Could the Apple IIe be the most reliable machine ever? (Testing 12 more of them)

[@ActionRetro]

Really love this series. I'm probably the only one, but I think the old school branding adds to the ambiance!

[@OzRetrocomp]

I agree. It shows the machine's history, which is interesting in itself.

[@GeekmanCA]

Old-school school-branding. :D

[@imax8abug590]

Hey cool to see you hear i like your video’s

[@kryskarr23]

@@GeekmanCA I was going to say the same thing

[@battra92]

Such beautiful penmanship!

[@Apple2gs]

Fun fact, I'm the author of the Wikipedia article on the Apple IIe (including the Revisions section) shown at 19:23! Also the author of the articles on the Apple IIc, Apple IIc Plus and several sections the Apple IIGS article, including its revision section. Wrote them up back in 2006, as there were no articles covering those machines at the time. Glad to see someone making use of my information all these years later! :) With regards to the IIe revisions, the presence of a 65C02 does not necessarily indicate an Enhanced machine. While there are indeed four chips making up the official enhancement kit, and recommended they all be used together, it is possible to upgrade *only* the CPU as some people did. I've also seen cases of custom video character ROMs used. Always best to check the part numbers on all four chips: CPU, CD-ROM, EF-ROM and Video ROM. The Platinum IIe came pre-configured as Enhanced, no need to check it. In schools, or at least my high school, kids would often pull off those "Enhanced" or "65C02" stickers over the power light (the later seen on international machines, such as in Canada), so that's not always the best way to tell if your machine is unenhanced or not. Thanks for the warning about the 'MT' brand DRAMs, turns out my unenhanced IIe is filled with them but thankfully they're all socketed!

[@ToadSprockett]

I found a IIE on Craigslist for $40 some time ago, it had some broken keys, two drives and a monochrome monitor, rebuilt the power supply, retro-brighted it and I still use it to this day. I love playing infocom games on it 😁 Good work on these, makes me happy to see them preserved…

[@MicrophonicFool]

Props to you and Infocom. Those games are bar-none the pinnacle of Interactive Fiction writing and story path. Also, the Z-code compiler was very early, and instrumental much later with hardware and software virtualization. A brilliant company and product. I always was a major Douglas Adams fan. When I heard there was to be a Hitchhikers game by Infocom, I think I might have pissed myself a little. I did eventually complete it, but the combination of Steve Meretsky and Adams lead to a fiendishly complicated experience. Very rewarding however.

[@knghtbrd]

The more of these machines I see with keyboard damage, the more convinced I am that we need to build a modern replacement for the keyboard. Someone did it for the C64 and the results are a keyboard that works far better than the original ever did, though it looks a little out of place with modern "too square" keycaps on it. Still, so many IIe machines need keyboard repair, and the original IIc keyboard is garbage. Bonus: The original keyboards on these machines lack diodes to prevent ghosting. That's a cheap addition today. Designing PCBs isn't really something I've done before.

[@ToadSprockett]

@@knghtbrd Completely agree, fixing the keyboard was the most expensive part. I was lucky and found a caps lock key switch. It’s not a complicated layout, maybe I should bite the bullet and prototype one. I’ll have to dig up another IIE that I can monkey with, I’m not touching this one as it runs so well 🤪

[@knghtbrd]

@@ToadSprockett Check for shorts on the prototype before connecting it to the machine. Rows, columns, and rails. It's not a complex layout at all-it's basically a 60% style but with an LED (make it a tri-color model and you can cheat on the power being green and caps-lock being orange). Note the IIc uses a different matrix than the IIe. Oh, and if you decide to do one for the I/II/II+ (with microcontroller to actually decode the key matrix), remember that the Apple II like many really old machines uses a ridiculously long space bar. Put an extra switch on the left and right, and have some provision for connecting them to the joystick port. Open/closed apple switches!

[@ncc17701a]

Back in my early days fixing Spectrum/BBC/Apple/Commodore machines, I used to have test systems where all the chips were socketed for ease of verifying if there was a fault with a chip out of a customer machine. I remember a Spectrum that came in where the ULA had a hole burnt through it, and the circuit board where some kid had plugged in a random PSU to a jack at the back. Didn't take much diagnosis to see what the problem was, and not much chip left to move!

[@christopherbaar4498]

The way you say Karateka is closer to the way it would be pronounced in Japanese. The word karateka means practitioner of karate.

[@raelik777]

Yeah, in Japanese it would be pronounced 'kah-rah-tay-kah' (of course with the Japanese-prounced 'l/d' sounding 'r')

[@SidneyCritic]

You should put dummy header pins in the unused pins of the ribbon connector so you can't be out 1 row of pins and blow it up. I wonder if the enhanced lids got accidently swapped to non enhanced apples.

