Back in 1981 my mother purchased an Apple //e for me. I still have it wrapped in plastic in my closet along with a spare Apple //e that I purchased 15 years ago, for parts. I have 2 3-ring folders full of Games/Utilities floppies. I may take it out of the closet and power it on after watching your very cool video. It’s nice to see people still enjoying vintage computers!
Wasn’t the Apple IIe released in very early 1983? We had a lab of brand new ones that year as a grade 11 student. The II Plus was perhaps what you meant… or the year was wrong.
If the ram you ordered doesn't work, let me know. I can go through my ][s and probobly pull some. I think i have one or two with a bad chip or two that I can just convert to a donor machine. (ie, the one with the trashed case LOL) Awesome video, always love seeing these ][e machines get a second life.
I rescued a IIe from a college where they were just going to throw it out. It was just the computer and 2 disk][s. I paid $20 shipping and that was it. I bought a Super Serial card and loaded up ADT to it (it was 1999, before great things like the CFFA and Floppy Emu), and used asimov to download disk images and get it back up and running. I still have that computer. I had a couple other machines (2 IIcs, 2 IIgs) that were similarly rescued.
@@junker15 My old elementary school in the 1990s used Apple 2e's in the computer lab and throughout the school. They were replaced in 1999 with the iMac. I later was reunited with the Apple 2's in middle school where they were heaped up in an abandoned music room. After the middle school closed in 2015 or so they were all in the dumpsters. It must have been nearly 100 or more. I only found out from seeing my old school on the news B- roll footage and wasn't actually there to see it. I was seething with rage. I have one myself I bought in 2013 off eBay for $80. Nobody wanted it because it had the Apple 3 monitor and a hodgepodge diskette drive that didn't work. After Steve Jobs died Apple 2's were selling on eBay all day long for $500 a piece.
This was my first computer. I bought it soon after college graduation. Added an Applewriter and two Apple disk drives. Those were the days. I later "upgraded" to a Mac512.
Great job on the restoration! It’s so sad to think someone was going to throw this out and would do things like cutting the cables. I’m glad you were there to save it. I need to find an Apple ][ to restore myself.
It is indeed sad, but we do have to remember not everyone sees these machines as something valuable like us in the retro community, they just seem them as old machines that are well past their usable life, and taking up space for something else, and seeing this might have come from a school, or library then even more so, if they were cleaning out a basement, or storage room. Thankfully there are those of us who do still see their value, and try to preserve as much of these old machines as we can for future generations to experience.
The cables were most likely cut by copper scrappers, not by the person dropping it off. Copper scrappers will often also go into abandoned buildings and cut out all of the wiring from them, even if the power was not shut off, sometimes bringing an abrupt end to their activity.
@@vwestlife Wire cutters are some of the most low IQ morons out there. If copper was actually worth anything it wouldn't be sold as extension cords in the Dollar Tree for $1. Had some copper morons in my city back in 2008 that thought they were smart going under the roads and cutting copper wiring in the utility tunnels. They found 5 of them dead in various parts of the tunnels over the span of a few months each time after businesses downtown randomly lost power. They had cut into 600+ volt lines with battery powered saws they stole. I remember they reported one guy was physically welded to the electric lines and had to be cut free. You can imagine what his body must have looked like.
I used to work with these in the 1980s, they were very reliable computers and were exceptionally well made. Thank you for making this video, it brought back a lot of memories.
I went ahead and replaced all caps in the PSU of my //e - I tested them out of curiosity and I'd say 1/3 were 20% off their tolerance with one completely off. Considering they are 40 years old I see a full replacement as a "service" visit that should give the PSU many many years of happy life. To be honest I did the same in the monitor - again, 1/3 were a bit off and 1 or 2 were completely off. And this is testing with an arduino-style tester: real life test with actual voltages may make things worse. It's so cool that a bad memory chip may impede some functions with the system but won't make the system completely unusable!
When I took a digital electronics course in '85 they used this model. Probably for it's ease of access and simplicity for interfacing projects. Thank you for saving it. Floppy disks decay with time to my understanding. How and why would be an interesting topic for a vintage computing show covering the storage medium.
From what I've heard, the eventual decay ("bit rot") of floppy disks is caused by the gradual depolarization of magnetically charged "bits" as they sit in close proximity of each other, both within the same disk track as well as alongside each other on adjacent tracks. To make matters worse, thermal stress caused by the day-night cycle & the passing of seasons (particularly in regions that experience hot summers & frigid winters) can incrementally weaken the adhesive that bonds the magnetic coating to the actual disk, something that wouldn't be noticeable until many yrs had passed. While there may be no way to conclusively determine what causes it, "bit rot" is most definitely real: I remember the 1st time I encountered it when purchasing new-old stock Apple II software on floppies (back in the 1990s), then discovering that *none* of the disks were readable. They were old enuff to have succumbed to "bit rot" thru & thru. There's a reason why I'll only purchase old software on physical media if it comes on CD or DVD-ROM now....
Nice clean repair so far. I actually just fixed one of these couple months back for an old neighborhood lady. Her monitor was blowing fuses. Had a shorted diode.
I'm sure someone mentioned this already, but (I think) the permanently attached cable was a requirement for monitors sold in the USA. Most other regions (including Australia) always had detachable cables.
If so, then something changed in the 1980s starting w/ the Apple IIc -- the 1st model to feature the newer "snow white" color scheme, as I recall. The IIc was marketed alongside a matching (9 inch?) monochrome monitor that used a standard detatchable 3-prong AC power cable ... which makes perfect sense, given that both the IIc & the monitor had built-in carry handles (the IIc carry handle doubled as a stand when the system was being powered on to improve cooling) & having a permanent, hardwired power cord would've been ridiculously self-defeating for a monitor designed for such a small & relatively lightweight computer advertised as being ideal for users who like to be able to "pack up & go". Ironically, it wasn't until a later model (the IIc Plus?) that the IIc itself was redesigned to use a standard AC cord: before then, it required a *hefty* "power brick" to operate, & the cabling @ the computer end was liable to fail due to stress on the wiring just below the strain relief....
