An Apple /// That "Just Works?" 

Two things to do with it: 1) ADD A FAN. One of the main reasons Apple ///s were so unreliable was because Jobs insisted on having no fan, destroying components with heat -- a problem that would repeat again with the G4 Cube. 2) Get some new filter caps in to replace the RIFAs.

Port A and Port B are joystick/paddle ports, and the color video output is RGB, although it also provides black & white and color composite video output on pins 11 and 12, respectively.

Probably what happened was, somebody tried it, the RIFA did what RIFAs do, they took the power supply out to inspect the carnage, realized they were in over their head, and closed the machine back up.

The two Apple keys were called the "open Apple" and "closed Apple" keys. You can think of them like left and right super keys. Each one could/would do different things depending on the software. On the Apple IIe they were on either side of the space bar. Why they're both clustered together on one side on the Apple III keyboard is a mystery to me. In any case, they would both need to be on the keyboard for compatibility with software that makes use of both.

Back in the 80's I wrote a program for a company using UCSD Pascal that ran on an Apple ///. Years later I rewrote the program to run on a PC using Pascal. I kept it running during Y2K and them did more work for the same company until 2016 when I retired. They were a good customer. We didn't have any serious problems with the Apple ///. We had multiple serial ports and a hard drive on it. It was fun.

Would a smoke show be called RIFA madness?

"where's the kaboom? There supposed to be an earth shattering kaboom!" :D

Dude this channel is so fucking comfy. I'm gonna eat ice cream, get in bed and watch a couple vids I missed before the UFC starts. What this channel is lacking though is more pizza and ninja turtles.

The Apple /// wasn't a bad machine - and not terribly unreliable. It's bad reputation was mainly a result of Apple's botched product launch. The first machines were terrible. Apple had to stop production and completely redesign the mainboard. About a year after the initial launch they recalled and replaced all machines. The new mainboards were much better and also used better IC sockets. This fixed the connection issues, which had triggered the alleged "drop the machine" fix. However, the Apple ///'s reputation never recovered from the damage that was done in the first few months.

Wdym you'll spare us the tangents, you're literally Tech Tangents.

When I was 13 I was donated an Apple /// and two Profile hard drives so this was 1991, the /// worked, the one Profile drive did not, but my learning of Apple 2's in school was still prominent in my head so I remember making them work for a bit but the whole system overheated so bad and was so unreliable it got curbed not soon after sadly. Definitely miss it now !

Cool that you managed to get hold of Todd Howard's old Apple ///

Honestly, the case being composed largely of cast metal is likely as much for aesthetics as it is for heatsinking. They were selling the Apple III as a "real" business computer, and having something heavier would make it feel more substantial.

Comp eng student. Just wanna say your enthusiasm is infectious and heartwarming. Awesome work

My high school's superintendent secretary had an Apple III. I only saw it walking past the doorway. For some reason, I thought the monitor was attached. This is the first time I ever saw the back, insides, and monitor removed. Before I graduated high school, the same secretary got an Apple II GS. I don't know if her Apple III broke. I thought, what does a secretary need graphics and sound to write word processing documents, make up signs, etc. We only had Apple II's in our computer lab (no Macs). The II GS would have been better for us to learn on.

Danny Kottke said that Steve Jobs was adamant that the Apple III should NOT have a fan in it, thus the whole machine would be a heatsink.

15:40 - Wow! It's so neat to see a KDE Plasma runing in YT video for now and then!

That is just wild that an Apple III for all intents and purpose worked right out of the box! Amazing find!

I loved your reaction of "I never thought I'd get an Apple III", specially given that it required minimal effort to get it going. It reminds me when I got an IBM 5155 (Portable Personal Computer). I bought it so cheap from an eBay seller that I was wondering if I was going to get an actual computer and not a set of bricks in a box. It also worked without any repairs, no parts required at all!.

I love how excited you get about this stuff . When I was 9 , this was cutting edge technology 😂

There is/was a podcast called "Drop /// Inches" that's all about the Apple ///, and is an enjoyable listen for people who enjoy such things.

