Newest updates are at the top - read from the bottom up if you want the full story (surely you dont).

8 Jan 2010 - Motivation lacking

Well, not much happening here, I did pull apart my II+ and start cleaning the IC legs/sockets - I've found 2 so far where corrosion / rust has eaten right through a leg (stink) - I have some spare boards so I'll go scavenging for IC's - I was also considering soldering the legs back on - but I'm not sure that will work out so well (still what do I have to lose right). That was yesterday tho, I'm not sure I have enough isopropyl (or beer) to continue (I've only got through one row of chips so far).

My II+ in bits - I love the way these machines come apart so easily

4 Jan 2010 - The World Champion Muses

There was a retro challenge HUNT yesterday which I didnt attend. As world champion I obviously cant be expected to attend every little event that is scheduled - the HUNT calendar is so busy, theres the signings, personal appearances, sponsor dinners - still, I hear there is some boasting going on, so perhaps I might need to make an appearance some time soon just to remind everyone who the current and undisputed world champion really is. I mean, I dont think Canada is even a real country is it?

<burp>

4 Jan 2010 - The return of the geek

Ok, heres my entry into the speech synthesised sub challenge - its a WMV (windows media format file), and its about 9MB (hope thats ok LD8!) - Sorry, I dont know how to use that new fangled Utube thingy, so this will have to do (I was impressed I was able to capture and convert this at all - I guess Vista is not so bad after all).

I was pretty happy that my 128k Mac (that you will see in the video) that was stored in the laundry cupboard booted up with no problem and Smoothtalker loaded and ran just like the good old days.

Heres the video...

4 Jan 2010 - Heres those pictures I was too lazy to upload before

Hmm, heres my Apple IIe/IIc joystick all apart - a little isopropyl alcohol dripped into the switches got it working again nicely.

Heres what the keyboard of the 110v IIe looked like before cleaning and switch replacement.

Heres a picture of the same keyboard after cleaning, and below the donor Mac Plus keyboard.

The 110v IIe case after cleaning, still yellowed, but now clean - look at that yummy water.

3 Jan 2010 - Alcohol is the answer to everything

Why do people keep telling me its not? Last night I sat down with a beer to enjoy a little tinkering on my Apple IIe (the older one) - booted it up, that was fine, then started pottering....hmmm, a freeze, thats odd, rebooted ok, then wacky beeping another freeze and no restart with ctrl-openapple-reset - uh-oh. Powered off and on and horrible bars of death and no startup beep. Stink. Ok, deep breath - PSU I mused? A quickly swapped out the PSU from the (newer) working IIe but it made no difference. Ok, memory, its always the memory so I pulled the RAM out of my extended 80 column card and replaced the mobo RAM with it - powered up - success!! Or so I thought. I reinstalled the original PSU, powered up again and bars of death... It was interesting (or maybe not) that the pattern on startup was always the same - what are the chances that I'd replaced a faulty RAM chip with another faulty RAM chip in exactly the same location - pretty slim I would think.

Beer drinking time.

Ok, pretty depressed now but what the hell, I'd had a beer and every single chip on this mobo was socketed - I know, I'll pull them all out and give 'em a clean. So I did. Out came the mobo and the isopropyl alcohol. I dripped isopropyl into the holes of every socket and swabbed the legs of every IC - an hour later (and another beer or two) and the chips were back in, mobo installed back in place and I was ready to power her back up - to be honest I was expecting smoke - I mean, what are the chances that I'd get every IC back in the right way. Anyway, BEEP - she booted up! Nice. So back in went the Disk II controller and extended 80 col cards - powered back up - BEEP, still working. OK, I'm on a roll I figured - my Joystick was still taken apart, so I fired up Karateka and started a game - buttons as I expected were non-functional - dripped a bit of isopropyl in 'em, and hammered on them for a while - guess what! Working perfectly now. So, quickly threw my nice Apple joystick back together and gave Akuma the beat down he deserves!! Game played flawlessly.

Once again, alcohol has saved the day - just powered the IIe up again a few minutes ago and its still going strong. Alcohol for the win!!

