Apple IIc Plus - the rarest and fastest Apple II!

[@ModernClassic]

Hey guys! Couple things: if anyone does have an Apple 3.5 drive (internal or external, doesn't matter) or just the eject motor that you're interested in selling for a reasonable price, please let me know. (You can use the contact info on my about page.) Also, I know there are a couple of errors in this video that I didn't catch until too late - for example, the IIGS is a 2.8Mhz machine, not 2.6Mhz. Such is the danger of speaking off the cuff. Lastly, several people have mentioned that the music in the repair section is louder than my voice - it isn't in Resolve, and it isn't in my exported file, but KZbin seems to have brickwalled the music but left my voice at the levels I set. This is irritating for all of us, but it is just one of those KZbin-isms, and once a video is uploaded and published there is nothing to be done about it. We all just have to live with it - sorry!

[@Nukle0n]

You can also just get a new gear, it's the gear that has turned yellow and has become brittle, it seems like whatever factory they got specifically that gear from didn't make them right so they've failed on nearly every single drive. That's why you need 3D printed replacements.

[@staggerwings]

I have a non-functioning 3.5 inch external drive. I recall it wouldn't read disks or eject but I can send it to you for just postage in case either the little eject board or the motor is still good, assuming your drive had the opposite component fail. The motor assembly still has the horizontal gear with the metal engagement pin. If you don't want the whole thing I can send you just the motor and board. Let me know.

[@RobertBullock]

Also I do have an extra ejector motor with the gear in if the drive is the same mech as Mac/IIgs (A9M0106). Those are 800k but IIRC the ejector motor part is the same on the 1.44 FDHD.

[@alextirrellRI]

@@Nukle0n Yeah, broken gear was my first thought. Didn't get a good enough look at it in the video to tell.

[@ModernClassic]

I show the gear in the video; it's perfectly fine. The motor does not turn on its own (it's not trying to spin the gears), but it does turn by hand, so it's probably not seized. It doesn't even make an attempt to turn.

[@esra_erimez]

This channel is like visiting a knowledgeable good friend.

[@bobbytheitguy4289]

Thanks for the trip down memory lane. I got an Apple IIc for my 12th birthday back in the days. I remember my friends had dual disk drives on their IIe's which I envied, but they would copy and give me some of their games. I also had FS II as well as Wizardry, Ultima IV, and Summer Games (1984). I also had a 300 baud modem that my mom bought me a year later, and used it to surf the very beginnings of the WWW....actually it was Compuserve ...but still a lot of fun. Great times and great machine.

[@vwestlife]

I've heard that the inspiration of the Apple IIc Plus was Apple's jealousy of the Laser 128EX, a lower-cost IIc clone with a 3.6 MHz CPU. Laser supposedly even had a 128EX/2 model with a built-in 3.5" diskette drive, also released in 1988, but most of the 128EX/2's I've seen have a 5.25" drive. That one sold for $499 (without a monitor), so even with the IIc Plus's price reduction, the Laser was still the less expensive machine. And your Magnavox monitor should have a button to switch it to green text mode, which would eliminate the rainbow streaking in 80-column mode -- or else you could just turn the color control all the way down.

[@ModernClassic]

The green mode on the Magnavox is not really the same as the Apple monochrome monitor - all it seems to do is block red and blue, so what you get is even uglier than just leaving it in full color mode.

[@josephbseeley]

@Vwestlife Are you certain they were 128/EX2s? I thought the EXs were 5.25" and EX2 were 3.5" drives. My brother had the EX and it was 5.25" which was actually more handy back then.

[@arentol99]

Lots of good memories here. Got a //c in 1986… launched my lifelong love of IT and my career.

[@steveh1792]

The //c was my last system documentation project at Apple. We knew the Apple// family was nearing its end, as the Mac was the only future seen my upper management. So I got the full source list of the //c's firmware included in the doc set... Nice if you can find the manual set.

[@apple2-tor]

Hi Steve. Was it a separate volume as with the //e Monitor ROM?

[@markaes]

My best friend had a IIc plus. I remember because it was my first time using a 3.5 drive which seemed so hi-tech. We played a lot of Flight Simulator and California Games. Several years back I asked him what happened to it and his parents threw it out (with all his Star Wars toys) when they went into assisted living...

