The Ultimate STEALTH Apple IIGS

[@Dbear1977]

I picked up a stealth GS back in the mid-90’s for $10-20. I needed the motherboard for a “Woz” GS, and tossed the rest. If only I had known back then…

[@drboom2]

Oh man... That's the sort of thing that would keep me up at night.

[@XenonG]

Stop with the hindsight, this will eventually turn you into entry level hoarders, which is a very easy slippery slop down...

[@MediocreTCG]

@@XenonG and it's an easy way to slip into a brain loop of sunken cost fallacy.

[@c90s_tech]

Haha I called you a dork out loud watching this video by myself and instantly gave this video a thumbs up when you did your "stealth' gag. And I mean dork in the nicest possible way. Love the new format BTW! Please keep being awesome!

[@juunidesu12]

needs a transparent case to go with the floppy drive too :) including the missing 3.5" drive! haha

[@Sevenfeet0]

I have the IIgs upgrade case as a part of the entire IIgs upgrade kit. I managed to snag one in 1990 when I was working for Apple as a young systems engineer and no one in the office wanted it. So I took it home and used it to upgrade the //e I had. The working computer has been sitting in a box in my basement for 25 years and one of these days I will take it out and see if it still works.

[@nticompass]

It was fun seeing you (and your Macs) at VCF East 🙂

[@matthew4501]

Fantastic. These videos have been the highlight of my weekend's entertainment lately. Thank you!!

[@wdd6864]

Seeing this in person was amazing

[@jameswest6161]

6:39 action retro: feels beautiful Blind people: I feel you man

[@Zahgurym]

Awesome build, love the bodged ram card. Lol Gotta get a clear prison tv or something to go with it.

[@seancdaug]

The IIGS is one of my all-time favorite retro computers. For what it could do, I've always found it so much more impressive than contemporary Macintoshes, and Apple's decision to basically kneecap it both in terms of specs and promotion and later abandon it in favor of the Mac has always struck me as a bad decision. One of the greatest "might have beens" in computer history, IMO. Love the clear case, too. Now you just need a period-appropriate CRT monitor with a clear case, clear Disk II, and clear mouse to go with it.

[@pedro_8240]

16:46 why don't you try to find a connector like that, fabricate a few PCBs with a card edge connector, like the memory module, and make a right angle adapter?

[@NoobixCube]

Rather than just jamming the solid core wires into the slot, you can probably get some veroboard with an edge connector of the same pitch. If you solder the wire to that, then you'll basically have a floating card edge you can easily insert and remove from the slot, and it will probably sit more securely, too.

[@richardbrobeck2384]

Now what you will need to do is to make yourself a 90 -degree adapter for the ram using good old PCB Way !!that case looks incredible !

[@eDoc2020]

I don't know if such a board design exists or not. If not I would be happy to help make one. It "should" only take five minutes.

[@MaxOakland]

Nice haircut! This machine is exciting to me. I love the IIGS. I think canceling the IIGS was probably Apple’s hugest mistake. They should’ve invested in it more than the Macintosh, honestly

[@tetsujin_144]

I can't see how that would have worked out for them. The IIgs was built on a decade-old technological legacy, and the updates they made for the platform weren't even enough to make it competitive with the other 16-bit platforms of the time. Macintosh was a clean break from that legacy, and while it was a very expensive machine, it was actually some of the best home computer gear of its time. The 65816 was a nice development for extending 6502 machines but it was otherwise a dead-end. The 68000 was more like a starting point and led to much more capable versions - full 32-bit CPUs like the 68030. (And Macintosh moved on to the PowerPC, of course...) The Apple II was so rooted in its own, specific hardware that it couldn't really make that kind of transition and still be the machine it was.

[@MaxOakland]

@@tetsujin_144 Same way Microsoft continuously extended the PC, keeping backwards compatibility but pushing it forward Apple did the braver, cooler thing by making a clean break but it wasn't as successful for obvious reasons

[@Pickle136]

board looked like it flexed a lot when you put in the flash adapter, guessing theres no supports in the middle. might want to deoxit or electric cleaner on the slots to make it easier to move cards in and out. but yeah that clear case and keyboard look great.