31 Dec 2009 - Back together

I splashed out and bought a $12 multimeter (to replace my $10 multimeter whose lead and broken - new leads were $15 - dont you love the world we live in...) and was able to continue with my key replacement. I decided to hit the newer IIe first as it only had two keys to replace - the keys came out easy enough, but my replacements were obviously a slightly different model with the pins not quite matching up to the holes in the keyboard PCB - the switches were keyed (so to speak) differently

It was no big deal as I just soldered on some leads off a spare diode I had hanging around and was able to mount them correctly in the keyboard whilst still getting the pins in the holes. Only problem I could foresee was that the next keyboard had 10 faulty switches - this could be a slow job!! As it turned out however, the older IIe had exactly the same switches as the donor Mac Plus keyboard, so replacement was extremely straight forward (yay!)

Heres a picture of the keyboard after I removed the faulty switches

And heres one with the replacements - now its good as new!

Good news for me, because now I was able to reassemble both of my IIe's - both having had their keyboards repaired, and a nice clean out. Now I have two working IIe's! I am truly blessed (although I can only keep one sadly).

Heres a picture of my older IIe in bits - the case is noticeably different than my later model one - interesting I suppose - definitely more character.

And heres a picture of my two IIe's back together - the one on the left is the older IIe, the one on the right is the US 110V one that I stuck a 230V PSU into. They are now shiny and clean although the one of the right is obviously yellowed - interestingly enough, the case of the older one seems to be made of some kind of different plastic and seems to have held up better against UV.

30 Dec 2009 - Slow Progress but some decisions

Well, my progress has ground to a halt - mainly because I've realised that it would be a wise idea to have a multimeter before proceeding any further. I want to replace the faulty key switches on my IIe's, and I have a donor Mac Plus keyboard for the switches but am fearful that I will replace non-working switches with non-working switches. I suppose I could pull out my 128k Mac and test the plus keyboard on that to select a few good switches... a multimeter would be better.

In any case, I have decided which IIe I will keep - the older one. Sure, the case has a few extra scuff marks, holes and wear - but the machine just has more character. I've pulled apart and cleaned both working IIe's now (the 110V and old ones), the 110V one was pretty disgusting but is now all shining clean. I washed the cases of both with Jif and scrubbed each of the keycaps. It looks like they have come up good - but the proof will be when I re-assemble them. The older IIe had a stamp on the inside of the case saying "1983" and the mobo is marked 1982. The older IIe was the one with the Zip 4000 installed, I've pulled that out and replaced it with the original "65C02A" that came with the enhancement kit that was installed in it. Its a bit odd, back when these things were the shizz a Zip 4000 was the dream - but today, I think I prefer the original 1Mhz speed of the IIe - I might reinstall the Zip if I do anything more than playing games (I know you can switch the speed when installed but....)

Finally, I took apart my Apple IIe Joystick to either replace or clean the button switches - unfortunately the plastic is very brittle and I broke one of the supports holding the buttons when getting it apart - I'm hoping a bit of super glue will sort that out - also, I found another (3rd party) joystick in the boot of my car - but haven't tried it out yet.

I took some pictures, but am too lazy to load them at the moment.

27 Dec 2009 - Gavo is a dirty cheat.

Yes, I am starting my Winter Warm Up Challenge early - no doubt this will lead to disqualification but I am willing to take the chance! ;-)

Well, my challenge is actually off to a good start for a change. Most of the stuff packed in the boot of my car has not moved around too much at all, but thats not even my first stop. In my cupboard is a IIe that a brought a few months back without a monitor or disk drives, the space bar is dislodged and someone has installed a headphone socket and a switch to switch from the internal speaker to the headphone socket (why oh why) and the case is a little beat up, but not bad. Anyway, this IIe has a Zip 4000 installed and I had briefly fired it up against my TV when I first got it and it seemed to work. My first test was to connect this to the monitor III I had got as part of the bulk lot I purchased a couple of months ago (the rest of which is in the boot of my car).

