Coming my way from Freecycle: Apple ][ stuff!

[MacNoob]

Picking up tonight or tomorrow:

>> Two Apple II plus machines

>> Each machine has two 5 1/4" floppy drives

>> one has a joystick

>> one has 3" floppy drive

>> one monitor

WHY do I volunteer to take on this stuff? At least I know at least a couple people I can give it away to.... I decided to 'specialize' in Amiga (sorry!) but can't resist a free Apple computer!!! I think it was just to see a 3.5" Apple ][ drive...

 

[slomacuser]

hm, I would like to have 5" drive ... [:I] ]'>

 

[MacMan]

WHY do I volunteer to take on this stuff? At least I know at least a couple people I can give it away to.... I decided to 'specialize' in Amiga (sorry!) but can't resist a free Apple computer!!! I think it was just to see a 3.5" Apple ][ drive...

You're incredibly lucky to get such good stuff for free! You would never see a load like that on my local Freecycle.

 

[nahuelmarisi]

most of the stuff on my local freecycle is old furniture

 

[MacMan]

most of the stuff on my local freecycle is old furniture

Mine generally offers baby accessories, used straw, naff furniture and general rubbish. Anything vaguely electronic gets snapped up immediately by Del-Boy types who sell it on the Sunday market.

Admittedly I have seen two Macs on there in the last few months but they were both too far away to be worth driving to pick up.

 

[Kallikak]

Picking up tonight or tomorrow:
>> Two Apple II plus machines

>> Each machine has two 5 1/4" floppy drives

>> one has a joystick

>> one has 3" floppy drive

>> one monitor

WHY do I volunteer to take on this stuff? At least I know at least a couple people I can give it away to.... I decided to 'specialize' in Amiga (sorry!) but can't resist a free Apple computer!!! I think it was just to see a 3.5" Apple ][ drive...

A II plus is a great find. IIe's and IIc's are pretty common, but a II+ is getting rare - not to mention an original II. I hope to find a II+ somewhere to get a keyboard and a spare encoder chip...

 

[MacNoob]

Now I found out I don't even need to pick it up... she works in my end of town and is supposed to DELIVER everything after lunch today (Saturday).

Normally there's not much good on Freecycle (mostly worn out kids clothes and broken TVs) but I have had a lot of luck over a long period of time:

* LC475 complete system mint from original owner (another 68kmlaer has that one now)

* 7300 system that caused me a lot of headaches

* Amiga 1200 and 500 with lots of good stuff. The 1200 is my main Amiga now.

* various C64s

Another thing I used to do is watch for newsgroup/craigslist/buy&sell/etc ads for stuff I know will never sell... then contact them later and offer to take the stuff away for free. Got a batch of 5 nice Macs in one load that way one time, and an inbox 6500 system that cleaned up nicely (that one took a ton of work though).

 

[II2II]

Wow, I wish that I would get Amiga 1200 lucky. I have every ROM revision in ECS machines, and an MMR in my Amiga 2000. But that still doesn't give me access to an (admittedly) small body of software.

Maybe it's just as well. Not much space for collecting these days.

 

[MacNoob]

It's all here.... this is the most amazing pair of Apple II+ I've ever seen... immaculate condition, 2 drives each, and each one fully loaded with expansion cards, most of which I've never seen before. I know for sure I have a Z80 CPM card here, the other stuff will take some research to figure out what it is. Fun times ahead.

 

[II2II]

Cool. Please let us know what you find out. And if you have questions, feel free to ask. I haven't met an Apple II that I didn't like.

 

[MacNoob]

Well, checked out the first unit a bit. Haven't powered it yet, found the following:

* one plastic keyboard retainer inside is broken - keyboard hangs into the case a little. Easy to fix.

* following cards in it:

- Orange 16k

- ASI-1 serial port

- Videx Ultraterm 80/160 column card

- Applied Engineering Ramfactor card has 256k, takes up to 1mb

- Applied Engineering Transwarp 3.6mhz 6502 accelerator has another 256k.

- oh yeah and dual floppy controller with 2 drives

- joystick

Cool stuff.

Edit: powered it on without keyboard, get Transwarp logo then Apple ][ screen.

Edit: second unit didn't power properly, but I missed one card connection inside, will try again.

- disk ii controller with 2 drives

- vtech universal floppy controller - support 2 drives - wonder if this is where the 3.5" drive goes?

- M&R Sup'r terminal 80-col card.

- Apple II "all memory expansion"

- Videx serial/parallel card

- Macrotech 16k card.

In box not installed in either machine: Z80 CPM card.

 

[II2II]

* one plastic keyboard retainer inside is broken - keyboard hangs into the case a little. Easy to fix.

Well, if you decide that it's too much trouble to fix I could use a replacement mainboard and keyboard.

- vtech universal floppy controller - support 2 drives - wonder if this is where the 3.5" drive goes?

You have a few nice cards there, some from the perspective of current users (like the Transwarp) and some from the perspective of vintage hardware (those Videx cards have their own termcap entries on Unix systems). But if that VTech card is what I think it is, you were given a brick of gold. Things may have changed over the past few years, but I seem to recall that a lot of users wanted those drives a few years back for mass storage and sneakernet.

 

[MacNoob]

Well, looks like I have enough stuff here to make one really really really nice ][+ and one parts unit. Unit #2 doesn't power on properly - sometimes I get a screenful of random characters, sometimes about 6 vertical green/black bars.

edit: I removed the Suprterminal card; it has a little kludgy daughterboard that replaces one mothernboard chip - and this unit works now! So I don't need to swap mainboards, I'll just use #2 as the base for a "really nice" machine and #1 as a parts tester.

The power supply on Unit #1 is a little whiney and the keyboard mounts (on the keyboard itself) are pretty broken - I fixed that and am putting it back in tonight. So I figure I'll use the power supply, case and keyboard from #2, the mainboard from #1, and the following cards to fill it up:

0 Orange 16k (I guess slot 0 is only good for a 16k card?)

1 Videx serial/parallel

2 Videx Ultraterm 80/160

3 256k Ramfactor card

4 256k 3.6mhz Transwarp card

5 VTech universal floppy controller

6 Apple Disk II controller

7 "Bison" Z80 softcard?

2 Disk II drives

a 3.5" drive of some sort

Joystick

Apple Monitor III

Cooling fan

Monitor stand.

Leftover:

buzzy power supply

semi broken (repaired) keyboard

motherboard nonbooting

Macrotech 16k card

ASI-1 serial card

Disk II card

Suprterminal 80-col

Apple 'all memory expansion'

One Disk II drive and one 5.25" low profile no name drive.

Cooling fan. Monitor stand.

Whattaya think? Suppose that config will all work together? I'm moving this to the Apple II board - please reply there rather than here!

 

[II2II]

Looks like a nice setup. I'd just swap slots 2 and 3, since most software will expect the 80 column card in slot 3.