[@erichkohl9317]

I started upgrading my IIgs a couple years ago after having owned it for several years (an eBay purchase). 4 MB RAM, CompactFlash adapter, as well as an add-on that lets me output the built-in sound to a decent set of speakers in stereo. Now I picked up a Floppy Emu too.

[@Jordan4Ibanez]

That ram fix was extremely skillful, nice work

[@td4dotnet]

Anything transparent deserves centre place on the shelf!!! Cool :-)

[@a6am3mn0n]

It looks like a 45 year old computer, but in actuality its 37 year old computer!

[@adventureridergirl]

It's the Apple IIGS prison edition, lol. All jokes aside, I like it.

[@brendanhoffmann8402]

We had Apple IIe computers in our primary school in the 80s. They were so fun! My Dad worked at a video and sound library for schools and brought one home from time to time to play with. This was until 1986 when our family got a Mac Plus with Image writer II and 20 MB hard disk!

[@50ShadesOfBeige]

BY. THE. POWER. OF. JANKY!

[@TPIR_Fan_1972]

A monitor 100? Those are as rare as hen's teeth.

[@singletona082]

Honestly I want a graphics card for the GS. I know you're not going to run quake on it, but even something that will allow it to talk to VGA (or HDMI at this point) without a box hanging out the back would be nice. The GS had so much potential that Jobs killed to preserve his baby mac.

[@kirishima638]

Jobs had nothing to do with it. He left long before it was even released. People need to stop blaming Jobs for everything that happened within Apple between 1985 and 1997.

[@singletona082]

@@kirishima638 Incomplete picture there son. jobs came back, was put in charge of the mac division, and was essentially hooking everything through to the mac division so he might nto have had the CEO title, but he had become defacto head by virtue of the Mac being apple's tentpole. Up to and including convincing apple to cripple the GS's clock so that it wouldn't be seen as 'too good' compared to the mac.

[@kirishima638]

@@singletona082 What are you talking about, son. The IIGS was discontinued in 1992 while Jobs was at Next. He came to Apple in 1997. Jobs had nothing, nothing to do with the Apple II after he left in 1985. The IIGS was introduced a full year later.

[@singletona082]

@@kirishima638 It's simple. You're misrepresenting events either intentionally to big up the myth of st jobs, or out of ignorance.

[@kirishima638]

@@singletona082 What exactly did I get wrong? That Jobs left Apple in '85 and only returned in '97? That's a fact. That the IIGS was introduced in late '86 and discontinued in '92? That's a fact.

[@lachlanwilliams5818]

Uthernet II is an awesome piece of tech. If you are an Apple II series owner I strongly recommend it.

[@TheSulross]

have never been able to get past the 65816 not having a dedicated stack frame register - to better support high level languages like C. That they could introduce a CPU in the mid 80s that didn't even achieve basic parity with the 8086 just doesn't sit well with me and so I get driven into the embrace of the Commodore Amiga to satisfy my 16-bit retro longings. It could have been you, IIgs

[@orbitalgolem91]

MPW C and Pascal were available for the IIGS. I did plenty of Pascal development on the //e and IIGS back in the day, even old UCSD Pascal on a ][ Plus. What would a dedicated SFR bring to the table?

[@TheSulross]

@@orbitalgolem91 And yet it didn't have a dedicated stack frame register so was using kludge code generation to support call stack languages (larger code, less efficient address ability). On the MC68000, there were oodles of registers - definitely a stack frame register convention, same address-ability to 16MB of memory as the 65816 and 80286, same capability for 16-bit multiply/div, and convenient 32-bit registers for 32-bit add/sub, as well address pointer arithmetic, making it feasible to conveniently walk through data buffers larger than 64K. It was certainly a complete breath of fresh air relative to the 6502 and 8088/86, or Z80. The 65816 coming out on hardware in the same time frame - well, the market place tells that story.