Success!! The monitor III works fine, and the IIe fires up with an accelerated chirp. It seems there's quite a few keys on the keyboard that dont work tho, so some surgery will be needed at a later date - I'm pretty happy about having a working monitor tho, yay for me!

Heres a picture

Now there's something interesting about this IIe - its been upgraded with the enhancement kit and a Zip 4000 - but the case itself is unlike any other IIe case I've seen (not that I've seen a lot of them) - the plastic is more reminiscent of the Apple II+ case material (not so beige and a little more bobbly if that makes sense) and the lid clips sport the familiar (or not) II+ plastic Velcro like catches. The board in the machine is labelled 1982, and pretty much everything is socketed - is this an early IIe model? Must be I guess. Take a look at this pic.

I wonder if I should fix this one up for my daily driver...

Still, no time to dilly dally, while I'm on a roll I decided to check out some of my other bits, so to the car boot!

Next to test was another monitor III that has been living in the boot of my car. The plug was cracked and it was missing a screw where the composite cable plugs into it (so it was flapping), but other than that is in slightly better cosmetic condition than the other one. Carefully plugged it in and attached it to my working IIe - YAY! Two working Monitor III's - I'll just have to replace the plug and find a screw - no big deal tho, pretty happy so far.

Next to test was a IIe from the boot. Pulled it out and plugged it in - unfortunately got a checkerboard pattern. On closer inspection I noticed some corrosion around one of the IC's - this board is going to need a clean up. In addition, it the keyboard is almost flush with the case - which is not right, I had a look inside and the keyboard PCB looks to be on a bend - I wonder if someone has had this apart in the past and not put it back together correctly. More work required here.

So I put that IIe to the side and moved onto the next in my boot. A 110V IIe. Heres a thought I thought to myself. How about I pull the 220V PSU from the IIe with the corroded mobo and put it into the 110V IIe? Why not indeed. The 110V IIe looks to be a relatively late model one. The mobo is labelled 1986 and has a look fewer components than the other boards I have - also, most of them are soldered in. It is also an enhanced IIe. The keyboard on this one is also noticeably more "clicky" that then others, it feels nicer to me, but then again the others could be also suffering from "gunk up". It was a relatively easy task to to switch the PSU's - four screws in the frame and disconnect the lead from the mobo - and hey presto a working IIe :) A quick test showed this is box has non-functional f and right shift keys, so I will need to sort that out, but otherwise a nice working IIe (albeit this IIe is also quite yellowed). The corroded IIe had an extended 80 column card so I installed this into this IIe and fired it up. Uh-Oh, checkerboard. Whipped out the 80 col card and reseated the RAM, the machine then booted up. Well, this has been all well and good, but with no working drives yet a little useless. So, out came two 3rd party half height drives attached to a Disk II controller card. I had been told that these worked and so was hopeful. Sure enough, I installed the card, powered the IIe on, and Drive 1 booted Bank Street Writer which was still in the drive. This version requires 128k and seeing as it loaded and worked, I'm assuming my extended 80 col card is working. Here is a pic of my "test bench", note bourbon strategically placed.

This machine also has a mousecard installed, but I havent tried that out yet. I think this machine will be the focus of my efforts for a fully working IIe - its the most "working" and complete - and plays Karateka just like the good old days (although I did discover the buttons on my joystick are not working as well as they could or should be!).

Not a bad couple of hours effort I thunk, but just for laughs I decided to try out the II+ in my car boot. Sadly this booted up into a checkerboard pattern, and perhaps sadder still is that I'm not sure that I have the motivation to try and fix it (at least in a hurry). I never owned a II+ in their hay day, I had a IIe instead, so I suppose this is where my interest is - I would like to fix it, but its not going to be high on this months priority list (unless I sort everything else out first).

 

So, from my first little outing I have discovered that to get a fully working IIe is not going to be too much of an effort (famous last words) - I just need to fix up the f and right shift keys on my transplanted US IIe, and, well, actually, thats it!! I wonder if I can get two IIes going. I only need one tho. Oh, and I have to fix up my joystick!

I havent even touched the clones at the bottom of my car boot, and there are lots of disks to go through - hmmm, what to do next .