Beautiful find, and I love your closing message. I learned on a C64 (and to a much lesser degree, a IIe at school), and decades later I find myself still learning awesome stuff while refurbing them. :)
This is the computer that my primary school had in the mid to late 1980s so I too have a good amount of nostalgia attached. We learned some introductory coding using both the built in basic and Logo, which involved giving commands to a turtle which were to reflected in screen and you could draw things graphically. I’ve been working in IT for nearly 20 years, I’m now in senior leadership roles but I owe a good amount to this computer for the path I chose to take in life.
Great video! I’m glad you were able to get it going again and look forward to part 2 when you get the ram chip. It always makes me happy when I see a piece of technological history saved from the scrap heap. Cheers!
Thanks to my uncle who was in the Marines all through the mid 60's - mid 90's, he gave me an Apple IIe with dual disk drives, an Epson printer(used it on both my Apple, and C64), and green monitor the military was e-wasting on base around 87 to replace them with IBM PC machines, so I had that machine, as well as a C64(later C128) thanks to yet another uncle who helped run a Commodore users group, and did repairs for side money, and the machines he gave me where his refurbished models, so I got to spend a lot of time with the Apple IIe at home, and school getting to know it inside, and out. So this for me brought back a lot of memories of things like making banners, and homemade cards with my Epson printer via Paint Shop Pro, or playing games like Pirates, Choplifter, Oregon Trail, and Where in The World is Carmen Sandiego. 👍👍
I started off in IT as a trainee technician in the '80s bench repairing Apple computers, along with IBM PCs, Olivetti, Altos, Alpha Micro, Honeywell, IBM mainframes, Digital PDP 11/70, etc. The range of equipment that we were exposed to, as a technician, in the '80s was fantastic. The IIe was one of my favourites to repair due to ease of access and well designed and laid out tracks.
I found a Briefcase type one and a color monitor once in the dumpster looking clean and mean so I grabbed it. I lost it somewhere in time but used to love Swashbuckler on it. The monitor ended up lasting for years as a great gaming monitor. It had a speaker too if I remember correctly. Living the high life.
The reality is that those RIFA caps are not needed anymore. They only acted as power line filters and because of how clean modern day power is, they are useless. Whenever I see one, I take it out and leave it out. Everything still works fine.
those damn Rifas are like in every 70s electronic device. It's a pain with this little ticking smoke bombs... I've a Revox A77 reel to reel machine and in there are a few of them which still have to be replaced. Some older amplifiers here have them too and one blew up in a Video 2000 machine from a friend. For all who see those stink boms: change them! Anytime!
I'm 39 now and I remember using these in Elementary school from 1989-95. I would LOVE to own one of these that is totally restored and with those new drives just rot play all the vintage games and do typing. They had the best keyboards and I loved making those banners on the shitty printers of the era 😂 Some of the best nostalgia early childhood memories.
We had these in Middle school as well (I may be a bit older). Anyway, while waiting for RAM might as well whiten the case/keyboard. Its super simple and there are tons of vids out there on how to do it. Uses hydrogen peroxide and UV lights. Would make it look brand new.
I had the exact RAM issue with an Apple IIc I picked up earlier this year. I had an old Commodore 64 scrap motherboard and I desoldered all of the RAM chips from it as they used the same type. I painstakingly desoldered multiple RAM chips from the Apple as several had failed and installed sockets. After swapping around the new RAM chips, it works like new. Make sure to buy chip sockets when performing this repair.
Cool video. Brings me back to my elementary school days as well; I vividly remember learning how to code on an Apple II, and by far my favorite day of the week as a kid was the day we got to go to the lab to play Word/Number Munchers, Odell Lake and Oregon Trail.
This was my first computer, had the same monitor as well, but had the floppy drive unit which sat between the computer and monitor and had two disk drives. My elementary school had them, and when they were upgrading to macs my parents bought one for us if memory serves. But then when we got our first PC they sold it to a friend to put towards the PC, and then it got destroyed by water damage from a burst pipe. Not sure what became of it after that. Always awesome seeing restoration videos of them!
i have an apple IIe from 1986, it looks to be as yellowed, but if someone who didnt know might not notice its the wrong color. i noticed they used a couple different psu's in them, mine looks like that but without the mains filter cap, it has a filtered power socket instead which uses different caps, not the rifas. but i changed the plug anyway with one similar.
8:33 oh God, my Apple III had those explode and irreparably damaged it. That smell of those RIFA caps exploding is probably one of the worst smelling things ever. My room smelled like it for about a week, had to sleep in another room
Brings back memories for me too! My Dad was a Civil Engineer and Geek for early HP programmable calculators and the first PCs. At home we had a beautifully stylish Apple //c and noisy dot-matrix printer which the whole family used for school and college assignments (so basic obviously compared to a modern version of MS Word!). In about 1987 he had an IBM Clone 80286 12mHz with EGA graphics and a beautiful voice coil actuated Miniscribe 3053 5.25 inch 40 MB hard drive--and that drive made such pleasing sounds when seeking--superb listening compared to a modern drive. This machine ignited my passion for PCs and operating systems (early MS-DOS versions back then). I used it to install the first versions of MS Flight Simulator on and a batch of Astronomy Software that I could use to plan observing sessions with my telescopes. A wonderful piece of computing history. I still have the 3053, its MFM controller, the first IDE/ATA drive (Miniscribe 8051A) and the second, a Conner Peripherals 3044A and a batch of archived 80286, 80386SX, 80386, 80486 and Pentium motherboards :-)
Good memories! Apple //e was my second computer. The school computer lab had TRS-80s and Apple //+s. Two floppies and my Epson RX-80 dot matrix printer and I was ready to go.