The Apple /// was my first computer. It had to be repaired once. For some reason, the Profile /// controller card didn’t work in slot 3. Moved it to another slot and reconfigured SOS and it worked perfectly. The only other thing I took it in for was to have the RAM increased to 256K and to have the built in floppy speed adjusted. I used it as my primary computer for over 5 years until I bought my Commodore Amiga A2000. The Apple ][ emulation requires a boot floppy that sets up an environment where an Apple ][ Plus floppy could boot into 48K RAM mode. Apple didn’t want the /// to take away from ][ sales so they put a bunch of hardware constrictions on running Apple ][ software. You may be able to plug Apple ][ cards into a /// but there are no drivers that will make them work. Port A and B would allow joysticks to be plugged in (Apple ][ compatible) and one of the ports allowed the Silentype thermal printer to work. There was no compatible color monitor that worked with the color video output. I was able to get color on the RCA jack, though.

Sick! A working Apple /// with minimal hassle! Dig it, Shelby!

Used one in grad school back in 1981. Drove me nuts as I had my own trs-80. Spent many a day teaching the other grad students how to use it and basic. Determine after that not to by Apple products

This was amazing! Never played with an Apple ///. (My dad bought an apple ] [+ back in '79) I love how you can change the system font!! And to that 1980s "hi tech" Wargames style font. That font was the way companies communicated something was "hi tech" in the 70s and 80s. It's hilariously outdated now.

Great video, your nerdiness is so enthusiastically delivered - its a great thing!

13:00 I'm shocked Apple actually recommended people to pick up and drop it to fix RAM issues. Like sure, just grab your $4,500 - $8,000 computer and drop it hoping it fixes your issue and doesn't break anything else in the process. 💀

I do appreciate the excitement during the process of discovery....

I love your enthusiasm. It's great 😃

I also have an A3 sitting next to me that 'just works'. It's in a very similar condition to yours and is a lot of fun!

The simplest repairs are always the best repairs.

inconceivable! glad it's working

Great to see you getting more familiar with apple computers

My OCD wants me to come to your workshop and organise it.... One viewer here already knows.

First time I've seen the Apple III presented on a channel. Would like a deeper dive into that system to get to know it better and all the differences with the Apple II+ and IIgs models.

I have one that I got for free when I worked at tech recycling place. I have the computer, monitor and extra floppy drive. Surprisingly still works, but I baby it and need to recap at some point.

I remember that terminal off to the right. I used those at my local library when I was a teenager, since they'd digitized their card catalog onto a mainframe. The librarians used them, too, to check out books. They had a barcode reader attachment.

Merch designs are on point. Gonna have to pick up a CRT shirt.

Congrats on a successful Apple /// purchase!

Excellent video and addition to your collection. Would like to see you make a video on how you made the diskette for it. Thanks for sharing

Awesome episode!

I've put you forward to be cast in the Adam Driver biopic.

Highly recommend getting the reactive micro power supply, which is way smaller and more reliable.

Congrats on getting it working

those rifa caps look like these "peanut butter bar" candies i used to eat when I was a kid. probably about as flaky, too.

Nice video. If i were you id get a 12v fan and have to blow into the back of the computer to keep the vintage motherboard chillaxed. I tend to try to add cooling to everything vintage these days. Heatsinks or fans or both.

You're not finished yet. We need to see the colour display.

Cool score, dude!

Hah, cast metal. Apple thought they were building an Atari.

I've had all sorts of Apple machines INCLUDING a LISA! (Wish I had THAT today...) But never had an Apple III. Cool to see it!

Remember seeing the Apple /// reviewed in (the British) PCW Magazine when it was new. Have often wondered what it would really have been like - the specs in the review made it sound good, but then again almost anything would have to that teenage lad from so long ago. Not sure whether it would’ve been reviewed when I had my SoC MK14 or had progressed to my second hand VIC=20… likewise if it would’ve been contemporary with my school having its single RM 380Z or if it’d got its first BBC Micros by then.

She's a strange beast right enough. Not really seen many people cover the Apple 3 before so this is very interesting, I didn't realize that is a huge heatsink before.