[@gregsnarke610]

It really looks cool 😎 so you can see the inside of the apple 🍎 2 GS computer 💻 I even had a apple 🍎 2 e computer 💻 back in the 80’s 👍

[@deludedmarxist]

"Some rare upgrade cards" I swear to god if there's a mystical PowerPC IIGS upgrade card I will fully lose my mind.

[@aa-au]

There is one.. and Sean is looking for it.. so you can fully lose your mind....

[@morecrappysketches]

Nah, just CPU upgrades like ZipChip or Transwarp that would speed things up to 9mhz or 14mhz on the very high end, I think. The closest thing would be the Apple II add-in card Apple made for some Macs like the LC so schools could still run their old Apple II software on Macs.

[@aa-au]

@@morecrappysketches The Apple IIe PDS card will only slot into an LC or Performa with an LC PDS slot. Essentially it is a whole Apple IIe that sits on one small card and was used for education, primarily trying to get schools with Apple IIs onto Macintosh platform, and have a 2 computers in one. Unfortunately, you cannot place this into an Apple IIe, although the idea would be great!

[@breestandard1318]

Could make a right angle PCB with an edge slot connector on it.

[@cwaldrip]

Descendant’s Milo! This channel just got 1000% cooler!

[@john_ace]

The strange thing with the Iigs is that it is actually something like an Apple IIe with a 65816 Accelerator. Every component apart from the fast ram and the CPU is on the classic //e 8bit bus at 1MHz. The CYA/FPI is the interface between the fast 65816 cpu/ram and the 1MHz system-bus. The FPI/CYA also does some tricks with optimising the read/write accesses by tweaking the 2.8MHz->1MHz bus-conversion. In this way the CPU can write at 2.8MHz into the VGC over the 1MHz bus since the writes need more than one cycle. This makes accelerating the IIgs complicated since it already is 'kinda' accelerated. The 65816 is also more like a 8bit CPU with 16bit capabilities. Like the 68000 was a 16bit CPU with 32bit capabilities.

[@john_ace]

Another strange thing with the IIgs: The 640 video mode has differently 'sized' pixels for even and odd columns (can be seen in the monochrome mode on a sharp display). This will result in slightly different colors on neighbouring columns when the colors are 'mixed' on the GSOS desktop. You can see this happening with the light grey line in the drive icon. the drive icon itself and the lighter line are both black&white columns but 1 pixel shifted. Sadly this can only be observed on real CRTs since these are analog-effects. The mixing is most likely facilitated by the lowpass filter (possibly even the RGB-transistors) in the CRT.

[@ran2wild370]

8bit and 640kilo-bit ought to be enough for everybody.... (C) somebody from the greatest tech leaders in 1980x //** sarcasm **//

[@xirtus]

you could probably fit a mini itx with a 3090 in there

[@KrishnaDraws]

Very cool! Now all you need is a VidHD to give HDMI out from your stealth IIGS :)

[@JeffTiberend]

I wonder if a Transwarp GS would fit in this case? What an awesome build!

[@thumbwarriordx]

That clear keyboard is actually a really nice use for those Matias switches. They've been making them full transparent polycarbonate for a while now and they could easily be the best backlighting switches on the market if any ALPS keycaps actually supported shine-through. Not to my tastes but I'm glad someone finally took the crystal opportunity. If they'd drilled some holes under the switches in the PCB you could bling up your Apple II with some RGB light strips for a good and proper anachronism.

[@christhomas5804]

Cool! ...What kind of monitor is this? Can you link the used parts?

[@robertsissco2439]

That case is sexy. I am building a SixtyClone board and went to get one o the new 64c cases for it, and I wish the clear version was like that. I had to settle for black since I hate the cloudy clear style.

[@muttBunch]

Nothing beats PrintShop on the IIgs on a good ‘ol fashioned dot matrix printer ❤️

[@bobweiram6321]

I remember programming the IIgs when it still a prototype called Courtney. It was delivered to developers in a regular IIe case. We all had to sign Apple NDAs before we were allowed to know anything about it. It was an incredibly fast machine with incredible sound and graphics.

[@youngknight5589]

I been studying the history of Apple recently this is interesting to learn about cause it seems like the perfect compromise between Apple II and Macintosh with II’s expandability and Macintosh’s accessibility all while being extremely powerful.