[@twocvbloke]

I'm guessing the speakers were jabbed by kits with pens or pencils or other implements, either to vandalise or to mute the things to avoid making noise or something...

[@brentboswell1294]

So you could play "Moon Patrol" (by far the loudest Apple 2 game) while the instructor wasn't behind you 😋

[@infinitecanadian]

@@brentboswell1294 The loudest Apple ][ game is 'Microwave'.

[@iamthedavel]

I received a ban from my high school library in my senior year for playing Ultima 3. I was the only on in trouble as everyone else was playing games on IIc's that had volume controls and I was on the only IIe.

[@Apple2gs]

@@infinitecanadian - Nah, I'd say The Halley Project (the intro, with digitized audio of the guy shouting and the guitar solo! Very cool, but VERY loud!)

[@infinitecanadian]

@@Apple2gs You're right! That's amazing! I don't know why they didn't do that on the Atari 8-Bit, which had impressive speech capabilities.

[@toddrlyons]

Thank you, Adrian. I've learned to appreciate the Commodore content over time, but I really love the Apple ][ videos whenever you publish them.

[@indigodarkwolf]

At the grade school I went to (not Clover Park), I recall we had an entire room of Apple IIe computers next to the school library and every single one of those computers relied exclusively on 5.25" disk drives. No other disk drive at all.

[@rbrtck]

Same here, although many had two Disk ][ drives, and some of those had two floppy disk controller cards. I knew there was a difference because I could type PR#7 to boot from the second drive on those (just a thought I had), while on the others with two drives the command didn't work. I wasn't sure why this was until I learned more about Apple II computers later, though. Additionally, about half of the Apple IIes were unenhanced with the old style case and key caps with white lettering, while the other half were enhanced IIes with black lettering on the key caps. Most had Amdek Color-I monitors, while the others had Apple green monochrome monitors (I have one of each now because they're so iconic with the Apple II). There was also exactly one Apple IIc with the small green monochrome monitor that was designed for it (need to get one of those, too, but with my Commodores and Ataris and consoles, this hobby of mine is starting to get out of hand!).

[@thesledgehammerblog]

The only Apple IIs I ever saw with 3.5" drives at the schools I went to were IIgs machines.

[@MicrophonicFool]

Even (only) 30 years ago, the company I worked for had the maintenance contract for Apple, exclusive then in this Left-Coast Canadian Island town. Most Libraries/Schools had already started to go away from 8-bit, but there was still a metric shit-tonne of Apple IIe labs. The Cannibalization had already been a thing for years, but at the tail end, these schools knew that modern stuff was soon-coming and I was informed that ALL means should be used to get to the next replacement cycle and nothing more. Hence all the Frankenstein swaps, different key colours, different top plates, etc. I wasn't even authorized to replace all those dead speakers you have found! It was the end of the line at that point. If young Billy didn't get his BEEPS then such it was.

[@williamsquires3070]

The “head-seek track 0” sound from the old Disk ][ drives just makes me happy every time I hear it. Those were simpler (and happier) times (except for having to go to school, that kinda sucked)! ❤️🥰😻

[@knghtbrd]

I can hear right now the sound of Apple II machines loading various things off various disks as if it was right in front of me. By far the largest such mental library is an old Shugart Disk II. I wish I had one, but at this point I've only got an AppleDisk 5.25 which serves for all necessary tasks.

[@tenmillionvolts]

My old high school had a master switch for all of the bench power points. The teacher would flick the switch and about 20 DIskII drives would do the seek simultaneously. Sounded fantastic!

[@atkelar]

With the speakers... and the "school district" logos... what are the bets that a teacher got really annoyed by the beeps and boops and just silenced the speakers the only way they knew? Way too many broken speakers for an accident IMHO...

[@TeionM83]

"I'm first!" *WHO CARES?!*

[@VincentParisien]

Even more impressive that these units still work for having been used in a school environment. Speaking of that, my theory for the broken speakers are the students wanting to play games on these without the teacher knowing... By damaging the speakers, the teacher could not simply just plug it back in and probably not worth the service call to have it repaired. At least, that would have been the kind of things I did back in the day...

[@oldguy9051]

Good theory. They probably snipped the thin wires going to the coil...

[@8antipode9]

Having been a network admin for school districts in the past, this is where my money is. Students did it by jamming something in the slot and destroying the speakers. Either to secretly play games or to just vandalize.