So blessed, rich neighbors just thrashing hard to find classic computers- Apple II, the one that made computers cheaper and thus partly created the internet (cheap servers).
It hurts so much to see these classic machines left to the e-waste pile. The Apple II was such a prominent mainstay of my grade school years. Good on you for restoring this wonderful computer. :)
Thanks for good video. Apple 2e was my first computer in high school. I was in the class of programming in Basic. Green monitors are most common but we even had a color screen's for Apple 2E
I used to work on these when i worked at Xerox in the early 80s. We had software developers that used to write games for these and top them off at our service center. The amber tubes were popular but only lasted a short time when color crts showed up. Osborn Executive portable computers had them and were very popular. Good luck with your find.
Fantastic, really enjoyed this one! I have two Apple IIe’s and a monitor in the garage that a friend gave me. Sadly, they seem to have sat underwater for a significant amount of time. Amazingly, I’m told that the monitor works, but while the logic boards look okay... I can hear lots of rust when I shake them around. The same friend gave me a Mac SE SuperDrive that was also equally rusty, and I was actually able to revive that one. Maybe, just maybe, I can get a working Apple IIe out of these. If I do, I plan to give it back to the guy who gave them to me, since one (or both) of them were his childhood machines, and while I have lots of infrastructure to support the Macintosh ecosystem, I don’t have much in the way of Apple II stuff.
I've used these machines a ton when I was in school. Playing games as well as typing things for school. I had a disk that I saved my files on and I ended up having to take it with me because people were reading the things I typed.
@@BilisNegra I'm not sure. It's a couple euros per kilo as of my last check a while back. If you're early on scrap day, you can have a whole morning of just cutting cords.
@ungratefulmetalpansy my dad used to do that too. He went to the extent of breaking things. Cutting cords off stuff that's not explicitly placed for trash is illegal already, but that was totally out of bounds.
I’ve got a working Apple II GS but I’m not all that confident of how to use all the features of it. It all seems to work and the floppy drive reads and writes discs fine. I bought an graphics adapter so I can output SVGA and that I have hooked up to a projector and what a blast to play classic games. Thanks for the trip back in time. The IIe was my very first computer and my dad payed $3000 for it and a printer back in 1982.
The Apple //e was the first computer I ever used. I taught myself to program in AppleSoft BASIC in order to fix some bugs in some public domain software my dad had purchased for it. I miss the days when Apple made computers for hobbyists instead of hipsters.
Apple PC's are basically a Playskool computer now. People buy them so they don't have to think and throw money to the corporation to fix their problems instead of doing proper diagnostics.
This is a great video. I got my hands on a IIe with the same monitor and a Duodisk drive last year. I might do that modification to the monitor even though the cable is intact
We still used these for learning Appleworks circa 1997 in Middle school here in Austin Texas. Though there was also a semi-modern Mac lab upstairs, and all the classrooms got a fancy blue G3 towers in 1998, whether they needed them or not. My math teacher gave me the admin password for the macs, as children were more helpful than tech support back then...
I remember back when I was in like 1st or 2nd grade, our computer lab had a bunch of those blue iMacs. What was funny is the computer lab instructor's name was Mrs. Apple!
I moved to a different elementary school for 97-98 and they still had two IIe's in each classroom. Ours had a standard IIe and a Platinum [enhanced?). I was pretty much the only one who would use them. There was also an old computer lab full of them, including a black Bell & Howell model. The newer computer lab had LC575's that were on the internet.
My school had a lab of 16 Apple ][e setups just like this. My Bio teacher at the time was tasked with teaching a Logo & BASIC programming class, and after one week she allowed me to take over & teach the class for her :) I extended the classic 10 PRINT 20 GOTO program to bounce the repeated text forward and back from the left margin, then did some graphics & rudimentary move & shoot games. In Logo I made a system to draw sheet music notes, rests & clefs- good times!
This came up in my recommended videos. Great work! I've subbed and look forward to diving into more videos! The Apple IIe brings back a lot of memories as I used them at primary school here in Melbourne Australia.
I have a trash salvaged Apple IIe too. I got it with all the boxes, manuals and software. It’s been in my garage for 15 years now. Perhaps someday I’ll try and revive it.
We were poor growing up. So even though it was 1994, the first computer my family owned was a Commodore 64. We didn't have any games but my stepmother tried really hard to program a game for my brother and I. The "game" had no name and basically just made colored shapes appear when you his random keys. It was valiant effort.
Thank you for making this video, especially the part at 8:50 with capacitor info. My 2e started smoking when I turned it on last month, so I immediately turned it off. Now will go back and look for that capacitor...!
Found your channel randomly when looking for how to keep the saves on my SNES game batteries and I'm glad I did, truly a gem of a channel. Love the content, I've got that bell icon turned on :)
Is there floppy emu's for other systems than apple as well? Thats such a neat little drive... I never commented so much on a single video as this one, man i gotta say your content is great, your voice is easy to listen to and your not in any way cocky 😂👍
I love TDNC so much I decided to make his day (or someone else's) This dude content is so binge-watchable it's good and well made, I like how he uses modern solutions to older problems (I. E. 3D printing brackets for older PowerBook displays) its just good quality content I subscribed years ago for. Good work, keep it up!!! 🙏🏾
You can use that Serial card, and a suitabe cable (ebay) with a USB adapter, to connect the IIe to a modern PC / Mac, and then use ADTPro (on the Floppy Emu) to WRITE Apple II disc images onto physical disks in the drive. Mind you, you still need 5.25 Floppies and these are not cheap AND tend to be quite dodgy these days. I started my own Apple II odyssey some 5 months back, first with IIe, then a IIc and now a IIgs, Im from UK, and was an C64 / Amiga guy in the 80s, but felt learning about a machine that was SUPER rare here would be fun. Other devices worth considering, are an Apple IIe SCSI card and a SCSI2SD device, so you can pop an emulated hard disk in there. Fun Fun Fun!