[@battleangel5595]

I had the original II\c as my first computer. It was a Christmas gift ages ago. My father went bonkers when he bought it. BONKERS. A full setup with the II\c. External floppy, mouse, joystick, color monitor, and color printer. I remember playing Flight Simulator for hours. Even Aztec. Where I blew up the stairs to kill an enemy on the lowest floor only to find the idol and realize what a COMPLETE IDIOT I was for blowing up said stairs... The NES came out not long after. Then we had this 80386SX-16 IBM clone I loved... But my computing origins began on the II\c. Seeing all those big boxes under the Christmas tree from "Santa" back then... Priceless memories.

[@freeculture]

Aztec was such a fun game, climb over the status to the next level lol. I ended using that very same color monitor for my Chinese Famicom clone (a nes without the stupid lock chip) which conveniently had composite output...

[@pbloo574]

This was a cool video. I randomly found a IIc Plus with a monitor for $60 at a flea market a few years ago and Immediately bought it because I had always wanted a vintage Apple computer of some kind. This videos makes me want to get it out of storage and mess around with it again.

[@dgordon2991]

Had two of them, one with the microsoft cp/m os card and //c lcd display, other with the //c monitor. They were fun little alternatives to the //e.

[@maxheadrom3088]

Dude, thanks! I bought a IIc plus from Hong Kong and it was shipped to Brazil. It has several problems and I'll have lots of fun repairing it - fun now that I found your video.

[@dennisud]

I bought an Apple IIC way back in 1987 from an IRS worker for $795.00. It was a great tax write off! I used it for work as I was a Middle school teacher and used my very 1st Gradebook program, "Making the Grade" on it. I also made several worksheets for my students as I had 4 Apple IIe's in my classroom for Oegon Trail, Amazon Trail and a few others. I eventually bought a Macintosh LC-II and transferred to that and eventually The IIC was donated to an after school program nearby.

[@RetroGamesCollector]

I just got hold of a IIGS so really enjoyed learning about one of it's contemporaries. This thing really moves for an Apple ][ !

[@The_Wandering_Nerd]

So the market for the Apple IIc+ was someone who already had a significant investment in Apple II peripherals and software, and who wanted a small boost in productivity software, and who didn't care about games so much, and who weren't swayed by the Apple IIGS's enhanced graphics, sound, and GUI capabilities, and who didn't have the technical knowhow to just install an accelerator card, and didn't mind that they took out the headphone jack, and were willing to pay over $1000 for the privilege when faster, cheaper computers like the IBM, Tandy, Amiga, and Atari ST--or even a used Mac--would have been a much better option? Wow, Apple's contempt for its own customers hasn't really changed much in 30 years, has it?

[@ModernClassic]

I think the problem was really that it started off as a decent idea and was watered down to the point that they shouldn't have released it. It's one of those "you can make a pizza so cheap that no one will eat it" things. Who knows, maybe it's one reason why Apple stopped trying to make budget-priced products.

[@Apple2gs]

32 years ago, I was excited to see a (then) brand-new Apple II model on the cover of A+ Magazine. As I started flipping through the pages about the IIc Plus, I remember being very confused... It must have better graphics, right? Better sound? More built-in RAM? Does it share ANYTHING in common with the IIGS, other than a 3.5 drive? Nope, nope, nope and nope!! Just an obsolete Apple IIc in basically a new case...huh? What the heck was Apple doing I thought? Is this a joke, are they just trying to give a middle finger to IIGS users? Honestly, the Apple IIe should have been removed from Apple's price list by early 1987, and the IIc Plus should have been a portable version of IIGS. To this day, it still makes no sense why this was released.

[@kenon6968]

Apple didn't figure out product planning till the i series with Job's return, it's a miracle that they even survived the industry shakedown at the end of the 16 bit era

[@amann2547]

I'm still amazed that my (extremely cheap) stepfather bought a IIc Plus when it came out. Fond memories of that PC. So sleek, for its time.

[@gallgreg]

Great video and awesome machine! Glad you got it working!! Wish I had a IIc Plus in my collection!

[@The-Weekend-Warrior]

Oh my, oh my... what a drive on memory lane... My first ever computer was an Apple IIc and I miss it sooooooooo much ever since it died on me and had not enough knowledge back then to repair it or have it repaired (and wanted an Atari ST badly anyways). Nice to see, thanks!

[@chrisjamesr77]

I used to have one of these! Somehow the sound of those keys clicking at 10:00 just brings it all back, lol

[@JimLeonard]

Sound issues aside, this was an excellent overview of the IIc Plus. Your upgrade to 4k was also very appreciated. I'm glad you're able to still pursue your hobby despite your drastic career change and training.

[@photolabguy]

Awesome to see this kind of content again! I hope you and your family are doing well!