[@colinstu]

There are speaker holes located in the case? Could a student jam something through there and damage the speaker?

[@oldguy9051]

@@colinstu Yes, perhaps scissors...

[@rbrtck]

These computers are pretty robust and reliable, I'm not saying that they aren't, but when I did the inventory for a middle school in the late 1980s, there were plenty of broken ones in storage--more than there were in operation, as I recall. If the 16 that Adrian is looking at here were taken straight out of a classroom when the school stopped using them, then it shouldn't be surprising that all or nearly all of them would be in working order. The ones that broke over time might have been disposed of separately, either all at once if they were kept in storage or one at a time.

[@fnjesusfreak]

Mechner pronounces it ka-ra-TE-ka. ka-RA-te-ka does reflect how it's actually pronounced in Japanese.

[@janklas7079]

It's more like the C64 was an unrealiable piece of crap. You won't find many broken ZX-Spectrums. Most other brands computers out of that era, still work. Except C64's.

[@williamsquires3070]

Silly boy; taking the long walk off a short pier again, I see. Just call the machine that had the “4” sticker on it as #4, instead of renumbering it to #8. 😏 Ditto for the other machines that already had a sticker on them. Well, that just wasted a few seconds of your life you’ll never get back. 🤣😂

[@mar4kl]

13:40 - "Someone decided...to pillage it for all its parts...when the reality is it's a very simple fix." It's a very simple fix NOW. Back in the day, memory chips were expensive, and most people, including the ones working in the computer stores that sold these, had no idea how to troubleshoot a memory problem. So if one were a school district computer systems manager who had plenty of these machines to go around, keeping a malfunctioning computer around in order to cannibalize the parts would have been a completely reasonable decision.

[@brianv2871]

Yup, like the power supply replacements. If a Power Supply goes on our PC, we just order another one.. no-one (even at work or elsewhere) would open up the power supply to find the fault. We do it more now because it's easier/cheaper to find the individual parts then it is to find whole units of things so repair is more the mindset for vintage stuff.

[@mar4kl]

@@brianv2871, that's true as well, but my point was that back when those Apple IIe computers were in use, the tools for doing board-level diagnostics were mostly out of reach, the brainshare for doing board-level fixes was largely nonexistent, and replacement parts were too expensive for experimentation. The manuals that shipped with them were useful, but fell far short of providing detailed information about how the ICs worked together, where to test the ICs for voltages with our multimeters or where to touch the oscilloscope leads to test for noisy circuits. Did I say "our" multimeters? Personally, I was the only person in my circle of friends who had one. And forget about the oscilloscope. That was an expensive piece of scientific equipment back in 1989. I certainly didn't own one or have access to one, and I knew nobody outside of academic circles who did. Even if a school computer systems manager had access to those tools, that doesn't mean he knew what to do with them. The how-to knowledge was generally found at computer club meetings, and unless your computer club members included an electrical engineer or two, or you were fortunate enough to have access to a BBS that offered up that level of information, what Adrian does in his videos may as well have been magic. Nowadays, of course, we can look all this up on the Internet, so anyone with some basic skills in small electronics can teach himself to fix the stuff that we once gave up on. This is merely my explanation as to how this amazing collection of Apple IIe computers came to be the way Adrian received it. I don't mean to minimize what Adrian does in his videos. To do what he does requires time, dedication and motivation born out of a genuine love of breathing life back into old electronics. I have none of those, so I'm not going to start looking around for antique electronics and teaching myself to repair them. But I do enjoy watching Adrian do it. To me, he is just as much an artist as he is a talented technician.

[@HaveYouTriedGuillotines]

This is sadly true, especially with Apple who provided less and less straightforward documentation as time went on. The Sad Mac codes were actually pretty informative, but good luck decoding them in the 90s when few people had internet access, few resources existed on the internet, and even the few off the shelf books that had info on the codes were written by people who didn't really know specifically what the codes were, just what type of failure normally accompanied them. Even now you have to do some digging to find an accurate sheet that was documented by a tech or developer at Apple, and it gets harder the further into the 90s you go.

[@runderwo]

37:30 Try IN#6 as an alternative to PR#6

[@Technichian462]

As an electrical troubleshooter, it is very common to have connections like that. Its called galvanic corrosion. Its why you dont put a screw in an aircraft panel that is made from a different material that the screw mount. They must be the same, or they will corrode. Same is true for cards/slots. If the connectors are copper going into aluminum, silver, or gold, it will corrode. Basically two different metals are all you need for it to happen. When the metals are in a humid environment, it happens a lot more. Often, simply re-seating the parts is enough to break the corrosion. But cleaning if off will usually give you years before it shorts again.