Imma be honest, I was able to fix up my grandparents apple PC with this video! It was an old house computer however! It was able to finally turn on and found some old Accounting Data from 1980!
My school also had an entire room of these old apples and random dos boxes. My computer teacher was a huge Mac fan and she prided herself on keeping all the machines running for decades. She even spoke to Woz about it and he was stoked that his machines were still working and being played with by hundreds of kids daily.
I find it interesting that it had a permanently attached power cable. I may be wrong, but I'm fairly sure that our monitors here in Australia all had IEC sockets. At least my Apple ColorMonitor IIe does. Those RIFA caps are horrible. I have had them blow in power supplies of all sorts. At least they're an easy fix. Quite a few vintage TV's that were dead on the side of the road were resurrected with a replacement RIFA! What a strange reaction with the plastic and adhesive! I have never had that happen, it's always been un-faded below a sticker or tape.
I hate to admit this, but this Apple was my first intro to automation. It had a modem so I could download Dunn and Bradstreet credit reports on prospective clients. I had an IBM PC on my desk though. It replaced my typewriter.
This channel kept coming up as a recommendation, glad I finally took the time to watch an episode. I can only hope my channel does as well as this one someday. Well done, sir!
I remember when I got my TRS 80 Model 4 last year. I turned it on and started messing with it and then I heard POP! And then smoke started coming out of the vents! I turned it off and sure enough a smell of what I thought was a combination of burnt s’mores and skunk odour filled up my room! I later opened the computer and the filter cap had indeed blown. It had been in tact since 1984 and it even made it through being shipped from California. But a few minutes in my house it decides it wants to die!
12? But I saw 10??? There goes my career as an Apple II repairman. Seriously, I know very little about what you talk about half the time. But I had a C64 in 1986 and I enjoy seeing you fix all these old gems up. The videos are really cool. I like hearing the old stories of working in a Computer Store if that was you who did those? It's been a year or so since I saw it but the stories were great.
I've seen those old rectangular capacitors explode, it'll scare the living crap out of you. It'll also leave you wondering "What exactly was soldered here?" if you don't know about 'em. They rarely leave more than the legs behind when they pop.
You might as well buy some disks, whether commercially released software or blank, just to test that drive and get that true nostalgia feel on camera. Maybe also play around with ADT Pro. It amazes me how by typing in some hex in the Apple monitor and executing that code allows booting a disk image via the serial port. It's almost like magic and would make a good video segment.
Try retrobright for the yellowing on the case and the keys. It's cheap and easy to do and makes old computer cases look like brand new again. UV light\sunlight, Peroxide, and plastic wrap is all that's needed.
Nice find with the power inlet! I did the same to a PC Jr and Tandy CM11 monitor. :-) The PC Jr had the mounting holes for an IEC socket already, like this one did. I had to laser cut a replacement aluminum panel for the Tandy, but it was well worth the trouble to have removable cabling. As for using a clamp to crimp ribbon cables - that’s so clever, and obvious in hind sight. Cant believe that never occurred to me! I ended up buying a bespoke IDC ribbon crimper after a long time using an old dead hard drive to crush the connector against a workbench or floor. Having the proper tool makes it so easy, but man.. I had clamps sitting right there the whole time.. haha!
![ลองสุ่มไอโฟน 990 โกงมั้ย? [ โกงมั้ยครับ ep.101 ] | DOM](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/bfsWe0j492k/mqdefault.jpg)
Back in 1981 my mother purchased an Apple //e for me. I still have it wrapped in plastic in my closet along with a spare Apple //e that I purchased 15 years ago, for parts. I have 2 3-ring folders full of Games/Utilities floppies. I may take it out of the closet and power it on after watching your very cool video. It’s nice to see people still enjoying vintage computers!
Noice
That would make an awesome video!! Did it power up? :-)
lucky!!
Hi, I am 12 now 13 years old, and I'd like to buy this kind of computer... If you're interested in sale, would you take 200 USD maybe??
Wasn’t the Apple IIe released in very early 1983?
We had a lab of brand new ones that year as a grade 11 student.
The II Plus was perhaps what you meant… or the year was wrong.
If the ram you ordered doesn't work, let me know. I can go through my ][s and probobly pull some. I think i have one or two with a bad chip or two that I can just convert to a donor machine. (ie, the one with the trashed case LOL) Awesome video, always love seeing these ][e machines get a second life.
Tip:
Double-sided foam trim tape is easily removed by sawing with dental floss. It's what we do in automotive de-badging.
Of course i floss a lot. i do it every day
you with the dentist
Fishing line works great also.
Left for scrap? It breaks my heart this happens. Glad you rescued it!
Agreed! I’m jelly
I rescued a IIe from a college where they were just going to throw it out. It was just the computer and 2 disk][s. I paid $20 shipping and that was it. I bought a Super Serial card and loaded up ADT to it (it was 1999, before great things like the CFFA and Floppy Emu), and used asimov to download disk images and get it back up and running. I still have that computer.
I had a couple other machines (2 IIcs, 2 IIgs) that were similarly rescued.
@@junker15 My old elementary school in the 1990s used Apple 2e's in the computer lab and throughout the school. They were replaced in 1999 with the iMac. I later was reunited with the Apple 2's in middle school where they were heaped up in an abandoned music room. After the middle school closed in 2015 or so they were all in the dumpsters. It must have been nearly 100 or more. I only found out from seeing my old school on the news B- roll footage and wasn't actually there to see it. I was seething with rage. I have one myself I bought in 2013 off eBay for $80. Nobody wanted it because it had the Apple 3 monitor and a hodgepodge diskette drive that didn't work. After Steve Jobs died Apple 2's were selling on eBay all day long for $500 a piece.
because it is trash. If I found it, I'd get it working good enough so I can smash it on video while it's on😂
it breaks my heart too.
The IIe was the very first computer my family owned. We got it in my senior year in high school. Thanks for the memories!
Seeing those ribbon cables cut at the beginning was just painful. Great video Colin!