[@musiclabmn]

Makes me a bit sad. I had one in fantastic condition, with the box and all accessories that I sold on eBay back in January. It's the ONE time I didn't fully insure it and FedEx lost it. I still think it was stolen somehow, but I have no way to prove it and they paid me $100 for my 'trouble'. Thanks for keeping another one of these rare guys kicking!

[@mcrazza]

15:47 I had Flight Simulator II for the Atari XEGS back in the day. As a kid I had absolutely no idea how to play the game. It was an absolute slideshow. Wasn't much a fan of simulators from the era. GATO was the exception.

[@freeculture]

I played lots of GATO with the //c. Of course its a wireframe slideshow like everything else with that platform 🙂 Like you i had no idea what to do with in Flight Simulator II. But when you are a kid and have nothing else to do, you start touching and trying everything and writing it down. Because, "ahem", no manual... And i eventually learned to take off and land without crashing and going places. When i moved to the PC and tried FS3, felt right at home except things looked much better and smooth.

[@hopper1]

That print ad near the end of the video really threw me back into my youth. I suffered with a VIC 20 (with a cassette drive) until I got into high school when I was able to purchase a Lazer 128EX from a store in a strip mall. I only ever used Apple Works on it, but it served me well throughout high school.

[@misterkiji]

I had one of these as a child. It was great. Still had to sit and load discs to play games

[@jdrukman]

My first job out of college was developing educational software on a IIc+. Nice trip down memory lane.

[@adriansdigitalbasement]

Couple tidbits. I swear I have seen that lock slot on the original Macs too. (128k and And on) I might be mistaken. Also, some original IIc machines had the alps keyboards like I guess all IIc+ machines did. :-)

[@ModernClassic]

It is possible the original Macs also had that lock slot. I am not a fan of the Mac so I don't have one to check :)

[@uwtitanfan]

I complied your basic program line for line on PDS 7.1 and ran it on my PS/2 30 8086 8mhz. TIme to run was 4.2 seconds.

[@rager-69]

The Apple II Color (composite) monitors are amazingly sharp. I don't know if it automatically puts itself into monochrome mode for text but there is no NTSC artifacting on 80 column text. I'd recommend acquiring one.

[@jrmcferren]

I'm not sure, some Apples may have killed the chroma circuit, but I don't think they all did. Apple color monitors had a color/mono switch. The Apple IIgs I think simulated the chroma artifacts too, the Apple IIgs RGB monitors also had the color/mono switch. I have also experienced an Apple IIe system on a pro video monitor which told me when the chroma was disabled.

[@Akira625]

The composite color monitor I used with my Apple IIc automatically switched to monochrome mode for text, and it also has a button to turn on/off color. I also used the monitor on my NES, and it had a much sharper picture than when using a TV set.

[@BrianOfAteionas]

I wish I still had my IIGS. It was already outdated at the time I got one used from a friend for 20 bucks(late 90s), but it was so cool to be like 12 years old and and play these mysterious games that came with the computer. It can still remember that distinct old electronics and cigarette smell that just enriched the experience for me.

[@davidorama6690]

Apple //c was a fantastic computer. I longed to buy one back in the day.

[@matthewplehn4271]

good to see content still coming from this channel

[@retropuffer2986]

I remember the Compute! Magazine reviews which seem to focus on how you could get 16 bit era computer for the same money. They did note that for parents the large number of software packages, especially educational, were a benefit to this system. If you recall the first couple years of 16 bit era computers (other than PC) had a tiny software base. Software base was a factor for buyers back then. I would imagine Apple Works would fly on this system and Apple Works was probably one of the best 8 bit era productivity software packages.

[@Lion_McLionhead]

The dreams of the IIC in View to a Kill being some kind of wonder computer have been dashed by this series.

[@steveh1792]

The //c also showed up near the beginning of "2010" with Roy Scheider computing on vacation at the beach. It was connected to an LCD display that we at Apple had been working on that didn't manage to make production when the //c was introduced.

[@csabasanta5696]

Glad to see you back! Great content as always. Keep it up!

[@elfenmagix8173]

I have the Laser128 and a Apple IIc with the 5MHz RocketChip. They both kicked the IIc+ ass though the IIc+ had better expandability than the IIc I have with the RocketChip. The Laser128 had 2 Apple slots to expand from- one internal and 1 external.

[@gallgreg]

The Laser 128 was a very cool machine! Still have one in my collection!

[@lcdrugo]

I have that exact same monitor, (although it's Commodore-branded). If you push the last button on the right it switches from RGB to a green monochrome. That should sharpen up the text nicely.

