer and have a retrobright-a-thon. :D
Ive been looking for one for a good price forever i miss my old one ftom my childhood
Hello from Ukraine! We love computers and haribo! Like you:)
I want one!
I love emulating old machines, playing around.
I dont have the room for the real deal. but if i did, oh my id have it all lol.
@18:34 my unenhanced IIe does the same. It was almost but not quite the same rom as the IIplus, and the self test was one of the new functions. What was the highpitch whistle when you tested it, was that from speaker or from PSU or screen?