This was my first computer. I bought it soon after college graduation. Added an Applewriter and two Apple disk drives. Those were the days. I later "upgraded" to a Mac512.
Great job on the restoration! It’s so sad to think someone was going to throw this out and would do things like cutting the cables. I’m glad you were there to save it. I need to find an Apple ][ to restore myself.
It is indeed sad, but we do have to remember not everyone sees these machines as something valuable like us in the retro community, they just seem them as old machines that are well past their usable life, and taking up space for something else, and seeing this might have come from a school, or library then even more so, if they were cleaning out a basement, or storage room. Thankfully there are those of us who do still see their value, and try to preserve as much of these old machines as we can for future generations to experience.
The cables were most likely cut by copper scrappers, not by the person dropping it off. Copper scrappers will often also go into abandoned buildings and cut out all of the wiring from them, even if the power was not shut off, sometimes bringing an abrupt end to their activity.
@@vwestlife Wire cutters are some of the most low IQ morons out there. If copper was actually worth anything it wouldn't be sold as extension cords in the Dollar Tree for $1. Had some copper morons in my city back in 2008 that thought they were smart going under the roads and cutting copper wiring in the utility tunnels. They found 5 of them dead in various parts of the tunnels over the span of a few months each time after businesses downtown randomly lost power. They had cut into 600+ volt lines with battery powered saws they stole. I remember they reported one guy was physically welded to the electric lines and had to be cut free. You can imagine what his body must have looked like.
I used that type of Apple II more than 30 years ago, Great video! Thank you!
I used to work with these in the 1980s, they were very reliable computers and were exceptionally well made. Thank you for making this video, it brought back a lot of memories.
I went ahead and replaced all caps in the PSU of my //e - I tested them out of curiosity and I'd say 1/3 were 20% off their tolerance with one completely off. Considering they are 40 years old I see a full replacement as a "service" visit that should give the PSU many many years of happy life.
To be honest I did the same in the monitor - again, 1/3 were a bit off and 1 or 2 were completely off. And this is testing with an arduino-style tester: real life test with actual voltages may make things worse.
It's so cool that a bad memory chip may impede some functions with the system but won't make the system completely unusable!
When I took a digital electronics course in '85 they used this model. Probably for it's ease of access and simplicity for interfacing projects. Thank you for saving it. Floppy disks decay with time to my understanding. How and why would be an interesting topic for a vintage computing show covering the storage medium.
From what I've heard, the eventual decay ("bit rot") of floppy disks is caused by the gradual depolarization of magnetically charged "bits" as they sit in close proximity of each other, both within the same disk track as well as alongside each other on adjacent tracks. To make matters worse, thermal stress caused by the day-night cycle & the passing of seasons (particularly in regions that experience hot summers & frigid winters) can incrementally weaken the adhesive that bonds the magnetic coating to the actual disk, something that wouldn't be noticeable until many yrs had passed.
While there may be no way to conclusively determine what causes it, "bit rot" is most definitely real: I remember the 1st time I encountered it when purchasing new-old stock Apple II software on floppies (back in the 1990s), then discovering that *none* of the disks were readable. They were old enuff to have succumbed to "bit rot" thru & thru.
There's a reason why I'll only purchase old software on physical media if it comes on CD or DVD-ROM now....
@@zenkim6709 Thank you. All the more reason to archive anything on floppies that survives to a stabler medium.
Nice clean repair so far. I actually just fixed one of these couple months back for an old neighborhood lady. Her monitor was blowing fuses. Had a shorted diode.
I'm sure someone mentioned this already, but (I think) the permanently attached cable was a requirement for monitors sold in the USA. Most other regions (including Australia) always had detachable cables.
If so, then something changed in the 1980s starting w/ the Apple IIc -- the 1st model to feature the newer "snow white" color scheme, as I recall. The IIc was marketed alongside a matching (9 inch?) monochrome monitor that used a standard detatchable 3-prong AC power cable ... which makes perfect sense, given that both the IIc & the monitor had built-in carry handles (the IIc carry handle doubled as a stand when the system was being powered on to improve cooling) & having a permanent, hardwired power cord would've been ridiculously self-defeating for a monitor designed for such a small & relatively lightweight computer advertised as being ideal for users who like to be able to "pack up & go".
Ironically, it wasn't until a later model (the IIc Plus?) that the IIc itself was redesigned to use a standard AC cord: before then, it required a *hefty* "power brick" to operate, & the cabling @ the computer end was liable to fail due to stress on the wiring just below the strain relief....
Beautiful find, and I love your closing message. I learned on a C64 (and to a much lesser degree, a IIe at school), and decades later I find myself still learning awesome stuff while refurbing them. :)
This is the computer that my primary school had in the mid to late 1980s so I too have a good amount of nostalgia attached. We learned some introductory coding using both the built in basic and Logo, which involved giving commands to a turtle which were to reflected in screen and you could draw things graphically. I’ve been working in IT for nearly 20 years, I’m now in senior leadership roles but I owe a good amount to this computer for the path I chose to take in life.
Great video! I’m glad you were able to get it going again and look forward to part 2 when you get the ram chip. It always makes me happy when I see a piece of technological history saved from the scrap heap. Cheers!
Thanks to my uncle who was in the Marines all through the mid 60's - mid 90's, he gave me an Apple IIe with dual disk drives, an Epson printer(used it on both my Apple, and C64), and green monitor the military was e-wasting on base around 87 to replace them with IBM PC machines, so I had that machine, as well as a C64(later C128) thanks to yet another uncle who helped run a Commodore users group, and did repairs for side money, and the machines he gave me where his refurbished models, so I got to spend a lot of time with the Apple IIe at home, and school getting to know it inside, and out. So this for me brought back a lot of memories of things like making banners, and homemade cards with my Epson printer via Paint Shop Pro, or playing games like Pirates, Choplifter, Oregon Trail, and Where in The World is Carmen Sandiego. 👍👍
I started off in IT as a trainee technician in the '80s bench repairing Apple computers, along with IBM PCs, Olivetti, Altos, Alpha Micro, Honeywell, IBM mainframes, Digital PDP 11/70, etc. The range of equipment that we were exposed to, as a technician, in the '80s was fantastic. The IIe was one of my favourites to repair due to ease of access and well designed and laid out tracks.