[@ModernClassic]

I know about that; all it seems to do is filter out red and green, which means you end up with even lower resolution. It's not the same as a proper monochrome monitor.

[@apple2-tor]

The story about Apple limiting the speed of the //gs so that it wouldn't compete with the Macintosh is a canard, a scuttlebutt, and a tired old fable. The truth is that Western Design Center (the maker of the 65816) just didn't have the manufacturing capacity to provide Apple with the quantity of the faster CPUs required for their production, so they went with the slower 2.8Mhz chip. Regardless, this is a good video.

[@alexandermirdzveli3200]

Another marvelous review from Modern Classic! True delight.

[@zorinlynx]

Bank Street Writer had slow-ish scrolling because it used graphics mode to implement text display. This allowed more flexibility in what could be displayed at a cost of performance. Other productivity software like AppleWorks used native text mode and as a result were MUCH faster, even at 1MHz!

[@hawkeye454]

Your videos are so good, I always look forward to seeing the next notification from your channel. Thanks for taking the time to make videos like this Apple repair. Cheers!

[@NathanDavisVideos]

5:02 - Looks like I found where the ol' saying "Take the L" came from! 😂

[@xWindreaderx]

I kick myself for not jumping on this system when I had the opportunity about a year ago! I had seen a listing on Craigslist of a guy discounting his listings for both an Apple IIe Enhanced and an Apple IIc Plus, with the IIc Plus being only $30! I waited too long to contact the guy as he’d already sold it and really do regret it to this day considering the prices these go for.

[@bhstone1]

My left ear loved your MIDI music. My right ear felt very felt out.

[@noop9k]

Where’s MIDI in this video?

[@adriansdigitalbasement]

Great video! I remember using one at school (I had a IIgs at the time) and thought it was such a stupid machine. It is neat now though :-)

[@gamedoutgamer]

Yes the stupid machines BITD are often cool to own and even use.

[@theonecalledstein]

I also had a IIgs at the time, but still wanted one of these for the portability.

[@travis1240]

I remember being impressed at the 2gs graphics and sound, which was good for the time.

[@pentiummmx2294]

The original II, the Bell and Howell II Plus, and the IIc Plus, along with the apple iii, Lisa, Color Classic, TV, and 20th anniversary mac are rare apple relics.

[@jinchoung]

holy crap ms. pacman on apple 2 was freakin amazing!

[@Meatpipeify]

This guy sounds just like This Old Tony. Great video!

[@Psychlist1972]

Love the chiptune music, but it's so much louder than your voice, so it blew me out of my chair :P.

[@ModernClassic]

Please read the pinned comment.

[@Nukle0n]

I think Adrian Black talked about how the later manufactured IIcs also got rid of the mechanical Alps keyboard. Also that SmartPort support is just a function of the ROM, so you can burn a new rom for the IIc and put it in there (You have to open a close some jumpers on the board as well) and that will add that functionality, plus the self-test.

[@ModernClassic]

Yeah I just don't have really any experience with later IIc's. I remember being surprised at the time when I looked in magazines and saw that you could upgrade the RAM. (This was one of the drawbacks of the IIc that I remember weighing when I chose it.) I opened mine up one day and there was no slot for it. That was my first inkling that Apple was making changes to the IIc on the fly.

[@freeculture]

Yes, i definitely had one of those with the better keyboard. A friend had the other one. His also became yellow very quickly while mine remained white much longer...

[@paulmuaddib451]

Good to see ya back!

[@Mikeywil0003]

That is an interesting machine, but you are right about the cost to performance. In 1988, you could get a bargain model Tandy 1000, like an EX, with a monitor for the same price, and it would run circles around a 2C+.

[@majorhemroid]

I remember these in my computer lab in high school. Teacher was a hardcore Apple guy.

[@RustBunny]

Late to the party, but glad I stumbled across this nonetheless. I have a IIc Plus that I've had since I was in high school. I had no software for it then, have nothing for it now. I should put mine through the paces some day and see if it even still works, along with the other older Apples and Macs I have sitting around (couple PowerBooks, a IIgs, a few others).

[@rmcdudmk212]

Love the look of the IIC. Been looking for a busted one with a decent case so i can gut it and put in modern hardwere like a SBC or sothing like an Intel Nuc. 👍

[@dave4shmups]

Great video on the IIc+! Aside from consumers not buying 8-bit computers anymore, I think Apple’s other problem was the lack of a 5.25” built in floppy drive. You can find an episode of The Computer Chronicles where Stuart asks a lady who worked for Apple about that, and, of course, she said that Apple had a lot of software vendors lined up to make software on 3.25” disks for the IIc+. I don’t know how many software titles were released on that format, but it would be interesting to know.