[@AussieBloke6502]

Sean, how did you connect your AppleColor Monitor 100 (A9M0308) to the IIGS? I always had read that the 100 is "digital" or "TTL" RGB while the IIGS and its matching RGB monitor use analog RGB? It *never* occurred to me that you could just plug the 100 into a IIGS and get a color output !!!!

[@TheMalMeninga]

I love that bodge job on the RAM expansion!

[@knghtbrd]

I don't, as a permanent solution because it might come undone leading to all kinds of problems. But I love it as a way to get the video done and revisit the question of RAM later. There ARE RAM cards that will fit. I've probably got one here I can offer Sean in a small trade (souvenir!) but seems he doesn't strictly need one by the time I could get it to him. Might offer anyway because I don't need this one and it's the perfect period-correct card for his machine.

[@MotownBatman]

Thats Sweet! Never had an Apple II, Older cousins did, I want this now lol

[@Mr_Meowingtons]

i might be the only one that don't like clear cases

[@eugiblisscast]

Same here

[@quaqstar]

I just spraypainted the inside of my Mac Effects clear case with a glow in the dark textured spray paint, and I would recommend doing it to give a nice frosted effect. Since Im not skilled at spray paint its not perfect, but it looks really good! and since its on the INSIDE of the case it doesn't effect the touch feel of the new case!

[@ActionRetro]

Oh wow what an interesting idea! Have any pics?

[@zarkeh3013]

do those ram slots fit in the opposite side of the PCB? maybe they're in on the wrong side, I donno. nice case tho,

[@WizardClipAudio]

Yes, but can we use and make square space websites, with our Apple II’s? 😊 This project is way out of my foreseeable budget, but that’s really cool to have a GS in the Apple iie nicer form factor.

[@domramsey]

Needs RGB. I hate RGB, but this needs it!

[@HoJoGoGo]

I have the ultimate stealth Apple IIgs, a developer seed prototype built in a //e case by Apple before the IIgs was released, as the case design was kept secret until launch. The ROMs are four EPROMs on an adapter board, and it boots as the 'Apple IIBF', for beta firmware. Basically identical to ROM 0.

[@a4e69636b]

Could you show us it in a video please?

[@darrenmcintyre2674]

Make a vid of this sounds cool.

[@retropuffer2986]

Wow! GS brings back a ton of memories!

[@repairerofreputationsmusic]

Is there any synth software that let's you directly access/program the ensoniq DOC chip? I am an ensoniq mirage/ESQ-1 owner and the idea of a 32 channel DOC that's potentially programmable might actually be reason enough for me to buy one of these things.

[@jimb032]

The gglabs iigs ram card will fit and look less dodgy. It's super small. And you should support this guy too, he builds great stuff. And his card is pretty purple too.

[@brianh2771]

Is there a keyboard connection hack to allow this build to be done with the standard IIgs motherboard?

[@Adora724]

I had an Apple IIc. it's only 6 months younger than me and I wish I still had it.

[@DavidStahlOLDHAPPyMACs]

That is A Beautiful llGs Sean Your Killing Me I will have to ADD this To My list To get Along With The Mystic Color Classic Great Video

[@skipbreakfast]

I'm drinking from a Descendents official bonus mug while watching this.

[@douglashudson4706]

I've seen it before, that clear case from MacEffects is the coolest. Which model of monitor are you using in this video?

[@alextirrellRI]

Please tell me you weren't using a Macintosh to VGA adapter on that flat panel that didn't work (was it even on?). I smoked a flat panel trying that before I knew the pinout was completely different. Also -- it should go without saying, but snipping that battery and adding a holder for something new will come in handy. I'm presuming it's dead and while I've yet to see one with leads attached leak, we've all seen what happens to batteries in Macs. You'll need a working battery to save all of your Control Panel settings.

[@Voidsworn]

Hey, I just got two of those exact same flash to ide adapters. Nice little toys.

[@jeffsadowski]

Would have liked to see the clear keyboard that would be cool.

