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Engadget: Custom-Built Apple IIgs Laptop

Wow. I've heard of people making Apple IIgs laptops (or otherwise re-casing their Apple IIgs) before, but nothing like this.

Beautiful mod. Though what is it with mods and blue LEDs?

 
That is all kinds of awesome.

BTW you're fast :) I was just on my way over here to post that.

It's worth clicking through to Ben's page for the full story. Guy's a legend.

 
It is very cool. I also don't get the blue LEDs though, surely a green or red one would be more appropriate for a machine of that era... Although, absolutely everything electronic seems to feature blue LEDs these days, even my electric toothbrush has a blue LED on it bright enough to guide aircraft in with.

 
stole my idea I still like the cd ][ drive I made. I have been a big fan of ben's work for years his case making skills are amazing and I wish I could have the money to try it my self.

 
The IIgs had most of the common options built-in (it's not like a IIe). Besides, they added two cards to this machine if you look at the pictures. One for memory, and the second I forget (CF adapter?). They also left the drive connector open, so that you could access media.

 
I wouldn't mind knowing how he hooked the monitor up to the motherboard. From the looks of those photos it looks like he used the composite video output instead of the analog RGB, because it looks really bad.... though that could just as easily be the camera doing that.

Otherwise, that's a pretty hot looking case.

 
he probably did, the regular out will not work on a tv since most tv's do not have the manual knobs to adjust the picture properly so you get these great flickering screens of nothing.

 
IIGS RGB output works well on TVs if you connect it via SCART using a custom cable. I'm not sure if American TVs have SCART but it comes as standard with pretty much all modern European sets.

 
actually I have never even seen scart on a tv before over here or anywhere I can recall. but we do have composite video on some tv's.

 
Yeah, SCART is a european thing...

But there are TV's in North America(and other countries) that do accept analog and digital RGB... they're just not as common.

I've got one, but the TV uses a weird connector... looks like an internal SCSI or IDE hard drive connector. I need to get some cables made so I can take advantage of the Analog RGB signals from several of my older game systems as well as the IIgs and Amiga....

My TV is a Sony XBR that was made in the late 80's. I picked it up broken for $5 at a thrift and shelled out about $150 to get it repaired. Big honking 25" Trinitron set.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
A IIGS without it's expansion slots is pretty pointless.
Click to expand...
What's the point of vintage computing at all? I love my PB170, which is essentially a black and white IIci without the slots. This IIgs hack is awesome, IMO.

 
I have an SCSI card and a 1MB Apple RAM card in my IIgs, it works just fine for me as is (mostly just play games, the SCSI just makes it easier to dump images to it to convert to floppies).

That laptop looks very nice, the only thing I would be worried about is how the keyboard actually works. Is it a real laptop I didn't notice a battery there anywhere?

 
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