I found a Briefcase type one and a color monitor once in the dumpster looking clean and mean so I grabbed it. I lost it somewhere in time but used to love Swashbuckler on it. The monitor ended up lasting for years as a great gaming monitor. It had a speaker too if I remember correctly. Living the high life.
I used one of those in 3rd grade in California. It was quite an experience. I programmed at the time in basic so it was easy for me to work on.
08:22 "A cap for replacement". Oh, look, it's the rare RIFA pyrotechnic capacitor!
Ah, guess he didn't wanna smoke a RIFA! :D
The reality is that those RIFA caps are not needed anymore. They only acted as power line filters and because of how clean modern day power is, they are useless. Whenever I see one, I take it out and leave it out. Everything still works fine.
It's still good to replace the power line filtering capacitor. Anyone nearby who listens to AM or shortwave radio will thank you.
those damn Rifas are like in every 70s electronic device. It's a pain with this little ticking smoke bombs... I've a Revox A77 reel to reel machine and in there are a few of them which still have to be replaced. Some older amplifiers here have them too and one blew up in a Video 2000 machine from a friend. For all who see those stink boms: change them! Anytime!
Still better than tantalums, the original "shrapnel-emitting" capacitor.
I'm 39 now and I remember using these in Elementary school from 1989-95. I would LOVE to own one of these that is totally restored and with those new drives just rot play all the vintage games and do typing. They had the best keyboards and I loved making those banners on the shitty printers of the era 😂 Some of the best nostalgia early childhood memories.
I owned this as my first Apple computer back then. Great video by the way 👍
I have one of these with DuoDisk drive! I've had a blast writing simple programs on it. Great video!
Your geeky vids are so fun to watch and/or listen to while I'm working. Keep up the good work.
Great video, I remember playing Oregon Trail on one of these in elementary school!
We had these in Middle school as well (I may be a bit older). Anyway, while waiting for RAM might as well whiten the case/keyboard. Its super simple and there are tons of vids out there on how to do it. Uses hydrogen peroxide and UV lights. Would make it look brand new.
I had the exact RAM issue with an Apple IIc I picked up earlier this year. I had an old Commodore 64 scrap motherboard and I desoldered all of the RAM chips from it as they used the same type. I painstakingly desoldered multiple RAM chips from the Apple as several had failed and installed sockets. After swapping around the new RAM chips, it works like new. Make sure to buy chip sockets when performing this repair.
Cool video. Brings me back to my elementary school days as well; I vividly remember learning how to code on an Apple II, and by far my favorite day of the week as a kid was the day we got to go to the lab to play Word/Number Munchers, Odell Lake and Oregon Trail.
This was my first computer, had the same monitor as well, but had the floppy drive unit which sat between the computer and monitor and had two disk drives. My elementary school had them, and when they were upgrading to macs my parents bought one for us if memory serves. But then when we got our first PC they sold it to a friend to put towards the PC, and then it got destroyed by water damage from a burst pipe. Not sure what became of it after that. Always awesome seeing restoration videos of them!
i have an apple IIe from 1986, it looks to be as yellowed, but if someone who didnt know might not notice its the wrong color.
i noticed they used a couple different psu's in them, mine looks like that but without the mains filter cap, it has a filtered power socket instead which uses different caps, not the rifas. but i changed the plug anyway with one similar.
This was my first computer. Glad you saved it
8:33 oh God, my Apple III had those explode and irreparably damaged it. That smell of those RIFA caps exploding is probably one of the worst smelling things ever. My room smelled like it for about a week, had to sleep in another room
Bloody hell when was this? 😯
Brings back memories for me too! My Dad was a Civil Engineer and Geek for early HP programmable calculators and the first PCs. At home we had a beautifully stylish Apple //c and noisy dot-matrix printer which the whole family used for school and college assignments (so basic obviously compared to a modern version of MS Word!). In about 1987 he had an IBM Clone 80286 12mHz with EGA graphics and a beautiful voice coil actuated Miniscribe 3053 5.25 inch 40 MB hard drive--and that drive made such pleasing sounds when seeking--superb listening compared to a modern drive. This machine ignited my passion for PCs and operating systems (early MS-DOS versions back then). I used it to install the first versions of MS Flight Simulator on and a batch of Astronomy Software that I could use to plan observing sessions with my telescopes. A wonderful piece of computing history. I still have the 3053, its MFM controller, the first IDE/ATA drive (Miniscribe 8051A) and the second, a Conner Peripherals 3044A and a batch of archived 80286, 80386SX, 80386, 80486 and Pentium motherboards :-)
Good memories! Apple //e was my second computer. The school computer lab had TRS-80s and Apple //+s. Two floppies and my Epson RX-80 dot matrix printer and I was ready to go.
You lucky man! Finding a working Apple 2e in the trash... Very nice video!
That detachable power cable is a HUGE upgrade! Attached power cables are the worst!
So blessed, rich neighbors just thrashing hard to find classic computers- Apple II, the one that made computers cheaper and thus partly created the internet (cheap servers).
It hurts so much to see these classic machines left to the e-waste pile. The Apple II was such a prominent mainstay of my grade school years. Good on you for restoring this wonderful computer. :)
Thanks for good video. Apple 2e was my first computer in high school. I was in the class of programming in Basic. Green monitors are most common but we even had a color screen's for Apple 2E
I used to work on these when i worked at Xerox in the early 80s. We had software developers that used to write games for these and top them off at our service center. The amber tubes were popular but only lasted a short time when color crts showed up. Osborn Executive portable computers had them and were very popular. Good luck with your find.