Anyone ever see that tim and eric skit "cinco midi organizer"? Gold.

That's pretty sick dude. Good call on checking for RIFAs! It looked like a lot of carnage, but surprisingly little collateral damage. I'd probably order in a replacement for the big cap that got hit and swap it out just in case, and give the board a general clean. Also run a cleaning disk through the floppy drive. But apart from that I'd say you're good.

Awe bud your way to excited for me on a early Sunday morning. I remember excitement I think..... hhahahaha

You're starting to close in on yourself there with gear! hahaha

The Apple III uses Alps SKCC for standard keys, and Alps SKFF Double Action switches for the arrow ones. The SKCC is also found on the 128K, 512K, Mac Plus, and the first generation IIe with the white on brown keycaps.

Even it's reputation was unreliable.

dude. The stuff you can do with this thing! And it's the 256K model! I hope you'll eventually get a color monitor that works with this thing! This is from the same era as those dedicated HP systems! Not to mention how much like a mad scientist you sounded when this machine Just Plain Worked in the end! XD

I dunno about unreliable, both of mine just worked when I got them home, RIFA explosions notwithstanding. The catch with mine was that I was crashed into bringing them home from Scotland and one of them bounced around the back of the car in the impact. Lost a couple of keys but it worked fine. This was 23 years ago, the one I still have is still working and now has a Profile and a Z80 card. Love 'em.

This brings back bad memories. I got given one of these back in the mid 90s, complete with hard drive and monitor, but I couldn't get it to boot off the floppy disk. Due to my then-lack of experience I managed to break it completely, I think I put the RAM card in backwards by mistake. I gave up and ended up contacting another retro enthusiast and part-exchanging it for some other computers. I wonder what happened to it.

Like the saying goes: - "Never look a gift horse in the mouth."

Never seen an Apple III in action or being repaired, pretty interesting video. 2 thumbs up. Though im more of a PC guy. (though I had experiance with apple IIs, Macs and Gateway PCs, at the little rural school I attended.) The general unrealiablilty, overheating issues and lack of Apple II software compatibiliy were its major downfalls, the Apple II could do most of the functions of the III for alot less money. In-fact if im not mistaken pretty much every other Apple computer clear in to 600-series powered Macintoshes and could natively run apple II software for a long time, and im sure there were software packages that allowed you to run Apple II software on much newer G+ series macs and beyond.

Steve Jobs smiled upon the was like "Don't worry I got you, she will work."

I used to be a computer works technician for goodwill. I got in box with packing material (not new in box it was obvious the previous owner kept the box and packaging and put the computer back in it once they upgraded) everything about it worked perfectly fine even the power supply was still in good condition.

So are you the one that pulled the trigger on the Apple III at Savers?

They aren't 'unreliable'. They just respond best to corporal punishment.

Nice video.

I recently got around to building a harness for a thermal printer, and the controll board was acting wierd, it was and more or less the same story as this. one bad cap, that's it. it was a smoothing capacitor that was shorting 5V to ground, and causing an inductor to overheat. it'd also leaked onto the board snd caused some corrosion, but it just worked after I removed the bad cap.

Would pair nicely with a silentype printer. the controller is built in to the logic board

I don't know if you know this, but Twitch has ended their ban on simultaneous streaming, so you are once again allowed to stream to both RU-vid and Twitch at the same time. I would be very happy if this is something you would be able to do, since I prefer the RU-vid interface to the Twitch interface, and RU-vid doesn't delete VODs after two months like Twitch does. I miss when you would upload VODs to your second RU-vid channel, and if that was becoming a hassle, then simultaneous streaming could be a way to get your VODs on RU-vid without having to upload them yourself from Twitch.

If you were surprised to learn that there were both 128K and 256K versions, you'll be even more surprised to learn that the original version of the Apple /// came with a memory card which supported 64K, 96K, or 128K of RAM.

it just works :) nice!

So many thousand dollars for double the memory, double the CPU clock, double the overheating, and THAT'S IT? THANK YOU APPLE for making me see the hopelessness that you were in the old days. Later I bought a Toshiba T1100PLUS LAPTOP, with 10 times the memory, 4 times faster CPU, and 4 times more floppy disk space FOR LESS and switched to PC DOS. Never looked back.

