Restoring an Apple IIe Left for Scrap! 

Back in 1981 my mother purchased an Apple //e for me. I still have it wrapped in plastic in my closet along with a spare Apple //e that I purchased 15 years ago, for parts. I have 2 3-ring folders full of Games/Utilities floppies. I may take it out of the closet and power it on after watching your very cool video. It’s nice to see people still enjoying vintage computers!

Tip: Double-sided foam trim tape is easily removed by sawing with dental floss. It's what we do in automotive de-badging.

If the ram you ordered doesn't work, let me know. I can go through my ][s and probobly pull some. I think i have one or two with a bad chip or two that I can just convert to a donor machine. (ie, the one with the trashed case LOL) Awesome video, always love seeing these ][e machines get a second life.

Left for scrap? It breaks my heart this happens. Glad you rescued it!

Seeing those ribbon cables cut at the beginning was just painful. Great video Colin!

The IIe was the very first computer my family owned. We got it in my senior year in high school. Thanks for the memories!

This was my first computer. I bought it soon after college graduation. Added an Applewriter and two Apple disk drives. Those were the days. I later "upgraded" to a Mac512.

Great job on the restoration! It’s so sad to think someone was going to throw this out and would do things like cutting the cables. I’m glad you were there to save it. I need to find an Apple ][ to restore myself.

I used that type of Apple II more than 30 years ago, Great video! Thank you!

Beautiful find, and I love your closing message. I learned on a C64 (and to a much lesser degree, a IIe at school), and decades later I find myself still learning awesome stuff while refurbing them. :)

08:22 "A cap for replacement". Oh, look, it's the rare RIFA pyrotechnic capacitor!

I used to work with these in the 1980s, they were very reliable computers and were exceptionally well made. Thank you for making this video, it brought back a lot of memories.

I went ahead and replaced all caps in the PSU of my //e - I tested them out of curiosity and I'd say 1/3 were 20% off their tolerance with one completely off. Considering they are 40 years old I see a full replacement as a "service" visit that should give the PSU many many years of happy life. To be honest I did the same in the monitor - again, 1/3 were a bit off and 1 or 2 were completely off. And this is testing with an arduino-style tester: real life test with actual voltages may make things worse. It's so cool that a bad memory chip may impede some functions with the system but won't make the system completely unusable!

Great video, I remember playing Oregon Trail on one of these in elementary school!

Great video! I’m glad you were able to get it going again and look forward to part 2 when you get the ram chip. It always makes me happy when I see a piece of technological history saved from the scrap heap. Cheers!

I'm sure someone mentioned this already, but (I think) the permanently attached cable was a requirement for monitors sold in the USA. Most other regions (including Australia) always had detachable cables.

Nice clean repair so far. I actually just fixed one of these couple months back for an old neighborhood lady. Her monitor was blowing fuses. Had a shorted diode.

Your geeky vids are so fun to watch and/or listen to while I'm working. Keep up the good work.

I owned this as my first Apple computer back then. Great video by the way 👍

I started off in IT as a trainee technician in the '80s bench repairing Apple computers, along with IBM PCs, Olivetti, Altos, Alpha Micro, Honeywell, IBM mainframes, Digital PDP 11/70, etc. The range of equipment that we were exposed to, as a technician, in the '80s was fantastic. The IIe was one of my favourites to repair due to ease of access and well designed and laid out tracks.

Congrats on 200k subs! Really enjoy your content, keep up the great work 👌

I have one of these with DuoDisk drive! I've had a blast writing simple programs on it. Great video!

It hurts so much to see these classic machines left to the e-waste pile. The Apple II was such a prominent mainstay of my grade school years. Good on you for restoring this wonderful computer. :)

Nice restoration! She's a beauty!

Good memories! Apple //e was my second computer. The school computer lab had TRS-80s and Apple //+s. Two floppies and my Epson RX-80 dot matrix printer and I was ready to go.

