Apple IIe
It’s time for another entry of my ongoing series featuring the Zscaler Logo Displayed on a Weird, Old or Obsolete Computer!
This is a “Revision A” Apple IIe, built in January 1983. It runs at 1.02MHz (that’s megahertz, not gigahertz!) and has a whopping 64 kilobytes of RAM. As you can read below, it came to me in very rough shape, badly broken and probably destined for an e-waste recycler.
I was given this badly-abused Apple IIe a couple years ago - it had suffered multiple damaging incidents decades ago and had been left for dead ever since. The keyboard was in rough shape (it had suffered a soda spill 30+ years ago and several keys were shorted out), capacitors in the power supply had exploded (literally!), the keyboard cable was crumbling, the whole thing was filthy, and it was just a sad sight.
After sitting in my storage locker for a couple years, I recently got the urge to pull it out and see if I could bring it back to life. I began by teaching myself how to replace the capacitors in the power supply.
Once the power supply was fixed, I was able to verify that the motherboard did work - a promising sign! From there, I completely disassembled the keyboard and cleaned out a lot of disgusting reside from that long-ago soda spill. Most of the keys began working again after a deep-clean and some de-oxidizer spray, but a handful were beyond help. Fortunately, I was able to locate someone in New Mexico who had a few spare vintage key switches that would work as replacements. Those arrived a couple days ago and I taught myself how to extract the old broken ones and solder in the replacements without setting the keyboard on fire. I also sourced a replacement keyboard cable, and since I had the machine opened up anyway, I took the entire thing apart and gave the whole system a deep-clean. I’m delighted to report that it now looks gorgeous and is running like a champ!
Eagle-eyed viewers might notice two odd things about this pic:
There’s a mouse! These systems didn’t ship with mice, and in fact, very few Apple IIe users would have owned a mouse to go with them. However, I recently found an Apple II Mouse Card and matching Apple Mouse, which means that future visitors to my “Retro Roadshow” events can use this machine to explore the limited (but historically interesting / important!) catalog of mouse-compatible software for this 8-bit computer
There’s no disk drive! This machine came to me with a matching “Disk II” floppy drive, but it’s in non-functional condition right now. While I’m waiting for replacement parts to arrive, I’m using a “Floppy Emu” - a tiny little gadget (hidden behind the machine in these pics) that emulates a floppy drive from ‘disk images’ loaded onto a microSD card. Very handy!
Happy Friday everyone!