You found an apple iii?! I'm actually a little jealous, but then again I'm not super huge into apple besides having a couple iis for games and such... I'll leave iconic machines to folks that have a history or can better appreciate it 😅

dont blame apple, blame jobs. also was there magic smoke from the monitors efi/rifa ? caps ?.thanks for video , what a nice find !!!!!, best check the monitor rifa caps also. Awesome dude !!! love it , so cool

Can you do a longer video on the computer. I've read at least 5 articles in the computer media from the eighties and still have no idea what an Apple III is and what differentiates it from an Apple II and what about it that was supposed to be so good. The Apple III marketing is probably the worst marketing campaign in history. In addition to all of the articles I've read, I've seen a lot of Ads for it. Again, I have no idea what this is.

Obviously your Apple III has a working power light. If the power light burns out, the ROM will keep you stuck in diagnostics because it thinks the keyboard isn't there. When it's not in emulation or funny mode, it runs SOS, which is the ancestor of ProDOS for the Apple II. The bulk of PRODOS is SOS's Block File Manager component. Business BASIC via an SOS.INTERP file was completely different to BASIC.SYSTEM in that the entire interpreter needed to be loaded in (it was essentially a better Applesoft with party tricks like invokables); BASIC.SYSTEM had ROM Applesoft to do the BASIC stuff. SOS was far ahead of its time with its memory manager that didn't see anything like it until the IIgs had it in its ROM, and having device drivers on a little 8-bit computer was a new thing, too! It's a real disappointment that Wendell Sander was forced to waste his engineers' time hobbling Apple II emulation mode. I think the Apple III would have been far more successful if it had a whole set of Apple II software to run before Apple III software was ready, and didn't need to suffer the drawbacks of emulation mode.

Your shirt looks like the part in Mega Man 1 where you fight a clone of yourself

makes you wonder what the rifas were for, if they just work without them

I have used an Apple 3... dropping it fixes it that is how bad that was.

Great video! That’s really great that it works! What version/distro of Linux do you use?

Oh dear keeping it easy never works out lol 😂

Step One: Check if fire extinguisher works!

The Apple III, the only computer to have a case made of depleted uranium

Ahh, I see you bought it. I saw it on the Friday before 50% off day and forgot to go back for it then and saw it was gone next time i was over in that area. Awesome XD

The PC Jr of Apple

Keeping it easy? No sir haha!

Apples almost always work. Ataris about 75%. Commodores will work 25% of the time. TRS-80's almost always work too, but no one cares 🙂

Do all the keys work?

That font demo is not something you’d ever see on the Apple II. Some of those fonts aren’t exactly legible, but that’s not the point! Apple iii is a lot more impressive when you consider how primitive Apple II was, except I grew up with Apple IIe and IIc which have 80 column, lower and upper case 128kb ram.

can you please do a video on the difference between the apple 2 and the apple 3 i understand it was targeted for business but i have very limited understanding of the hardware difference between the systems i think this would be interesting to know or did apple do what they have always done and decided to make the apple 3 just because they could make something for a consumer that didn’t need it because the apple 2 could do it or something like that anyway i don’t think that is the case i would think there was improvements that made the 3 a stronger system besides not having proper cooling killing the system an other issue anyway this would be interesting to know i have enjoyed your videos for a long time now so i look forward to what comes next

Now you can hack into the ENCOM mainframe!

This video edited by some derpy jabroney in Arizona.

Damn, I would love to see the source code for this scroll !

I really want an Apple /// plus for my collection.

I was confused; I thought the RETRY message was a READY prompt and it had actually dropped into some sort of built-in ROM BASIC. Time for new glasses. :)

While it works, for now, I don't trust that power supply... Those voltages are significantly off...

Can I ask how the thing still works safely with your having removed- and not replaced- a capacitor? (I'm not an electronics engineer). Is there a level of redundancy in the power supply to allow for the computer to still run?

What were the two capacitors you removed from the power supply for? I'm surprised it worked with those open paths.