Love the chunky aesthetics of these machines, hope those memory chips get there soon!
Fantastic, really enjoyed this one! I have two Apple IIe’s and a monitor in the garage that a friend gave me. Sadly, they seem to have sat underwater for a significant amount of time. Amazingly, I’m told that the monitor works, but while the logic boards look okay... I can hear lots of rust when I shake them around. The same friend gave me a Mac SE SuperDrive that was also equally rusty, and I was actually able to revive that one. Maybe, just maybe, I can get a working Apple IIe out of these. If I do, I plan to give it back to the guy who gave them to me, since one (or both) of them were his childhood machines, and while I have lots of infrastructure to support the Macintosh ecosystem, I don’t have much in the way of Apple II stuff.
I've used these machines a ton when I was in school. Playing games as well as typing things for school. I had a disk that I saved my files on and I ended up having to take it with me because people were reading the things I typed.
The copper scavengers are still at it I see, just cutting those cords off.
It's good easy money.
@@AnnaVannieuwenhuyse Easy money? How many cents worth of copper would a power cord be?
@@BilisNegra stripped around 20 cents, probably more like 10 cents not stripped, not a lot but worth picking up if you're already a scrapper.
@@BilisNegra I'm not sure. It's a couple euros per kilo as of my last check a while back.
If you're early on scrap day, you can have a whole morning of just cutting cords.
@ungratefulmetalpansy my dad used to do that too. He went to the extent of breaking things. Cutting cords off stuff that's not explicitly placed for trash is illegal already, but that was totally out of bounds.
Ooh, this is cool, I love the Apple II Line! Glad you saved this one.
Damn that’s actually an insane find, those are getting rarer and rarer, and you got lucky cause Apple IIs are resold for a premium online nowadays
Glad you rescue and save the machine 🏆
I got one of these after working a summer in a thrift store been scared to crack it open this is inspiring me to attempt to fix it
This was my first computer! What a blast to see it inside and out.
I’ve got a working Apple II GS but I’m not all that confident of how to use all the features of it. It all seems to work and the floppy drive reads and writes discs fine. I bought an graphics adapter so I can output SVGA and that I have hooked up to a projector and what a blast to play classic games. Thanks for the trip back in time. The IIe was my very first computer and my dad payed $3000 for it and a printer back in 1982.
The Apple //e was the first computer I ever used. I taught myself to program in AppleSoft BASIC in order to fix some bugs in some public domain software my dad had purchased for it. I miss the days when Apple made computers for hobbyists instead of hipsters.
Apple PC's are basically a Playskool computer now. People buy them so they don't have to think and throw money to the corporation to fix their problems instead of doing proper diagnostics.
Oh my god curved traces! That might be the prettiest backside of any board ive ever seen. Its artistic to say the least!
This is a great video. I got my hands on a IIe with the same monitor and a Duodisk drive last year. I might do that modification to the monitor even though the cable is intact
We still used these for learning Appleworks circa 1997 in Middle school here in Austin Texas. Though there was also a semi-modern Mac lab upstairs, and all the classrooms got a fancy blue G3 towers in 1998, whether they needed them or not. My math teacher gave me the admin password for the macs, as children were more helpful than tech support back then...
I remember back when I was in like 1st or 2nd grade, our computer lab had a bunch of those blue iMacs. What was funny is the computer lab instructor's name was Mrs. Apple!
I moved to a different elementary school for 97-98 and they still had two IIe's in each classroom. Ours had a standard IIe and a Platinum [enhanced?). I was pretty much the only one who would use them. There was also an old computer lab full of them, including a black Bell & Howell model.
The newer computer lab had LC575's that were on the internet.
My school had a lab of 16 Apple ][e setups just like this. My Bio teacher at the time was tasked with teaching a Logo & BASIC programming class, and after one week she allowed me to take over & teach the class for her :)
I extended the classic 10 PRINT 20 GOTO program to bounce the repeated text forward and back from the left margin, then did some graphics & rudimentary move & shoot games. In Logo I made a system to draw sheet music notes, rests & clefs- good times!
This came up in my recommended videos. Great work! I've subbed and look forward to diving into more videos! The Apple IIe brings back a lot of memories as I used them at primary school here in Melbourne Australia.
Nice restoration! It's crazy to see what gets tossed out, but this was a great find!
Again great video. Nice to see that an old computer get a new home and some tlc.
Congrats on 200k subs! Really enjoy your content, keep up the great work 👌
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH NOBODY GIVES A SHIT
I have a trash salvaged Apple IIe too. I got it with all the boxes, manuals and software. It’s been in my garage for 15 years now. Perhaps someday I’ll try and revive it.
We were poor growing up. So even though it was 1994, the first computer my family owned was a Commodore 64. We didn't have any games but my stepmother tried really hard to program a game for my brother and I. The "game" had no name and basically just made colored shapes appear when you his random keys. It was valiant effort.
Fantastic rescue. Hopefully the ram chip fixes the issue (and eventually arrives). Looking forward to next video on it.
Replacing the ram is a good call, though it's too bad he ordered more Mt branded ram, which is the bane of retro computer owners everywhere..
@ungratefulmetalpansy yeah, there's more reliable 4164 or 8164 chips, it's specifically those Mt branded chips that are very flakey.
Thank you for making this video, especially the part at 8:50 with capacitor info. My 2e started smoking when I turned it on last month, so I immediately turned it off. Now will go back and look for that capacitor...!
It's definitely the RIFA. I wouldn't replace with that same RIFA but rather an 'x2 capacitor' instead to keep it from ever smoking again.
These and the Tandy’s were the ones I learned from when I was 10/11 years old, back around ‘82/‘83, wish I could visit that time again!