Damn that’s actually an insane find, those are getting rarer and rarer, and you got lucky cause Apple IIs are resold for a premium online nowadays

This was my first computer, had the same monitor as well, but had the floppy drive unit which sat between the computer and monitor and had two disk drives. My elementary school had them, and when they were upgrading to macs my parents bought one for us if memory serves. But then when we got our first PC they sold it to a friend to put towards the PC, and then it got destroyed by water damage from a burst pipe. Not sure what became of it after that. Always awesome seeing restoration videos of them!

Cool video. Brings me back to my elementary school days as well; I vividly remember learning how to code on an Apple II, and by far my favorite day of the week as a kid was the day we got to go to the lab to play Word/Number Munchers, Odell Lake and Oregon Trail.

The Apple //e was the first computer I ever used. I taught myself to program in AppleSoft BASIC in order to fix some bugs in some public domain software my dad had purchased for it. I miss the days when Apple made computers for hobbyists instead of hipsters.

Love the chunky aesthetics of these machines, hope those memory chips get there soon!

"Or-gone Trail" xD great video man.

8:33 oh God, my Apple III had those explode and irreparably damaged it. That smell of those RIFA caps exploding is probably one of the worst smelling things ever. My room smelled like it for about a week, had to sleep in another room

This is the computer that my primary school had in the mid to late 1980s so I too have a good amount of nostalgia attached. We learned some introductory coding using both the built in basic and Logo, which involved giving commands to a turtle which were to reflected in screen and you could draw things graphically. I’ve been working in IT for nearly 20 years, I’m now in senior leadership roles but I owe a good amount to this computer for the path I chose to take in life.

Ooh, this is cool, I love the Apple II Line! Glad you saved this one.

That thing is in outstanding condition for its age. I have quite a few that were rescued from similar fates, in much worse condition: broken keys, case damage, etc. Also have a similar Macintosh SE that was literally found on the side of a desert road. It had been tossed out by someone at speed, so they could watch it tumble on the shoulder (long slide marks to where it came to rest). I was so stunned to find this machine, that only 20 years earlier (at the time) had been the pinnacle of home computing. People took out loans to buy them and here it was, cast off in the desert like a sack of garbage. Luckily, it landed in very soft sand and was mostly none worse for the wear (a few light scuffs in the finish). Brought it home, plugged it in and--yes--it still worked fine.

That detachable power cable is a HUGE upgrade! Attached power cables are the worst!

I've used these machines a ton when I was in school. Playing games as well as typing things for school. I had a disk that I saved my files on and I ended up having to take it with me because people were reading the things I typed.

We had these in Middle school as well (I may be a bit older). Anyway, while waiting for RAM might as well whiten the case/keyboard. Its super simple and there are tons of vids out there on how to do it. Uses hydrogen peroxide and UV lights. Would make it look brand new.

Thanks to my uncle who was in the Marines all through the mid 60's - mid 90's, he gave me an Apple IIe with dual disk drives, an Epson printer(used it on both my Apple, and C64), and green monitor the military was e-wasting on base around 87 to replace them with IBM PC machines, so I had that machine, as well as a C64(later C128) thanks to yet another uncle who helped run a Commodore users group, and did repairs for side money, and the machines he gave me where his refurbished models, so I got to spend a lot of time with the Apple IIe at home, and school getting to know it inside, and out. So this for me brought back a lot of memories of things like making banners, and homemade cards with my Epson printer via Paint Shop Pro, or playing games like Pirates, Choplifter, Oregon Trail, and Where in The World is Carmen Sandiego. 👍👍

Again great video. Nice to see that an old computer get a new home and some tlc.

Oh my god curved traces! That might be the prettiest backside of any board ive ever seen. Its artistic to say the least!

Fantastic, really enjoyed this one! I have two Apple IIe’s and a monitor in the garage that a friend gave me. Sadly, they seem to have sat underwater for a significant amount of time. Amazingly, I’m told that the monitor works, but while the logic boards look okay... I can hear lots of rust when I shake them around. The same friend gave me a Mac SE SuperDrive that was also equally rusty, and I was actually able to revive that one. Maybe, just maybe, I can get a working Apple IIe out of these. If I do, I plan to give it back to the guy who gave them to me, since one (or both) of them were his childhood machines, and while I have lots of infrastructure to support the Macintosh ecosystem, I don’t have much in the way of Apple II stuff.