[@njmaugbill]

II GS was an awesome computer. In the Early 90's I had a mac classic and a IIgs running side by side. On Sunday nights, AOL had a User Group conference of UG people. At the end was a giveaway. The GS was a tad quicker in communicating with the AOL servers. I usually won with the GS.

[@smalltownMainer]

out of my old computers my favorite keyboards are my apple iie and trs80 model 3.

[@TeionM83]

I hardly ever dislike videos, but transparent computers cases are a big no for me.

[@MatroxMillennium]

I figure I should get a IIgs at some point. I've got two of the RGB monitors but no system to hook them to!

[@tetsujin_144]

2:12 - (Apple continued selling the IIe for a year after cancelling the IIgs) Because the antiquated legacy of Apple II backward-compatibility was more valuable than the new features offered by the IIgs. The niche the IIgs could have occupied was already better filled by the Amiga and ST, and even those machines were being squeezed out of the market by the PCs in the 1990s.

[@UpLateGeek]

Very cool! Although can you really call it "stealth" if it's got the GS badge right on the case, let alone is completely transparent so you can see it's not a II or IIe?

[@NdxtremePro]

All right, now that you have a clear case, you need some lights. May I suggest the original Apple Logo colors?

[@chadmasta5]

Does that case support standard pc motherboards? Would be cool to see a mini itx hackintosh or the innards of a Mac mini in that as sort of a "what could have been" alternate future where the Mac got cut instead of the IIGS.

[@tetsujin_144]

In that alternate future I think Apple would just be a curious footnote in computing history, rather like Commodore or Atari. "Remember when those guys had the best-selling computer ever? They sold it for like 15 years, they were in all the schools... Then everybody moved to the PC." Instead we got the version where Apple floundered through the 1990s, but made it through to a point where (thanks largely to the popularization of the internet) they found millions of new users simply *desperate* for a machine and OS that would do what the Mac was originally meant to do: help users do what they wanted to do with the computer, and simplify the whole experience.

[@Kylefassbinderful]

If my llc ever dies and I can't save it I'll reuse the keyboard as my main keyboard because I love it that much.

[@quincy1048]

I see where to get the case from...but not the keyboard...and it is the keyboard that make this interesting for me...as it updates a old keyboard at best with one that works great, So anybody got the keyboard link? Or have I missed the boat on that one, which happens.

[@bigloudnoise]

Only thing missing is the speaker! Maybe the people who make the memory expansion card might see this and create a right-angle slot adapter so it'll fit in this case.

[@Mr_Meowingtons]

I use to have one i had it all in the box's every thing! and lost every thing in a a basement flood :( i miss that little guy...

[@zaxchannel2834]

So that's what I was looking at at VCF, I was wondering how that worked

[@pafawag5b6b5b]

i gotta say this stealth iigs might not be very stealth because of this new clear case, but it sure as hell is very awesome!

[@dieseldanhockey2303]

that case would look out of this world with rgb leds in it.

[@williefleete]

They should change the design of the SIMM module to fit the stealth GS’s

[@richardestes6499]

Jank was before. Now it's dank.

[@pedro_8240]

Is it me or was the metal bottom spray painted? If so, couldn't they have powder coated it?

[@therealgaragegirls]

I just did a similar build, using the GG Labs 8MB RAM card, which fits the //e-style case perfectly. :)

[@richardbrobeck2384]

wow I am impressed with that Keyboard it makes me want to build one these upgraded computers my first computer was a Apple IIC which i still currently own i wish i kept the original Apple color monitor thou.

[@GaryBeltz]

You may have been asked this before but where did you get the T-Shirts you have? I want my own pairs

[@rmcdudmk212]

Love that clear case 🤩

[@patchso]

Should always be at least a little bit cursed. By learning to accept in-perfection, we experience a more peaceful existence ;-)

[@emceebois]

Surprised there wasn't a ready-to-order beveled-and-champfered extender for the memory card. Don't think I would have had the patience for all that soldering 🤣

[@danaeckel]

Never enough IIGS videos out there. I got my IIGS for free some someone off newsnet years ago, I just had to pay shipping. I was going to comment this IIGS needs something like an applesqueezer, but I notice there is more to come. Looking forward to it.