I use to repair these back in the day, good job man, brought back good times
Greta save Colin! Hopefully that new memory will have this beauty going again for years to come :)
Nice tip on the woodworking clamp for crimping the ribbon cable.. thanks
Found your channel randomly when looking for how to keep the saves on my SNES game batteries and I'm glad I did, truly a gem of a channel. Love the content, I've got that bell icon turned on :)
Is there floppy emu's for other systems than apple as well? Thats such a neat little drive...
I never commented so much on a single video as this one, man i gotta say your content is great, your voice is easy to listen to and your not in any way cocky 😂👍
Glad you saved it. Its a shame someone would dump one of these, especially one in as good shape as this one!
I love these computers.
You old ones are better than the new ones and you can get the Internet on them as well as the new ones
Great seeing another great old machine rescued. Long live the Apple ][ !! +1 LIKE as always.
I love TDNC so much I decided to make his day (or someone else's)
This dude content is so binge-watchable it's good and well made, I like how he uses modern solutions to older problems (I. E. 3D printing brackets for older PowerBook displays) its just good quality content I subscribed years ago for. Good work, keep it up!!! 🙏🏾
You can use that Serial card, and a suitabe cable (ebay) with a USB adapter, to connect the IIe to a modern PC / Mac, and then use ADTPro (on the Floppy Emu) to WRITE Apple II disc images onto physical disks in the drive. Mind you, you still need 5.25 Floppies and these are not cheap AND tend to be quite dodgy these days. I started my own Apple II odyssey some 5 months back, first with IIe, then a IIc and now a IIgs, Im from UK, and was an C64 / Amiga guy in the 80s, but felt learning about a machine that was SUPER rare here would be fun. Other devices worth considering, are an Apple IIe SCSI card and a SCSI2SD device, so you can pop an emulated hard disk in there. Fun Fun Fun!
thank you for saving that Apple IIe
Awesome episode! I really enjoyed this. Truly a preservation of Apple computing history.
Greater heat retention from the foam and the metal pad probably is the culprit. Remember for the yellowing either UV or heat is necessary.
Imma be honest, I was able to fix up my grandparents apple PC with this video! It was an old house computer however! It was able to finally turn on and found some old Accounting Data from 1980!
I'm 49. I used one of these a lot. Worked on them some as well when they didn't print correctly. Usually the card inside partially cocked out of slot.
My school also had an entire room of these old apples and random dos boxes. My computer teacher was a huge Mac fan and she prided herself on keeping all the machines running for decades. She even spoke to Woz about it and he was stoked that his machines were still working and being played with by hundreds of kids daily.
I find it interesting that it had a permanently attached power cable. I may be wrong, but I'm fairly sure that our monitors here in Australia all had IEC sockets. At least my Apple ColorMonitor IIe does. Those RIFA caps are horrible. I have had them blow in power supplies of all sorts. At least they're an easy fix. Quite a few vintage TV's that were dead on the side of the road were resurrected with a replacement RIFA! What a strange reaction with the plastic and adhesive! I have never had that happen, it's always been un-faded below a sticker or tape.
I hate to admit this, but this Apple was my first intro to automation. It had a modem so I could download Dunn and Bradstreet credit reports on prospective clients. I had an IBM PC on my desk though. It replaced my typewriter.
This channel kept coming up as a recommendation, glad I finally took the time to watch an episode. I can only hope my channel does as well as this one someday. Well done, sir!
Nice restoration! She's a beauty!
I remember when I got my TRS 80 Model 4 last year. I turned it on and started messing with it and then I heard POP! And then smoke started coming out of the vents! I turned it off and sure enough a smell of what I thought was a combination of burnt s’mores and skunk odour filled up my room! I later opened the computer and the filter cap had indeed blown. It had been in tact since 1984 and it even made it through being shipped from California. But a few minutes in my house it decides it wants to die!
Amazing find. I dream of finding something like that. Great video! Looking forward to an update when that ram chip arrives.
12? But I saw 10??? There goes my career as an Apple II repairman. Seriously, I know very little about what you talk about half the time. But I had a C64 in 1986 and I enjoy seeing you fix all these old gems up. The videos are really cool. I like hearing the old stories of working in a Computer Store if that was you who did those? It's been a year or so since I saw it but the stories were great.
Yes, it was you who did the computer store stories. I searched through your videos on my phone and found them.
I've seen those old rectangular capacitors explode, it'll scare the living crap out of you. It'll also leave you wondering "What exactly was soldered here?" if you don't know about 'em. They rarely leave more than the legs behind when they pop.
Congrats on saving this computer, it's was on a great shape even needing those fixes. Good luck with the memory
You might as well buy some disks, whether commercially released software or blank, just to test that drive and get that true nostalgia feel on camera. Maybe also play around with ADT Pro. It amazes me how by typing in some hex in the Apple monitor and executing that code allows booting a disk image via the serial port. It's almost like magic and would make a good video segment.
Try retrobright for the yellowing on the case and the keys. It's cheap and easy to do and makes old computer cases look like brand new again. UV light\sunlight, Peroxide, and plastic wrap is all that's needed.
that monitor power cable mod alone was worth the price of admission. great work.
your videos are always plaesant to watch. sacred time, with an hot coffee before works on my T3200 95% restored. thanks a lot, take care
Nice find with the power inlet! I did the same to a PC Jr and Tandy CM11 monitor. :-) The PC Jr had the mounting holes for an IEC socket already, like this one did. I had to laser cut a replacement aluminum panel for the Tandy, but it was well worth the trouble to have removable cabling.
As for using a clamp to crimp ribbon cables - that’s so clever, and obvious in hind sight. Cant believe that never occurred to me! I ended up buying a bespoke IDC ribbon crimper after a long time using an old dead hard drive to crush the connector against a workbench or floor. Having the proper tool makes it so easy, but man.. I had clamps sitting right there the whole time.. haha!
Love your video. Brought back some good memories from elementary school.
Finding an Apple //e in a dumpster... You've won the lottery!!!
My dream computer when i was young (sadly to expansive), but i always saw the IIe with 2 disk drive under the monitor
"Or-gone Trail" xD
great video man.