I'm 39 now and I remember using these in Elementary school from 1989-95. I would LOVE to own one of these that is totally restored and with those new drives just rot play all the vintage games and do typing. They had the best keyboards and I loved making those banners on the shitty printers of the era 😂 Some of the best nostalgia early childhood memories.

I had the exact RAM issue with an Apple IIc I picked up earlier this year. I had an old Commodore 64 scrap motherboard and I desoldered all of the RAM chips from it as they used the same type. I painstakingly desoldered multiple RAM chips from the Apple as several had failed and installed sockets. After swapping around the new RAM chips, it works like new. Make sure to buy chip sockets when performing this repair.

I used to work on these when i worked at Xerox in the early 80s. We had software developers that used to write games for these and top them off at our service center. The amber tubes were popular but only lasted a short time when color crts showed up. Osborn Executive portable computers had them and were very popular. Good luck with your find.

The copper scavengers are still at it I see, just cutting those cords off.

This came up in my recommended videos. Great work! I've subbed and look forward to diving into more videos! The Apple IIe brings back a lot of memories as I used them at primary school here in Melbourne Australia.

Nice restoration! It's crazy to see what gets tossed out, but this was a great find!

This was my first computer! What a blast to see it inside and out.

When I took a digital electronics course in '85 they used this model. Probably for it's ease of access and simplicity for interfacing projects. Thank you for saving it. Floppy disks decay with time to my understanding. How and why would be an interesting topic for a vintage computing show covering the storage medium.

I used one of those in 3rd grade in California. It was quite an experience. I programmed at the time in basic so it was easy for me to work on.

Imma be honest, I was able to fix up my grandparents apple PC with this video! It was an old house computer however! It was able to finally turn on and found some old Accounting Data from 1980!

This was my first computer. Glad you saved it

Found your channel randomly when looking for how to keep the saves on my SNES game batteries and I'm glad I did, truly a gem of a channel. Love the content, I've got that bell icon turned on :)

I found a Briefcase type one and a color monitor once in the dumpster looking clean and mean so I grabbed it. I lost it somewhere in time but used to love Swashbuckler on it. The monitor ended up lasting for years as a great gaming monitor. It had a speaker too if I remember correctly. Living the high life.

Greta save Colin! Hopefully that new memory will have this beauty going again for years to come :)

Brings back memories for me too! My Dad was a Civil Engineer and Geek for early HP programmable calculators and the first PCs. At home we had a beautifully stylish Apple //c and noisy dot-matrix printer which the whole family used for school and college assignments (so basic obviously compared to a modern version of MS Word!). In about 1987 he had an IBM Clone 80286 12mHz with EGA graphics and a beautiful voice coil actuated Miniscribe 3053 5.25 inch 40 MB hard drive--and that drive made such pleasing sounds when seeking--superb listening compared to a modern drive. This machine ignited my passion for PCs and operating systems (early MS-DOS versions back then). I used it to install the first versions of MS Flight Simulator on and a batch of Astronomy Software that I could use to plan observing sessions with my telescopes. A wonderful piece of computing history. I still have the 3053, its MFM controller, the first IDE/ATA drive (Miniscribe 8051A) and the second, a Conner Peripherals 3044A and a batch of archived 80286, 80386SX, 80386, 80486 and Pentium motherboards :-)

Satisfying video. Nice repair. Thanks for your efforts.

Awesome episode! I really enjoyed this. Truly a preservation of Apple computing history.

I use to repair these back in the day, good job man, brought back good times

We still used these for learning Appleworks circa 1997 in Middle school here in Austin Texas. Though there was also a semi-modern Mac lab upstairs, and all the classrooms got a fancy blue G3 towers in 1998, whether they needed them or not. My math teacher gave me the admin password for the macs, as children were more helpful than tech support back then...

Glad you saved it. Its a shame someone would dump one of these, especially one in as good shape as this one!

This is a great video. I got my hands on a IIe with the same monitor and a Duodisk drive last year. I might do that modification to the monitor even though the cable is intact

My school also had an entire room of these old apples and random dos boxes. My computer teacher was a huge Mac fan and she prided herself on keeping all the machines running for decades. She even spoke to Woz about it and he was stoked that his machines were still working and being played with by hundreds of kids daily.