[@LajitasRain]

The Apple IIC was my first computer. I purchased at a Computer Craft store in Dallas, Texas on Memorial Day 1986 ($1,495 w/color composite monitor & Imagewriter II printer). So exactly 34 years ago.

[@freeculture]

I had a later Apple //c without the awful keyboard. It wasn't a //c+ but a regular //c in Spanish. I know how the other keyboard feels because a friend had it. You tried capturing in sound... When you press the key, about halfway you get extra resistance you have to overcome so it reaches the bottom. Its a bit annoying. Mine didn't had that problem for all the years i used it. I had the Apple color monitor shown in the magazine, it had a button to kill the chroma and you would get crisp B&W when needed. I also had the Imagewritter II. oddly enough, with the platinum color, while my //c, color monitor and even the external 3 1/2" drive were snowwhite. Yes i had the opposite, an external 3 1/2, its probably the same the + has inside. Just like you, i switched to a PC clone around 1990, first XT, then 286, 386, etc. Never touched Macs, dreamed with the GS but was short lived. Would have loved a compact GS, stupid bean counters, no doubt the same people who ordered the GS being intentionally crippled down. Woz was the man. C64 was nice, but try loading a floppy with the 1641 or whatever that was vs the Apple... is literally minutes vs seconds, same game: Skyfox. One thing i remember slowing down into a crawl after a while was the Prodos tools, always wondered if it was a bug, or a ram/cpu issue. I also had a gui newsletter publishing software that may benefit from the acceleration (yeah i had a mouse, almost nothing used it). Also spent countless hours with that flightsim...

[@williamogilvie6909]

Very interesting. I worked in an Apple store (not owned by Apple) and sold several IIe's, an Apple 3, etc. I own what is absolutely the rarest Apple. It was called the Euro-Apple. It was designed for PAL-Secam video. I bought the board, populated with TTL and a 6502, in 1982. People tried to find a way to make them work with NTSC monitors. I was successful, and was able to buy a set of genuine Apple II ROM chips. FYI: That synthesized music is horrible.

[@freeculture]

Its the old trick also used with PC clones, to make the beeper produce something resembling low bit pcm playback. Very CPU intensive, often pauses the game. No SID chip here...

[@thorr2]

Very interesting how the 4MHz mode worked. I had a Laser 128/EX that also had turbo mode. It made everything faster, so in Ms. Pacman, it didn't have that behavior where it would speed up when there was no sound. It looks like the Apple IIc+ had turbo mode except when sound played to make it sound right at the expense of speed. Rampage was a game that was made for turbo mode (not really, but it plays that way). Not sure how well it would have worked on the IIc+ though.

[@Bonpu]

Am I really the only one thinking the Apple IIC - Hartmut Esslingens first design project for Apple - is the most beautiful personal computer ever built? To this day I am kicking myself for not snatching one when it became obsolete and hence affordable even in Europe.

[@rhodaborrocks1654]

I still have my Apple ][ Europlus, with 9" black and white monitor and single floppy, it taught me so much and was the key to a long career as a software developer, I could never part with it.

[@tomladdus9264]

I am amazed I don't remember this model at all. I was a big apple ii fan.

[@henkholdingastate]

What a huge difference from the absolute junk keyboards of modern laptops (Totally no feedback)

[@esseferio]

I missed these kind of videos :) Thank you :)

[@Energyone]

I got one when my parents bought it as a combo with a television sale. Naturally we had to get a 5.25 floppy drive for it as nothing was on the smaller discs really. Also came with an amber monitor which was a bit annoying. Used it a ton until I got an Amiga 500 later on.

