Broke my IIe cherry today

[luckybob]

Thanks to $40 and some nice guy on craigslist.



The first mac plus seems to work fine.  The 2nd has loose solder joints and a hyperdrive.  the SE is lifeless as a rock.  The IIe was the real reason I'm so happy.  I haven't laid my hands on one since I was 5 and in elementary school.  It will start, reads the first floppy like normal.  I had to google how to get into basic, but it seems the keys are not responding.  The add-on fan for the IIe is kinda nice.

Regarding the IIe, anything I should look for FIRST?  I'm thinking loose keyboard connection or something similar.

Wish I had gotten the keyboards/mice, but he didn't have them. C'est la vie.

Anyone have a recommended youtube/website for a general overview of the IIe?  I know basic well enough thanks to my TI-99/4a.  Is there an ideal machine to make floppy disks for this system?  I know the SE has a floppy port, can I get a 5.25 drive and use that to transfer files?  You will have to forgive me.  IBM has spoiled me on backwards compatibility.  

 

[Juror22]

This is how I made 5.25 disks for my ][, ][+ and IIc.

http://adtpro.sourceforge.net/bootstrap.html#Starting_from_bare_metal

Hopefully you have a SuperSerial card in your new IIe and a USB to serial cable.  That, along with the ADTPro software enable you to boot and make disks out of the disk images available online.

Nice haul!

 

[luckybob]

I have serial on my machine, but I don't think I have serial card on the IIe.  There is a mystery (to me) card in it.  Initial googling gives me nothing.  I'm making an account over on Applefritter.  Hopefully someone there will know.  I do have good news, the 4 key cap was inside the machine!  I will need to do a root canal to get it back in place, but at least I have the cap.  The eprom is a 2708 with a 7927 date code.  I'd dump the chip but my reader doesn't know what to do with it.    I'd have to build some adapter to convert it to the 2716.

If you care to see the card:  

   

 

[Gorgonops]

The card looks like a parallel printer interface to me. It's a generic brand but the 20 pin header seems to be kind of a standard in the Apple II world.

For creating disks I'll throw out my favorite link.

http://asciiexpress.net/diskserver/

All you need is something that can play .wav files and an audio cable. (A smartphone works fine.) It's considerably less fussy to set up than ADTPro over audio cables. It does less, but for what it does it's great.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

That is just so very, very cool, G.

 

[olePigeon]

Nice Apple //e.  Possibly a Rev A or B.

 

[luckybob]

Nice Apple //e.  Possibly a Rev A or B.

Does it matter?  Also how do you tell for sure?

 

[Gorgonops]

Your keyboard has the original white printing on it, which marks it as coming from the first year or so of production. "Rev A." motherboards from the first few months of production are probably pretty darn scarce in the wild. They didn't support the Double-High resolution graphics mode or the Enhanced ROM upgrade kit, so there's a lot of IIe-specific software they can't run and Apple would upgrade them free of charge when the Enhanced IIe came out.

Really the big thing you need to know is whether your machine has had the "Enhanced" upgrade installed or not. When you turn it on does the screen say:

APPLE ][

(non-enhanced) or:

Apple //e

(enhanced)

Enhanced units should have a sticker over the power light that says so, which I can't see in the photo, but it's always possible someone yanked it off. Basically, a non-Enhanced unit will have some compatibility issues with some //e software, including the latest versions of ProDOS, because they rely on ROM changes and/or the 65C02 CPU that came with the upgrade. (On the flip side, an non-enhanced unit may be slightly more compatible with the tiny selection of Apple ][+ software that uses "undocumented instructions" specific to the non-CMOS version of the 6502.)

 

[luckybob]

Well, I put a video on youtube the other day (sorry, I thought I linked it earlier)    it also has the 3 compact macs I got.

So looking back at the video, it does indeed show APPLE ][  serial #193815  and the motherboard has a datecode of 8320 if it matters.  

Side note: I did catch a bit of flack from someone here local.  Apparently he wanted these systems too.  If I had seen the CL ad like 5 minutes later, I would not have gotten it.  He's a nice guy so I'll probably set him up with a plus.  

edit: eww, i need to change that still pic somehow.

 

[Gorgonops]

So, it's unenhanced. Digging around, it appears that if your motherboard is labeled "820-0064-A" it's a Rev. A without support for DHR graphics. If it's "820-0064-B" or "820-0073-A" it's the "regular" board. That manufacture date and serial number are probably a little high for a Rev. A (quite a few early IIes were manufactured in '82) but it's not impossible. If it is you might poke around places like AppleFritter or the VCF and see if it's worth anything to a particularly hardcore collector. (Honestly have no idea if they have any real monetary value, but someone might want it more than you do to scratch some completion-ist itch.)

 

[luckybob]

motherboard is 820-0064-B so regular.  I can handle regular.  So it would be mod-able to the double high res.  I honestly don't have any concrete plans for this guy besides get it fully operational.  I think I have the long stem alps.  My initial plan is to drill a small hole down the remaining stem and into the key, insert a piece of metal and epoxy it in.  I'd leave the key unglued so it could still be removed if needed.  Unless replacement switches are cheap and plentiful.  Something tells me, that is not likely to be the case here.

I made a new account over on fritter and they know me on vcf.  Honestly I'd rather keep it.  That said, I am human, so if someone were to make me an offer I couldn't refuse...

 

[Gorgonops]

If it's a B it already does DHR. Basically what you miss out on without having the "Enhanced" ROMs are the "Mousetext" character set, a few bugfixes, and the 65C02 CPU. If you really wanted to you could mod it yourself with some EPROMs and a CPU swap.