These and the Tandy’s were the ones I learned from when I was 10/11 years old, back around ‘82/‘83, wish I could visit that time again!

Greater heat retention from the foam and the metal pad probably is the culprit. Remember for the yellowing either UV or heat is necessary.

Thanks for good video. Apple 2e was my first computer in high school. I was in the class of programming in Basic. Green monitors are most common but we even had a color screen's for Apple 2E

Great seeing another great old machine rescued. Long live the Apple ][ !! +1 LIKE as always.

Thank you for making this video, especially the part at 8:50 with capacitor info. My 2e started smoking when I turned it on last month, so I immediately turned it off. Now will go back and look for that capacitor...!

Trust old Apple to use high quality components. Just one capacitor and one ram chip failing for that vintage is simply incredible.

You lucky man! Finding a working Apple 2e in the trash... Very nice video!

I wonder if some of the keyboard issues could be resolved with engaging the CAPS LOCK. Many of the older programs didn't recognize lower case keys

This channel kept coming up as a recommendation, glad I finally took the time to watch an episode. I can only hope my channel does as well as this one someday. Well done, sir!

Finding an Apple //e in a dumpster... You've won the lottery!!!

Great video as always. Hope the part you ordered arrives soon.

I've never seen one of those in person, but it's so nostalgic!

I got one of these after working a summer in a thrift store been scared to crack it open this is inspiring me to attempt to fix it

Amazing find. I dream of finding something like that. Great video! Looking forward to an update when that ram chip arrives.

I've seen those old rectangular capacitors explode, it'll scare the living crap out of you. It'll also leave you wondering "What exactly was soldered here?" if you don't know about 'em. They rarely leave more than the legs behind when they pop.

I have a composite high-resolution amber monitor for my Apple II computer. It would even do 80 column mode very nicely for CP/m operation.

happy to see that some office upgraded computers after +30 years

Oh wow, what People throw away such beautiful things. Great find!

I love TDNC so much I decided to make his day (or someone else's) This dude content is so binge-watchable it's good and well made, I like how he uses modern solutions to older problems (I. E. 3D printing brackets for older PowerBook displays) its just good quality content I subscribed years ago for. Good work, keep it up!!! 🙏🏾

that monitor power cable mod alone was worth the price of admission. great work.

Finally a good video Thanks.

Love your video. Brought back some good memories from elementary school.

Is there floppy emu's for other systems than apple as well? Thats such a neat little drive... I never commented so much on a single video as this one, man i gotta say your content is great, your voice is easy to listen to and your not in any way cocky 😂👍

Nice tip on the woodworking clamp for crimping the ribbon cable.. thanks

Tip for removing double-sided tape: soak it with isopropyl alcohol and slice it with dental floss. Awesome job on that restoration!

Glad you rescue and save the machine 🏆

The keyboard on the IIe is the greatest thing on earth.

Man thats some quality build right there.

Wonderful video, man. Love 8-bit revivals.

i have an apple IIe from 1986, it looks to be as yellowed, but if someone who didnt know might not notice its the wrong color. i noticed they used a couple different psu's in them, mine looks like that but without the mains filter cap, it has a filtered power socket instead which uses different caps, not the rifas. but i changed the plug anyway with one similar.

Superb presentation as always. Thanks for the video

I’ve got a working Apple II GS but I’m not all that confident of how to use all the features of it. It all seems to work and the floppy drive reads and writes discs fine. I bought an graphics adapter so I can output SVGA and that I have hooked up to a projector and what a blast to play classic games. Thanks for the trip back in time. The IIe was my very first computer and my dad payed $3000 for it and a printer back in 1982.

Beautiful restoration. I do remember the proprietary parts and the fussing.

Try retrobright for the yellowing on the case and the keys. It's cheap and easy to do and makes old computer cases look like brand new again. UV light\sunlight, Peroxide, and plastic wrap is all that's needed.

I have a trash salvaged Apple IIe too. I got it with all the boxes, manuals and software. It’s been in my garage for 15 years now. Perhaps someday I’ll try and revive it.

An excellent production, sir!