Keycaps are usually PBT plastic on old Apples. PBT doesn’t yellow with UV exposure like ABS. Space bar tends to be ABS. That’s due to challenges making larger shapes in PBT without warping due to shrinkage during cooling.
In the US, the Apple II and IIe was used in schools for learning in the late 70's early 80's, one thing we played a LOT of in school after class on them was Karateka, so having that game ready to play on it would be great for any of us yanks visiting! :-)
We were still using them occasionally in the 90's! Usually for those one-off programs the teachers hadn't been able to replace yet. The last time I used one in school was in 1997 in technology class - we learned how to read the temperature from a thermal probe connected to the Apple II. The next year the class got overhauled to use brand new Windows computers.
I can confirm that kansas school’s used Apple lls for students until the late 90’s. Typically computer labs had new computers, teachers had computers that were a few years old for keeping records. But computers in the classroom for students to use were often hand me down Apple lls.
Here in S. Carolina the school system used Apple IIe and Apple IIc machines till the mid 90's when they phased them out right when Windows 95 came out, and they started to replace the last of them with Gateway, and Dell desktop PC's. They even replaced their DOS/win 3.11 era IBM PS/2 systems with the Dell, and Gateway machines leaving my high school with one room full of late 68K/early Power PC Macs as the only Apple systems left before phasing them out totally. I went with my girlfriend to pick up her daughter not too long back from my old high school for a doctors appointment, and noticed they still mostly use Dell computers with a mix of HP, and HP/ACER Chromebooks for the kids to use if they don't have a laptop of their own.
The various generations Apple II filled schools here in Canada up until the early '90s when they were replaced with Macs. Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, Cross Country Canada, Number Munchers / Word Munchers, and of course The Oregon Trail are the "edutainment" titles which pop to mind that we had. I recall lots of games with a Broderbund startup logo when outside of class.
Meanwhile I grew up in MECC's home turf of Minnesota. Our schools had some of the classic MECC edutainment games like Oregon Trail and Number Munchers for literally my whole life or close to it. I still have fond memories of Path Tactics -- especially "Subtraction, Negative Results Allowed", which let you sometimes move _backwards_ toward the drop-down spaces to get ahead. 🙂
I grew up with the apple 2e and it was incredible, simple enough for a child to learn with some of the best games I've still ever played. You haven't lived till you type out a school report and print it on a dot matrix, what a time to be alive.
The only game you'll ever need on an Apple II is Cross Country Canada, in which you drive a lorry across the country and learn all sorts of fascinating things about Canadian geography, commodities and natural resources. I played it every opportunity I got in primary school 🤓 🇨🇦
10:47 Hahaha, the repairs DnB makes a comeback and I still love it! Mark's segment on this video was really awesome xD lots of hilarious jokes! At 9:22, us overgrown children most certainly know what was cut here xD
The Killer App for the Apple II, at least in US schools was "Oregon Trail". Virtually every Gen X'er played it in elementary school from 1978 into the late 1980's.
Some of us early Millennials too, since plenty of schools hung onto their IIe's well into the 90s, even as they added Macs and eventually PCs. My elementary school (1988-94) had a computer lab full of Apple IIe's, while my middle school (1994-97) had both a IIe lab and a Mac lab, in addition to some Mac LCs in the school library.
@@AaronOfMpls That's true! My mother was a Junior High teacher and one of her colleagues, who taught Computer Science had to have his Apple IIE/IIGS lab taken from him kicking and screaming and upgraded in 2001. He didn't want to change the lesson plans he had been using since 1978,
Funnily enough in drama class in secondary school the teacher did a play about the Oregon trail one term, so when I found out about the game I had a weird sense of familiarity (before realising that’s the whole point of dramatising and gamifying history!)
Y'all aren't going to believe this, but we used Apple IIs in my high school physics lab around 2009! Absolutely wild. That's what they had photogate timers etc for, and my elderly teacher kept the Apple IIs in use all those years. We all had calculators significantly more powerful than the Apple IIs, of course, but I guess maybe the photogate equipment was too expensive to replace? Education is very poorly funded in my State (Arizona). 😵💫
An arcade style game I don't see mentioned often but I had lots of find memories of was Spare Change by Dan and Mike Zeller, published by Broderbund. The enemies are full of personality especially with their sound effects, and the jukebox tune is still stuck in my head nearly 40 years later. It even has cutscenes between levels.
You REALLY should pick up an IBM 5150. About 15 years ago my neighbour put one out for garbage with the original monitor, keyboard, and everything. Never opened and still totally clean inside and worked perfectly. I loved playing around with it because we only had one computer for everyone in the house to share so I was able to put the 5150 in my bedroom and play some Wheel of Fortune on it. Only issue was that every time it warmed up it would smell like cat spray so I ended up getting rid of it, not understanding what I had.
Hey Neil, you really need one of those handheld Dyson vacuum cleaners. They're WAY stronger than any other vacuum and they get rid of dust that others don't pick up. Also, you can go to eBay and buy nozzle kits for them with tiny nozzles and flexible hoses which is just perfect for the kind of cramped work you do there. Such a vacuum cleaner is better than just using the brush because you risk brushing the dirt into the switches making them non functional. Oh, and also, it has a brush tip, so you can brush away hardened dirt and it will be sucked into the vacuum rather than go somewhere it can cause trouble.