[@tahustvedt]

I like how janky the Apple II is. The disk cable is just routed out a hole in the back all the expansions are just flapping in the proverbial breeze, the motherboard sits on plastic spikes everywhere but the back and the top cover is just barely on there.

[@rantsfromcanada1656]

It just occurred to me... maybe an Apple //e (either one of these, or from that warehouse) could be sent over to Mark Fixes Stuff" after his fire.

[@144megabytes]

I'm totally jealous of all this awesome hardware. Great job on these and I love the series

[@RudysRetroIntel]

Excellent video and work as always. About the RAM, when you get the binary numbers, face the computer with the keyboard away from you. Then binary numbers match the chips on the board. An opps but the developer. Rifa caps are on those power supplies, so you know what to do next. Also, my rev A unit does take the enhancement chip :) oh btw, on board diagnostics is not fake

[@rbrtck]

I think the only difference between the rare Rev. A and ubiquitous Rev. B boards is the latter's ability to display the newer double-hi-res graphics modes. Either will take the IIe Enhancement Kit (65C02/6503 plus some upgraded ROMs).

[@DavePoo2]

Woz has a lot of good things to say about the Apple II recently in this 'Right to Repair' video he did kzbin.info/www/bejne/eX-UlZ2GgtSijLs

[@Technichian462]

One of the best games, as far as I know was only on the Apple II line, was EAMON. It was a text only adventure game, much like Zork. But it was all done in Applesoft Basic. It allowed for users to make their own adventure stories. I was big into AD&D at the time, so I learned basic rewriting adventures from AD&D.

[@BarnokRetro]

I bet the kids broke the speakers so the teachers wouldn't hear the computers reboot. Just in case they happened to have a game disk with them. :)

[@TheSinzia]

Man oh man, so many memories coming back to me! As a kid, I had a hand-me-down //E that was lucky enough to get the rare GS upgrade kit. I really wish I held onto that machine, but alas it's long since gone.

[@winstonsmith478]

Their great advantage: they didn't use ICs made by MOS Technologies. Edit: are those "MT" RAM ICs made by MOS Tech, using those letters instead of their logo?

[@eDoc2020]

No, I'm pretty sure it's Micron Technology.

[@georgesenda1952]

I am looking for the 5 1/4 inch Disk 2 drive hub white pads. They would go on the drive arm that would move up & down to read the disks. The pads would get dirty. I had a supply but lost all my spare parts when I lost my storage in the early 2000’s. I’ve looked everywhere & can’t find any. I have 4 disk 2 drives and 5 Apple 2’s.

[@cferrarini]

Thats because everything was make in US with quality components and the printed circuit tracks were very thick, all golden contacts were real gold. Although my dads apple II needed tinkering many times we used. Maybe the slots are not very good. My dad had an apple II factory in sao paulo Brazil, it was appletronica.. Try some pencil eraser to clean contacts.

[@mal2ksc]

Pencil eraser is OK in a pinch, but will eventually wear down the traces. He has DeOxit, so that's a better option.

[@amshermansen]

I am genuinely jealous you have that many IIs around. I've wanted a (replica) to chug an ITX build into for years. They are pretty dang rare here in Scandinavia (and usually restored and working), and after the Indiegogo campaign for a replica case where the author did a hit-and-run I get so sad whenever someone shows off IIs.

[@xPLAYnOfficial]

Do you have a 3D printer? I have some experience and could make you a printable case

[@jamescharron4535]

Why call the original number tags “Fake”? Makes zero sense… old, dated , or even obsolete but fake just implies something dubious. Was there something up with numbering of these machines I missed in this series? I don’t know what it is but every time I hear fake in this video my ears twitch.

[@krnlg]

Don't think he's saying it seriously :) They were just labeled by someone else previously for whatever reason.

[@AdamKlein77]

At 5:13...does the label say "Asslover Park?"

[@ricardojpinheiro]

If you meet the MSX standard (Japanese), you'll find a more reliable computer than the Apple IIe. Most of the MSX computers built from 1983 till 1994 runs perfectly despite the age. (yep, I'm a brazilian MSX freak 😄) PS: BTW, Commodore ones are the most unreliable, almost every Amiga needs to have its capacitors changed, and there are a lot of 64s which need repairs.

[@herrbonk3635]

Yes, Amiga used cheap or at least bad surface mount capacitors, while VIC 64 (perhaps even VIC 20) used a bad chip factory (their own) making self desctructive chips. I'm not even joking.