[@TheSulross]

Another problem was that neither the 6502 or 65816 were enabled in their designs to be able to run high level languages (very well) that require a call stack, such as C. By the mid 80s, business software had shifted to using C instead of assembly language (Intel did intentionally design the 8086 - way back in 1977 - to be able to run high level, call stack based languages). Yes, the early great software for the PC, like Lotus 123, was written in assembly language, but the C compilers quickly go better and improved their code generation - and memory became cheaper. So the industry around personal computers shifted to using high level, compiled languages. Even products like Turbo Pascal and Turbo C enabled this for the masses. If you look today you will see that there are C compilers for the 6502, but they generate bloated software and essentially implement a hack (establish a call stack off to the side of the 6502 default stack). There are no dedicated registers and instructions for using this stack - so the code is verbose and inefficient. There is a lot of retro activity to write games for the old 8-bit 6502 computers (like the Commodore 64) but people really have to learn assembly language to do that with much success (and ability to turn out games that have any appeal). But in commercial software for business purposes, high level compiled languages like C were a significant economic leverage. So in the latter half of the 80s, a new computer unable to facilitate this high level language economic leverage were at a great disadvantage - who would want to bother targeting such a computer if it meant having to return to writing business applications in assembly language? Yeah, nobody wanted to do that. And this is also part of the reason the IIgs failed - its 65816 still failed to add sufficient improvements to support high level languages like C. The call stack could be bigger but it was still pinned down in the special zero 64K block and there were still no special registers and instructions added for manipulating a call stack that makes high level language code generation more efficient (i.e., practical). The 6502 doomed itself because even with the 65816 it failed to sufficiently innovate forward. It was forever stuck in the late 70s, early 80s era of personal computing.

[@dank1837]

I believe my Apple to JPlus is rarer. The Japanese version but I love the video!!!

[@3Dparallax]

Even used the garamond font, nice touch.

[@SuburbanDon]

That original Flight Sim was BRUTAL !!!

[@freeculture]

And in fact would run a bit slower than real time. With accel the clock is going too fast, without it, it runs slightly slower (at least in the //c).

[@jrherita]

The IIC+ is the sort of upgrade I really wish Atari had given their 8bit. (3.5” disk support and higher frequency).

[@jetfrog4574]

Yes!!!

[@brianh2771]

You’re not alone. My IIc Plus came with the exact same problem. I had a spare motherboard, which simplified the troubleshooting. Then got a new ROM so I’d have two working motherboards. I also overclocked to 8 MHz.

[@gregorymalchuk272]

How do you overclock an apple iic plus?

[@brianh2771]

@@gregorymalchuk272 It's simple. Just swap out the crystal oscillator with a faster one. I added a socket too. My machine works reliably with a 40 MHz crystal, which gives 8 MHz CPU speed.

[@MRB16th]

@@brianh2771 Your IIc Plus sounds cool. Huge speed boost by the way.

[@winstonsmith478]

I would have removed the ROM, cleaned the pins if oxidized, put some contact cleaner on the socket, then reseated the original ROM before buying a new ROM. Or did the original troubleshooter do that or did they just get the bad ROM idea from the self-test?

[@ModernClassic]

The original owner did that, and I did it too a year ago. We both cleaned and re-seated all the socketed chips. I probably should have mentioned that but it just didn't occur to me. I wanted a new ROM regardless, since I'd read extensively about the original ROM and the various ways people had tried to force it to stay in non-accelerated mode. These ROM chips are $10, so it was a no-brainer.

[@thedopplereffect00]

Did the sound really take more CPU at 4Mhz? Wouldn't it be likely the CPU was waiting for the sound to play or for some interrupt to complete? Really fascinating behavior though.

[@Trusteft]

This was a cool Sunday morning video to watch. Thank you for sharing. I wouldn't swap my then Atari ST for this machine, but I wouldn't be disappointed either if it was all I had at the time. Especially since I was/am mostly a strategy/rpg guy.

[@ModernClassic]

I had an Atari ST until a little while ago. Unfortunately mine was one of the very early ones without an internal drive, so no way to use a floppy emulator internally, and the drive I had to go with it had the less common interface that wouldn't work with any floppy emulator without building a special cable. I never got around to doing that, so eventually just sold it. Not before taking the machine apart and cleaning and retrobrighting all the individual parts, though; it was beautiful by the time I sold it.

[@Trusteft]

@@ModernClassic Two reasons why I don't buy one (or any other similar age computer), I am worried of its condition, and I am not talking about requiring cleaning or retrobrighting. If I could find someone selling them 100% repaired/refurbished, I would...The second reason is money which right now is too tight. But one day perhaps I will. I am not good with actual proper repairs, I have an iMac (sunflower) which I bought as non working few years ago, but I am too worried I will do more damage than good if I open it.

[@maxxdahl6062]

@@Trusteft I bought a breadbin c64 a while back to get back into an old machine I wanted to play, then looked at what it would cost for me to get it going (PSU, floppy drive, etc.) and said to hell with it, bought a c64 mini for general use and will keep the breadbin for collection.

[@ilexgarodan]

Honestly, I'd go for the IIgs, if only because of how unique its architecture was!