Amazing as ever to watch these restoration videos. Especially great as my Mum used to use this at home for work when I was a young lad. Funny how something like this can trigger all kinds of wonderful, tangentially related memories.
I restored a //e about a year ago - I wish I had videoed it. Took a lot of replacement parts. It had been in a leaky old garage for probably 20 years. Tho I was surprised the PS only needed a Rifa cap and the switch cleaned. But the MB had bad flip-flop in the clock, video ROM, keyboard encoder and ROM, CPU, and RAM chip. And half the keys on the KB didn't work - ended up just getting a whole replacement KB. Tho I did design a PCB to create a KB using Cherry switches, along with adapters that could be SLA printed to use the original keycaps on the Cherrys I never actually had the board made. Interesting machine - expensive and built like a tank, but in reality VERY simplistic design. Video circuitry is weirdly brilliant.
There was a product by lego where you made a car with different gears that connected to the Apple iie and then you made a script that would controll it.. when I was in elementary school that was the thing I enjoyed on the apple that was 30yrs ago now.
RIP The Cave’s spider plant! Also - a tip for removing stickers from plastic etc. - good old furniture polish! Leave it to soak for 5 mins and it’ll come off easily!
Way back when, I did incoming inspection, test, and alignment on those Shugart 5 1/4 drives. The ones I recall had an interesting arrangement for the R/W head. It used a rotating disk with a spiral groove molded into it, to locate the head, by means of the stepper motor under the chassis. You can sort of see it at 10:15. Some drives came with Kapton drive belts, of all things. Those usually accumulated dust due to static electricity, so not the best choice. Otherwise, those old Shugarts were built like tanks! And it was nice to hear the story about how Woz engineered entirely new electronics for the drives. Great work, restoring that old machine! It looks like new! Keep up the good work! I enjoy your videos, and hope to get back to the UK one day to see the sights, including a visit to your museum.
Games I remember from my childhood (in New Zealand) on this machine: Apple Panic, Lode Runner, "Conan: Hall of Volta", Choplifter, Kareteka, Taipan, Castle Wolfenstein, Where in the world is Carmen Sandiago, Elite, Dung Beetles.
I'd love to visit some time, but between my health and the pandemic, that won't be happening soon. What I used to love was the Muncher games from MECC - the ones that brought the Oregon Trail. Word Munchers and Number Munchers. Watch out for those Troggles!
I was only a kid, at home we had a Commodore 64, at school we had IIe's, I thought the Apples were some cheap garbage compared to the vibrant Commodore. Ah to be a kid again. Awesome job bringing that thing back to beauty!
As a kid I was so fascinated by the heat that came from the power light in the lower left corner. It’s an incandescent bulb. Not an LED. Even back then LEDs were common. It always made me wonder, “why is this light so warm?”
TBF in ’77 LEDs were dim, small, and red. If you wanted larger, brighter, or white, you needed a tiny incandescent, especially if you didn’t want to pay for a square array of red LEDs to fill the space.
Loved this video! I am currently cleaning up a iie myself which is identical to this one SN 112xxx I also found the mill st sticker inside and wasn’t able to figure out the history so this video was a nice find! The date on the underside of my case reads 22 April 1983 which is the day after I was born which is a lovely surprise 😊
Good show! It looks great now. Suggest setting out the space bar in hot summer mid-day sunlight and that should remove it's discoloration. I did cringe when you cleaned those dirty and dusty parts inside your lovely clean space. =) We had many, many IIe's in the US. Even in '86 there were very common in schools.
Nice. I wish Sinclair would have got the contract to make the Apple 2 in Europe. It would have been awesome to see it made with like 6 parts, and couple of chips; just like what apple is doing now. Lol
@@fnjesusfreak And they used (almost) the same chips on the Apple IIe card for early-90s Macs. The 8-Bit Guy made a video about that: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-tvZ43JqrvXA.html .
Being a car geek and owning at least 4 of then in 30 year and running the twingo channel on youtube i noticed the roof line of a Renault 11 in the footage from the irish film of the Apple building car park
Hi, this was the first computer I ever used - our school had one. We used to play star wars on it using the 2 paddles - one person controlling L and R the other controlling Up and Down.
Ahh the Apple IIe. My school was loaded with IIe's. In the 80's I wish the school had Atari computers, but looking back the IIe was perfect. It was built tough to handle the abuse of children, still had color, the 80 column mode was necessary in high school when I used Appleworks for typing reports. Some of us has contraband disks with pirated games. I remember Montezuma's revenge was quite popular.
What a fantastically relaxing video. Really great for a Sunday night when you're chilling out before work begins again tomorrow. I found the archive footage of Apple in Ireland fascinating. Hopefully will come to visit you in the cave soon!