[@rigues]

I joke that unless you snap the motherboard in half, the brazilian Gradiente Expert (MSX 1) is virtually indestructible. Never met one with a more serious defect than bad RAM, Power Supply or sockets.

[@herrbonk3635]

@@rigues That's probably because it uses dynamic RAM chips, old ones were pretty error prone. Static RAM almost never go bad.

[@JamesHalfHorse]

Considering these were in schools and the shape most were in when I fooled with them in the early 90s these are in excellent shape. I could only imagine where we would be if Woz kept designing hardware for Apple.

[@Okurka.]

Can't you piggyback a RAM chip to see if it works?

[@brianboni4876]

They really boot that fast or are you cutting it out?

[@granpawa]

You can make a non enhanced Apple IIe boot from a LIRON card by patching the EF Rom (I usually use an AT28C64B but any 64Kbits (E)EPROM will do). Here are the patch offsets : 00001ABB is 07, change to 05 00001B08 is 3C, change to 3E The first byte modifies the routine that checks the signature for a bootable device card firmware. The second byte is required in order to have the ROM checksum correct so the autotest works without issue.

[@chuckthetekkie]

I would, in addition to verifying that all keys on each keyboard work properly, I would also check all expansion slots to make sure that they work. I lover your channel.

[@pmgodfrey]

18:05 -- MY EARS! I'm surprised I can hear that at 48. What the heck was that? 15kHz noise or harmonics from the monitor?

[@MrGoatflakes]

Hmm, bizarre. I can hear it too. Missed it the first time round. Very surprised as I'm in my late forties and have definitely suffered hearing damage :/

[@Apple2gs]

It's not the CRT, it's actual audio coming from the Apple IIe speaker. The self-test only requires holding down Solid-Apple, but if you press *BOTH* Apple modifier keys at once on the original/unenhanced IIe, you can that funky (ear piercing!) high pitched noise during the testing phase. Not sure if it is an intentional feature or not, particularly since you can easily test the speaker pressing Control-G for the system bell when you drop to the Applesoft BASIC prompt. Or just a Control-Reset too. Perhaps it's to test sustained and continuous audio? Either way, it disappeared in the later firmware.

[@blaizejosh]

You could also try IN#6 to boot up the computer. IN#6 or PR#6. Assuming that IN# means interface and PR# means peripheral.

[@NazarovVv]

I have a Pravetz 8C which is basically a reverse engineered Apple IIe (main difference is that the FDD and Serial cards are build in on the mainboard and you get 2 less expansion slots) and it still works absolutely fine

[@rivards1]

I know I've seen too many Commodore 64 videos when I see "KERNEL OK" on an Apple screen and think "KERNAL" would look more normal.

[@orbitalgolem91]

Adrian, as FYI, "IN#6" also triggers a boot sequence like "PR#6", for machines like the last one where the "P" key doesn't work.

[@elfenmagix8173]

#7's and #12 PSU is from the older Apple II ( not II+) as parts are hard to come by. No school or school district (in my experience with the NYC School System) had a contract with any company to repair machines and usually had some tech in-house hired as some low level school employee who assisted the computer lab teacher and were forced to cannibalize parts from dead or broken machines or swapped out spares. Things changed after the late 90s a mid 2000s when schools and their districts made contracts with computer companies lie Apple and Dell, but by then machines like the Apple IIe's were taken out of the classes and put into storage basements and replaced with Macs and PCs.

[@System-1541]

According to Webster it's pronounced kä-rä-ˈtā-kä (car-a-tay-kah). It means "a practitioner of karate".

[@UpLateGeek]

Thanks Adrian, your blue tape reminded me that I was looking for mine the other day, then I rememebered I was also missing my liquid flux and soldering sponge water bottles from my desk, which jogged my memory that I tidied up my desk when I got my new monitor at the beginning of lockdown 2 (electric boogaloo), and dumped a bunch of stuff into a box. So I dug out the box and found everything.

[@nogoodnamesavailable]

@32:34 ... some speakers on a *well-known-china-shop*: item number 1005002898556961 ... they have up to 77mm in diameter and various smaller ones.

[@christopherbouwsma207]

Let's see a 48-pin backplane revival. I was a super-bad amigaVision bundle builder. 1990-1993 completely disabled on anti-psychotics.

[@runderwo]

28:30 If you fry your Disk ][ by offsetting or reversing the cable, fortunately it's an easy fix (replace a single 74xx IC inside the drive).

[@profdc9501]

I blew one of my Disk ][s about 35 years ago doing this. I went to the local electronics store, bought the replacement, and it worked. The socket melted a little, but otherwise ok. :)

[@CDE.Hacker]

All hail the Mighty Woz!