[@iStormUK]

I longed for this when it launched - I had only a ZX81 at the time, and was soooo tired of crappy keyboards and tape drives. This looked like the perfect replacement - but you know, we weren't rich enough to get new computers, and I ended up with a 2nd hand Acorn Electron instead. Woo Life of Repton gaming! :p

[@flounder31]

I would have answered your initial question with - the Bell + Howell "Vader" IIe. Never even heard of the IIc+ - nice video!

[@flounder31]

Also - RIP Meigs Field, Chicago

[@gallgreg]

The B&H black Apple is actually a II Plus rather than a IIe...

[@A2Central]

@@gallgreg there are beige Bell and Howell //e units, complete with a beige version of the backpack. It's still badged as an Apple product though, so @Chris McDaniel it's not really a seperate model.

[@knyazhefilms2154]

Oh I see those days Control was in a right place. Interesting ...

[@MagesGuild]

I still use my //c Plus. For games it works best for turn based stuff such as Peek A Boo Poker; so yes contemporary arcade ports are as broken as a ZIP/Transwarp II or //e or //gs. it rocked AppleWorks and was grad for dev/compiling. MouseDesk was a dream on it.

[@freeculture]

So i imagine wargames from SSI would benefit a lot.

[@derklempner]

Best games I played on my ][c+ were Ultima IV and Ultima V!

[@ChrisCebelenski]

Color artifacts FTW! Nobody would use BSW on that screen with the rainbow text as you point out - a monochrome monitor was just about required for any productivity software or CP/M. This added a not-insubstantial cost for people who wanted color and mono.

[@timlocke3159]

Your "I'll be right back" music is much louder than your voice. Perhaps lower it some.

[@ModernClassic]

It's the same volume. I set all the levels to be equal.

[@timlocke3159]

@@ModernClassic Perhaps the volumes of the source files are different. It sure sounds a lot louder. I have to turn it down.

[@sub-jec-tiv]

][c plus is a beautiful design.

[@WelcomeToMarkintosh]

Awesome video-thank you! Could you tell me what model that Magnavox monitor is?

[@ModernClassic]

It's the RGB Monitor 40. (Not to be mistaken with the Color Monitor 40, which is a different monitor that only has composite, if I remember right.) There is also an RGB Monitor 80, which has a finer dot pitch (one is meant for 40 columns, the other 80 columns). They're both a little hard to find but if you can find either one, I'd grab it. They are great monitors in that they can take almost any retro source, even CGA. The 80 is obviously a bit more desirable with its finer dot pitch.

[@RobertBullock]

I own a IIgs for nostalgia but never had one back in the day. I was using a 520ST by then and I had a dealer license so I got it at wholesale. Wildly better and cheaper and faster.

[@Apple2gs]

I'm the reverse. Had a IIGS back in the day, but only in recent times picked up a 520ST and two 1040ST out of my fondness for vintage computers. I have to say the IIGS was overall better--vastly superior graphics, sound, operating system and GUI, and best of all, expandability with 8 internal card slots! CPU speed was about on par when comparing the 65xx vs 68xxx, but the ST had the upper hand when it came to price and support! The IIGS cost a small fortune, yet Apple, and in turn most companies, ignored it for software support. I used to drool over all the arcade games I saw in magazine for the Amiga and Atari ST got, while IIGS got left out.

[@LonSeidman]

Bank Street Writer! My word processor of choice.

[@cathrynm]

Oops, yeah. All the 3.5" disk software was for 2GS.

[@RobertBullock]

I have some refurb 3.5 drives. 800k is what you want I assume? Sold quite a number on Ebay. Clean, regrease, test, replace eject gear.

[@ModernClassic]

Yes, 800k. I've bid on a number of them on Ebay but have just missed every time. If you have a good one that you'd be willing to sell for a reasonable price, I'm interested.

[@Kaiju3301]

Lol computer science in grade school? We weren’t slowed to use computers in high school because the principal thought we would become hackers… I graduated in 2008.

[@KapiteinKrentebol]

2:00 InCider......brilliant! 😂

[@Christopher-N]

(17:13) "I'm gonna throw up right now ..." not on this flight, mister. :P "... some footage of _Flight Simulator_ running on the IBM P70 ..."