Very nice job overall. I'd put up a bit of a fuss about removing that paper label on the cover, but then I'd be hypocritical, since I replaced the entire plastic case with a clear polycarbonate replica. (see the quick video titled "Not So Stealthy IIGS Build With MacEffects Clear Case & Keyboard" on my channel) The discoloured space bar is pretty typical. In Canada we did have a French Canadian setting for the switch below the keyboard. If you have one of those modern digital mass storage devices, I'd recommend downloading the Total Replay archive. It's a very polished front end launcher for several hundred of games with an attract mode that shows images of game play. It also features a boolean search feature so you can start typing in the name of a title and then select the one you want to play. Have fun!
Remember playing on one at Laskys in the Queensmere shopping centre in Slough, next to a Camputers Lynx and a Commodore Plus 4.... How I wanted a Lynx, but was happy with my 464!
The Apple II and the Macintosh were almost complete opposites... The II was a bit clunky to use, but was extremely easy to fix and upgrade with its easily accessible motherboard and expansion slots. The Macintosh, on the other hand, had a very sleek and easy to use UI, but was impossible to upgrade and difficult to open up in order to fix.
You could try either Swashbuckler or Aztec, both from Datamost, those are very early classics. Also Choplifter or Karateka are some very famous titles created origanaly for Apple, that got ported to almost every other 8bit system avaliable at the time. Apple IIe got some more advance graphics modes with more resolution and colors that looked great but where terrible dificult to program (double high-resolution), very few games ever took advantage of them, I think some notable ones are probably Airheart (probably the most advanced I have seen) and offcourse Prince of Persia (I think at least the title screen is dhr). I guess that is just scratching the surface, possibly there is more stuff that came after, when I stopped looking at it, Also, the mockingboard was a big thing (ultima mockingboard music is great), they are dificult to get a hold of, but there are some clones around...
Don't forget that the Apple IIe was able to play the Sierra games like King's Quest thanks to double-hires. It's amazing how Wozniak's simple, yet elegant design gave it so much extra life just because 128K and floppy drives were standard on almost 100% of the Apple IIes. Add to that the disk drives were actually fast (imagine that!) so large games were bearable on the 8bit Apple whilest Commodore and Atari folks had to upgrade to the 16-bit machines if they wanted to play the latest point-and-click adventures, large RPGs, or even Prince of Persia.
I think a lot of the old retro machines from the 80s lived with smokers. I knew so many people that smoked while bashing keys on their Apples, Atari's, and Commodores beck in the early to mid 80's. Also, wondering if you turned a corner of the museum into a live restoration area might be pretty cool, so museum patrons can see what is currently being restored. In the 80's a local hobby store used to do this, and it was pretty cool. Cheers!
You need to play Taipan, it is a great game. One of my favourites. Also, Monty was a bit of fun on the Apple IIe. There were some others I enjoyed, but I was too young to know the name of them at the time just ones my teacher would put on for us for completing our work quickly :D
I was curious about what happened to the old Apple factory, and it seems to be used by ALPS Electric these days. Looks pretty much the same as well, judging from the Google streetview anyway (although it is from 2009).
Nicely done. Many of the Apple IIs I've seen on eBay have been missing keys, so if the only thing wrong with yours is a discoloured space bar, I think you're well ahead of many others.
Those drives really are built like a tank. Also, very clean and simple controller card and mechanics. I'm impressed actually! And that's something I don't say easily... At least about Apple 😁 It's one of the companies, which products I just don't buy... Ever. Well, maybe someday some retro machine... But, you get the point ;)
Would be great if you guys could show a detailed part list and products used when you restore a machine. This then helps greatly when tackling this same task.
I had the opportunity to use euro pluses in high school. They looked like "real" computers, though were about the same as all micro's at the time. Nice keyboard, though. I wonder if the person who owned this and stuck the sticker on was watching :)
Wow what a crusty keyboard! Shades of Jurassic Park you've probably got enough DNA there to recreate the original users of the system :-). I remember using Apple Its during my Biology degree at Leicester Uni to run mathematical models> The disk drives were certainly a one-up on my UK101 that was my first home micro.
My fondest game memories on Apple ][ machines are of Snake Byte and Robot Odyssey. I can still remember the Snake Byte sound effects, and every once in a while I work on the solution to a particularly difficult Robot Odyssey puzzle in my head. I would also like to see Bank Street Writer in action again.
The space bar looks like it was mounted the wrong way. The angle compared to the surrounding keys does look off a bit. But it already was like that before your disassembly. 🤔
That pinball game reminded me of one on the cpc464 i used to play loads a a kid, pinball magic or wizard or somthing. I will have to have a look about now.
Well done chaps! My best friend next door in the early 80's had one of these and we played it all the time. There is some awesome spy style wireframe 3D'ish game we played on it one time later in years and I thought it was the most amazing game I ever saw, but for the life of me I couldnt tell you which game it was. If there are any gurus here please fire off some titles and I would be happy to google em up and see if they were the one! Awesome video Neil, love what you guys are doing. Keep it retro
You’ve done so many restorations now Neil I am wondering if you now put all the keys back without needing to use a photo of the keyboard to get them all right
vry interesting video. sorry but I wasn't able to see how you fixed le two springs of the space bar the small one is centerly for the center botton, but the bigger one ?