[@xenoxaos1]

The 65SC02 is actually a stripped down 65C02. It's missing bit operations.

[@davidjohnston4240]

Kah-Ra-Teh-Kah (空手か - "Is it karate?") with no emphasis on any mora (mora in Japanese roughly = syllable in English). Not Kah-Ra-Tea-Kah. I still have PTSD from the Japanese teacher correcting every one of my many mispronunciations.

[@curtiswillie3249]

I don't know if you have the original Karateka disk, but if you do, insert it upside down. It still loads the game, but everything is upside down. Also if you bow to the fighters, they bow back, but bowing to the princess at the end puts her in fight mode, and she kills you.

[@douro20]

The school district where I attended my last seven years of school had loads of early Apple IIes. All of them had the early cases which carried over from the II+ and had the old Disk II system and Monitor III displays. I don't think any of them had the Enhancement Kit installed.

[@rbrtck]

I have one of those early Apple IIes (with a Rev. B board like most have and keys with the original white lettering), and I even got a vintage Enhancement Kit for it, but I still haven't installed it because I haven't had to--works fine with the software I use.

[@donovans.5241]

Really enjoying this series. I've never owned a vintage apple machine but I am seriously considering adding one to the retro machine collection. Keep up the great work.

[@thudtheace]

My Atari 800 is 40 years old and it still works flawlessly (quite the reliable machine), even my 40 year old floppy disks still work.

[@akaJughead]

I bet 9361 is an inventory number.

[@grossteilfahrer]

@23:42 Nope its a 16 sector card. by 1984 all new cards would be 16 sector. the 16 sector mod came out in august of 1980, along with DOS 3.3. Check the dates on the one with a sticker, it might be really old! The stickers came with the upgrade kit for older controllers.

[@benjaminscherrey1124]

They were great machines to learn how to be a hacker. Current generations aren't so lucky to have something that you have complete low level access to and complete control of the hardware & software. Loved the Apple ][s.

[@tony359]

To Apple: boring!! Not even a RIFA explosion! :) Great video Adrian!

[@rbrtck]

The ones that had aftermarket power supplies probably already had their exciting moment.

[@melanierhianna]

I always wanted an Apple ][e but in the UK they cost ridiculous money. I ended up with the British Apple, the BBC Micro. The only failure on mine was the RIFAs in the power supply. I recapped it. I bought that machine in 1982 and 40 years later its still going strong.

[@agurdel]

I am not at all surprised that the speakers dont work. These are school machines. A room full of computers operated by kids! You want all of them have access to a speaker? I bet the speakers are not broken by accident and they were all very rudely disabled. When I got access to computers at school it was the win2k era and net send was a thing. At some point it upgraded to broadcasts. Then the batch loops. That was the point we found out that the school secretary was on the same network. Whoops! DONT GIVE BORED SCHOOL KIDS ANYTHING (you like)!

[@brostenen]

8bit computers are just something special. Never tried any Apple-II or even seen one in person. I did see an Atari at some point and seen a couple of Amstrad's. 8088/8086 PC's and C64. But never Apple-II.

[@rabidbigdog]

Thankfully the IIe was post-Jobs. There's no way he would have allowed a reliable, repairable, expandable computer to survive.

[@AnOfficialAndrewFloyd]

Karateka appears in a commercial for the Atari 7800 and the voiceover pronounces it WRONG. It is not pronounced with a long E.

[@MrGoatflakes]

The lettering added to the sides is beautifully done.

[@JonRowlison]

Also... not like you'll ever need to know this now, but MOST of the time for a disk device "IN#6" will also reboot when your P or R key isn't working. :)

[@jukkajylanki4769]

The nonenhanced machines #14, #15 and #16 still each have a top cover that read "Apple IIe"? I wonder if that means they have all the wrong cover on them, shouldn't they have read "Apple II"?

[@AriannaEuryaleMusic]

I love the Apple //c, I bought one for $20 in 1997 and Still works.

[@TheAnkMan]

Judging from the sheer number number of computers you not only have a huge Apple IIe problem, but an Apple IIe *infestation*. ;-)

[@richardwernst]

I was surprised on the failed floppy controller (#16?) you didn't just press all the socketed chips right off the bat and retry. Oops, just got to the part where you ask yourself if you should have tried the above first... :)

[@rdh2059]

These are from a school district in Lakewood, WA aren't they? Clover Park School District?

[@Abhishek-C92]

Old PC or Phones lasts long then newer models because their build quality is top end. Nowadays PC or Phones lasts hardly maximum 3-4 years .Planned Obsolence is really getting bad.

