exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

I had an Apple IIe as a kid but never really understood it (I got it in the late 80s by which time it was thoroughly out of date and you couldn't get any software for it in the UK). One popped up on eBay recently for what seemed like a reasonable price in working order so I bought it - normally I buy broken computers for cheap and fix them up, losing interest when they are working properly, so it could be a brief ownership.

Here it is - plastic cased IIe with early ish motherboard, a bit yellow but in generally good shape and an aftermarket floppy drive:


The Thinkpad perched on top is acting as a tape drive, which lets me download stuff from Apple II Disk Server Online and write it to floppy disk over the cassette port. You'll notice the case is open, because about an hour after it arrived it locked up then this happened:


Prodding, reseating and swearing at it made no change. The PSU then started making arcing noises and a burning smell (the RIFA caps had already been replaced) so I took it out and elegantly rigged up an ATX one which made no difference:


It looked very RAM related from what I could see (there are built in diagnostics but it wouldn't get that far) so I ordered some more off eBay and generally messed about with it to no avail in the interim. When the RAM arrived I swapped it around to find that one of my originals and two of the replacements were bad, and ended up with a working machine, still running off the ATX PSU as I hadn't figured out what was wrong with the original yet:


Karateka despite being clearly rubbish and ludicrously unfair is very addictive.

I messed about with it some more and noticed that the colours looked off - black was blue or red depending on screen mode, so I fiddled with the colour signal pots on the motherboard which corrected it. Unfortunately the following day everything remained in black and white and nothing brought the colour back.

At this point, from arriving in working order, I had used the machine for about 2 hours and had experienced:

• Failed RAM
• Failed PSU
• Failed something else related to colour

My original IIe spewed smoke out of it while I was playing Sneakers in the early 90s so this was just like the old days. More to come...

Damn you, I think you outbid me for that one!!!

BTW have you seen some of the outrageous prices Apple II's are on eBay for, really quite ridiculous!

I do get the urge to bid on an Apple IIe every so often, not won one yet though.

This one was a buy it now (£175) from a guy that had a couple for sale - a repeat chancer currently has a few up for £900+ that were originally 5 grand(!) each.

After a bit of digging I found that the unique way the Apple II generates colour is slightly more unique on the PAL version and uses an off the shelf demodulator chip (TCA 650) for its reverse purpose - I figured this was the likely failure point so bought a new old stock one off eBay for £3. I swapped it over and lo:

My 80s model had an RGB card and monitor so the way Apple IIs display colour on a composite screen is new to me - it's quite something, like running water over the screen.

I looked at the PSU next and still couldn't work out what was wrong with it - caps looked OK, no obvious damage, so I bought a Flex ATX PSU with necessary -5 and -12v, this didn't work properly so I binned it and looked again at the original one. This time I spotted a solder joint on the high voltage side with black marks and corresponding arcing signs on the case, so I cleaned it up and reflowed, checked voltages and all is well again.

It's worked for a few hours now without fault so hopefully it will stay that way - next I need a joystick for it as most games don't work without one. I'd quite like a proper Apple Disk II drive for it as well.

PhilC wrote: 17 May 2021 20:19 I do get the urge to bid on an Apple IIe every so often, not won one yet though.

Me either!

@rubber_jonnie


Has anyone ever seen one of these work its from Hong Kong and manual or advice

Tom

@Tomswork Interesting, so can you connect an FDD controller to it and have it pretend to be a floppy disk?

I've decided to order a Floppy Emu https://www.bigmessowires.com/floppy-emu/.

Payday tomorrow so I'll order it then :)

rubber_jonnie wrote: 24 Aug 2021 09:30 @Tomswork Interesting, so can you connect an FDD controller to it and have it pretend to be a floppy disk?

I've decided to order a Floppy Emu https://www.bigmessowires.com/floppy-emu/.

Payday tomorrow so I'll order it then :)

That's interesting @rubber_jonnie I have been wondering how to use something like the Gotek with the Spectre GCR Mac for the Atari ST. Looks like with a bit of modification that Floppy Emulator may work.

Icky wrote: 24 Aug 2021 10:16
That's interesting @rubber_jonnie I have been wondering how to use something like the Gotek with the Spectre GCR Mac for the Atari ST. Looks like with a bit of modification that Floppy Emulator may work.

It's pretty cool, hopefully I'll have it by mid-September and can review it.

I ordered this too: https://www.tindie.com/products/garrett ... apple-iie/ and according to tracking it's in Copenhagen so fingers crossed it'll get here soon.

I can review that too.