[@s3vR3x]

Still have mine, it was our family's first computer we got on new years 1989. We used it until January 1992 when it was replaced by a 486/33. Honestly the 4mhz was a gimmick. I dont think in all the time we were using it we benefitted from the increased speed in any way

[@mikehosken4328]

Can you imagine if Apple didn’t hamstring the GS, it would have buried the Mac. Unfortunately the //c+ was destined to fail, most businesses moved to the PC when it was released and was serving a ever decreasing market. I very much appreciated your remarks on the accelerator issues and ram cards. Not very good for games but a real advantage with productivity software. I’ve got a 16 MHz accelerator that is adjustable and have found 1.3 MHz is perfect for most games that ran sluggish on the original cpu.

[@jfbeam]

Well. Apple has always been its own worst enemy. (And that can be traced directly to one person: Jobs) I saw a lot of IIGS and ][c systems in education. But unless Apple (or someone else with infinite pockets) paid for them, PC's or various UNIX systems were the affordable option. When I left NCSU in '95, I had already built several PC labs (linux and windows NT dual boot.) There were still thousands of DEC and SUN workstations everywhere. (and a few alphas that hadn't set themselves on fire.)

[@freeculture]

I don't think it would have buried it. Clearly they were different markets, like the more hobbyists/gamers vs the productivity/publishing crowd. And a compact version of the GS in the //c form factor would have been awesome.

[@ww21943]

Will pressing the OA key and Control start the self test on a IIGS? I think I have a bad onboard RAM chip

[@backman60205]

Do you remember the logos computer writing program?

[@lyonadimral]

Sadly my high school threw about 20 of these out complete with stands, color monitors, external drives, etc... in the trash back in 1999.

[@Sashazur]

Ehh, if nobody had done that, then these old systems wouldn’t be rare and cool.

[@gallgreg]

That's sad but hardly surprising... I once rescued 22 IBM PCjr's from a school district's dumpster around 1991!

[@andyk939]

I have one of these in my garage somewhere...

[@AureliusR]

Hey, some sound advice (get it?): You should run the audio on your videos through a compressor, with a fairly high knee but high ratio. The music comes in waaay too loud.

[@ModernClassic]

Yup, it went through a compressor. I do it every time.

[@FrancisFjordCupola]

1988 was also a single year after Acorn introduced the 32-bit Archimedes range featuring 8Mhz ARM2 chips. The ARM1 chip was used on prototype/development boards... a computer that would roughly be 10x as fast as a 4Mhz 6502 CPU.

[@MrGeorgeGary]

Gosh it's 6.6.22. I feel as though I am showing up really late for this party. Where can one purchase the MG ROM 5x. I would dearly love upgrading my IIc Plus with this improvement. Thanks! 😋

[@tetsujin_144]

30:55 - "This is a 40 column monitor" ...Isn't that monitor the Magnavox-branded equivalent of the Commodore 1084? It certainly looks the part... As such it should be good for 80 columns.

[@ModernClassic]

No, this is the RGB Monitor 40... there is also an RGB Monitor 80.

[@telocho]

@@ModernClassic It’s actually made by Philips for their MSX line of computers. The 80 column (fine dot pitch) was for the MSX2 (NMS, new media systems).

[@michaelsworkshop9031]

I was around when all of these machines were released and in use, and speed just rarely came up as an upgrade anyone cared about through the 80s and early 90s for the IIe and IIc, etc. Yeah, the Apple IIgs was almost 3x faster than an Apple IIe, but apart from the fun of watching IIe-specific software run too fast on it at full speed, that speed was taken advantage of by native software written for the IIgs alone (and then speed hungry people started itching for TransWarpGS and ZipGS CPU speed upgrade cards, especially for GS-OS). Everyone I knew wanted bigger storage than their Disk II drives could hold (140k), and started looking at 3.5" disk upgrades, SCSI cards and SCSI hard drives, even some SCSI magneto optical drives (!!!). Customers were more confused and pissed at how Apple seemed to bury Apple II advances -- they seemingly went all-in at the famous "Apple II Forever" event around when the IIc was introduced, and then a year or two later, they sort of buried the IIgs launch and then later the IIc+ launch, all the while continuing to prop up the Macintosh division using revenues from the Apple II's they were selling virtually from 1984 straight through NOVEMBER 1993 when they discontinued the Platinum IIe. Honestly, nobody I knew cared that most PCs existed were faster -- people were seriously more frustrated they couldn't view colour ANSI graphics on most PC-based BBSes on their Apple IIe or IIgs terminal software. For all the teachers at our schools, the Apple IIe Card for the Macintosh LC was the gateway drug to get them onto that different platform, but does that really count, if you're using that Macintosh dialed down significantly just to use the same software you've been using on Apple II's for the past decade?