[@bennetfox]

Dude! Get back to the Radio Shack Model II!! That's the one I'm waiting to see resurrected!

[@sub-jec-tiv]

Had a ][+ in 81 when i was a kid. 48k baby. This is really bringing back some memories. That old dual disk controller, wow what a trip. I was obsessed with Karateka and Hard Hat Mack.

[@StrangelyIronic]

I would say the ][ series is probably one of the best designed computers ever made. There's a reason that line lasted so long from introduction until the IIGS finally phased out (arguably a whole new computer, still the //e and //e platinum were made at the same time roughly). Woz made sure it was a simple construction, easy for the user to fix anything that went wrong, and expandable into the future all in the same computer. His philosophy for building a computer would get an engineer fired these days at most companies. My //e Platinum and IIGS Woz edition still run flawlessly; both filled with expansion cards. The IIGS is still my favorite computer from that era even if it has quirks just like the rest of the ]['s had when it comes to graphics modes among other things.

[@williamsquires3070]

As for the speakers, just steal them out of an old crap transistor radio. Or an old PC. As long as they’re marked “8 ohms”, they should work. Old kids’ toys probably have some, too. 😊

[@helldog3105]

I have an Apple IIe here. I think it's an original, but it's missing the keyboard and the PSU. I need to get one of those PSU kits from Reactive Micro. Is there a place to get replacement keyboards aside from eBay? I haven't really researched it.

[@TTim4]

The biggest hint on fixing the ]['s is those mother board chips would unseat themselves due to warming & cooling ... first thing we always did when "repairing" them was to push down on all the chips to re-seat them, most of the time it would fix the issue. Next was the power supply. pretty much nothing else ever broke on them, well the disk drive condolers could burn out, though most of the time it happened when someone plugged them in incorrectly, they are super finicky with power. It also looks like the had a few of the duo-drive on top of some the cases by the yellowing patterns, they were completely awful products. Little known fact about the ]['s you could print a file, any file(binary included) from one to the modem input on a different machine one and then save the file it was a awesome way to transfer things from the ][s to the early macs, I may or may not of made a lot of money off people when they upgraded to the 128 mac. There were also some "engineering" cards for the ][s that had a whopping 1 meg of memory, they were fun for making ram drives & if they had a battery was a great way to save a ton of time and you didn't have to switch disks once you set it up.

[@toshiyasumorita4569]

Your explanation of how reset works with the open-apple and closed-apple keys is incorrect. The values of the keys aren't stored to memory per se. The address $C061 and $C062 are used as I/O ports and the high bit indicates whether the key is pressed or not, and these bits are checked in the reset code.

[@donwalton2314]

awesome - just found this blog - (from just south of the Portland Metro area). I have an old 2e - which works - and an old Lisa which doesn't currently. Love the vids so far. I need to learn more about my old stuff. -d

[@enphour7960]

I suspect the multiple speaker failures are from human abuse… i.e. Mischievous children opening lid of Apple II and poking pencil ✏️ through speaker cone

[@CB3ROB-CyberBunker]

probably the only time apple got anything right. it didn't catch fire unlike most of their other products (I, III, mac classic, cube, you name it it catches fire ;) :P but yeah there seriously isn't all that much you can do wrong with the chips they used. as long as they're also on a decent pcb (not the brown moist sucking up types that were around at the time) and use metal film and ceramic caps, it'll basically last forever.

[@erichkohl9317]

Ah yes. The classic "KERNEL OK" message. We had an original IIe so I remember seeing that whenever I did a self-test. Of course, a kid in my 6th grade class once told me that his machine said "GENERAL OK". To this day I still don't know if he was making that up or not.

[@Jenni_S25]

I’m quite familiar with it, too. I do wish that, just because Adrian hasn’t seen it before, wouldn’t say it’s "fake" or ‘pseudo," it’s just an earlier version.

[@erichkohl9317]

@@Jenni_S25 Actually, back then when I was only 12 or 13 years old, I always thought that message was a little cryptic. It wasn't until years later that I knew what a "kernel" was in computer-speak. :)

[@Apple2gs]

@Eric Kohl - He was likely making it up, no official production version of the Apple IIe firmware reported "GENERAL OK". The only possible exceptions would be if one of his parents worked for Apple and had a pre-1983 prototype motherboard (the "Super II") with beta firmware, or they burned their own custom firmware on EPROM, modified to say that phrase. Never saw the beta firmware so I cannot tell you what it said, or if it even had a diagnostic. Either way, neither is a likely scenario. On a side note, the Apple III diagnostic that came on disk, would clearly speak "I'm okay, system status normal!" (it had a 6-bit DAC as a sound chip!)