[@musclesmouse]

I picked up 4 iigs free back inthe 2000s. Need todig them out

[@joltdude]

Jobs intentionally crippled the gs to not compete with the Mac… was meant to have a faster cpu than it shipped with

[@tetsujin_144]

That claim is made a lot and I don't think it's truly substantiated. For instance, WIkipedia says it was an intentional choice, to keep it from competing with the mac... But the two articles it cites to support this assertion are fan articles written in the 2010s. One of them says "The 68C816S design runs at up to 14 MHz" - The 65816 is still manufactured today, and that is true - for the *current* version of the part. *Not* the ones made in 1986. The other says "the processor could easily go up to 16 Mhz but the supplier, for lack of suitable test means, only certifying it up to 4 Mhz" - It doesn't really matter *why* the manufacturer wouldn't rate their CPUs to higher than 4MHz. If the part is rated for 4MHz, it'd be stupid to run it faster than that. By running the parts out-of-spec, virtually anything that might go wrong with them later would be by default Apple's fault. And if you compare the IIgs (2.8MHz) to, say, the Amiga (7MHz) - The Amiga has a faster clock speed but the 65816 CPU takes less time per instruction. The Amiga is not exactly a CPU powerhouse either. Its strength is more in its chipset: hardware scrolling, hardware sprites, hardware blitter, hardware co-processor. Through that chipset, the Amiga can do more not *because* of its CPU, but rather completely *independently* of its CPU. The IIgs has none of that, its performance is completely dictated by its CPU, and by that 1MHz bottleneck. The fact that IIgs fans are willing to endlessly propagate this claim without substantiating it, and despite the evidence to the contrary is kind of irresponsible, to say the least. Maybe it's the story that makes you feel good about your favorite computer, but I don't think it's the truth.

[@eveypea]

What is a Retro computer mod without a bit of Jank?

[@evknucklehead]

Actually considered a similar solution for my IIe's RAM expansion slot back when I couldn't find a reliable source for an actual card. Bought all the parts for it, but never got around to actually doing it. And then I found a card for a reasonable price, so I didn't need to bother reinventing the wheel, as it were.

[@SteveChisnall]

is that an AppleColor 100 monitor?!

[@n__neen]

whoah he has a face now! great vid!

[@CanadianComputerCollector]

Oh man I have also wanted to do something like for quite some time. Looks great. Awesome build!

[@bluephreakr]

Now, all you have to do is convince the kind folks at MacEffects to create an Apple II SE case with room for massive storage and a specially-made 4:3 flatscreen display for the _ultimate_ hand-built cursed II SE.

[@Benzona]

Nah it’s gotta be a crt. LCDs suck. Some great crts are still available over in china you’d just need to build new housing for it

[@00Klingon]

I really wonder how much better Apple would have been had they kept upgrading the Apple II line and not hampered the IIgs CPU performance to keep it closer to the original Macintosh. Apple may still have struggled somewhat by the mid 90's against all the PC clones and economies of scale but I do believe that Apple would have been far better off and the product line more competitive in features, and expandability at that time. Still, I don't think there would have been that much difference by the time we got to the second coming of Steve Jobs and the iMac (iApple?) but it's still a fun thought experiment.

[@damian9303]

0:14 did he just.. teleport to the upside down?

[@DonMr]

Video Apple TV 1 Gen. PLS?

[@willm5032]

Shoutout to the Descendents shirt

[@jaymemengoni1130]

Is that an Apple IIGS in an original Apple II shell? Genius... Now put a modern gaming PC into it.

[@TrashfordKent]

Seeing as you have a proclivity towards maxing out hardware will you be keeping it stock or looking at transwarp/apple squeezer type upgrades? Ps neat video, really like the keyboard and case.

[@RudysRetroIntel]

Excellent!! You should make a case case for the power-supply:)

[@kurtwinter4422]

The II is to the C64 what the IIGS is to the C65. Would the C65 suffered the same fate as the GS, losing out to the more expensive 68k bigger brother machines?