[@samljer]

I love emulating old machines, playing around. I dont have the room for the real deal. but if i did, oh my id have it all lol.

[@xX_Kryptis_Xx]

Ahh, the good old 2e, The first type of computer I used back in 85//86 at school think in first or 2nd grade

[@tristanhameleers7506]

Back then Apple very very very good these days: o no my phone fell 10cm now it is broken, and now I need to sell my other kidney (because of price).

[@JonRowlison]

Jordan Mechner says kara-TEE-ka, so I'm copying him since it's his word. :)

[@waterup380]

I still don't understand why they were still used up until 1995 in some schools. Across North America

[@Kunigun]

Hello from Ukraine! We love computers and haribo! Like you:)

[@Goran_Varbanov]

Hi, Adrian! I have an Apple II/e Platinum, i've bought it from ebay, couple years ago. Yesterday I decided to take it apart, so I can clean it up from inside, and overall to see what's inside after 35 years... So, when I take the motherboard out from the bottom side of it I've found that the three gum pads from the bottom of the case were melted out, and the bottom side of mother board was pretty nasty. So I've Cleaned the mess up, and it turned out pretty well! Before cleaning I've noticed that from time to time on the monitor it was some flickering, when the solid color or white screen was generated, but after cleaning of the bottom side of the mother board the video image on the monitor is rock solid again. So even if all seems to be ok it's not a bad idea to take the machine apart for further investigations. Sorry that I didn't take pictures of the melted gum on the bottom side of the motherboard.

[@McTroyd]

I guess that's why Apple had a lifetime warranty on so many models. That speaker looks like a bog-standard 8 ohm speaker though. Measure the cone diameter and I'd bet it's a standard one.

[@rigues]

Adrian, after watching these I'm starting to believe that the problem is not MT RAM, is MT RAM on COMMODORE machines. Maybe they bought marginal/low grade chips to save cost, and Apple got the better stuff? Also, after watching all of these I'm starting to miss my first computer, an Apple IIe clone from Microdigital in Brazil (TK 3000 IIe). Had the same "old school" floppy controllers with the two ribbons, but no extra RAM.

[@rbrtck]

No, MT RAM fails more often than other brands in Apple computers, as well. I don't think Commodore bought lower-grade MT RAM (I doubt such a thing exists--it's all the same). The problem with many failing C64s is that the power supply over-volts the computer when it fails. In cases where this failure mode is slight at first and gradual (the most common case), you get failing RAM with most people having no idea why it happened. Obviously, this is a very insidious problem. Commodore computers that have better power supplies (some even have switching power supplies) suffer a lot less from RAM and other chip failures. In the Commodore community, the rule is to *never* use vintage C64 power supplies--use only quality aftermarket units (or ones you can make yourself if you know what you're doing). Many Apple II power supplies also have design/quality issues, such as the Rifa X2 filter capacitor (one of mine was cracked and about to blow, so I replaced it with a modern substitute). But fortunately those either work or do not, and when they blow up (all eventually will), they almost never cause damage to the computer (just a lot of noxious smoke). Meanwhile, many C64 power supplies slowly "cook" the computers to death by pumping 5.5+ volts through circuits expecting 5 volts. Originally, they worked fine, they just have a really bad, sneaky way of failing. As long as people keep using them, though, and many still do, C64s will continue to fail at much higher rates than they otherwise would. Sadly, it is hard to get people to heed this warning. I even see KZbinrs who can repair C64s using the old power supply, one time even after they diagnosed the cause of the problem--he just plugged in another crap vintage power supply and has been using it ever since. Someday soon, that C64 will need to be repaired again when the power supply starts cooking it. He should know better!

[@toshiyasumorita4569]

The reason the speakers are damaged is probably because the kids wanted to play games during class and if there was sound, they would be caught. So they damaged the speaker. If they unplugged the speaker, the teacher would notice and plug the speakers back into the motherboard. So they poked holes in the speakers instead so the teacher wouldn't be able to easily fix the sound problem.

[@dakiloth]

Sockets make sense. You can continue motherboard production if there's a parts supply issue then populate the chips later

[@Araye]

Teachers would do that to disable the speaker. They wouldn't just unplug it because students would just plug them back in.

[@inwedavid6919]

Just correct me if I am wrong, the Apple II has no graphic chip, color or sprite, no sound chip? So with fewer componant it should be quite more reliable?

[@johanlaurasia]

You took off #14 written on blue painter's tape so that you could put on a #14 written on blue painter's tape...