FYI: The Platinum IIe, released in 1987, is basically a cosmetic update of the original IIe with some cost-cutting measures. I documented it thoroughly on Wikipedia (I'm the author of the article!) if you're curious about every minute detail, but essentially it is identical to the Enhanced IIe. The only functional difference is the shift-key mod is active by default, and the Game I/O socket has some filtering that lowers bandwidth to cut down on RFI noise (no effect on joysticks or paddles for the most part). The keyboard layout differs slightly, mostly to match the IIGS and Macintosh. Only the original 1986 Apple IIGS motherboard (ROM 00/01) has the connectors or solder pad locations for the IIe powersupply and numeric keypad. They were completely removed from the 1989 (ROM 3) motherboard, as the IIGS upgrade for the IIe had been discontinued by that point. The Extended 80 Columns Card (what provided the extra 64K RAM, 80 columns text and Double-Hi-Res graphics) was drastically reduced in size for the Platinum IIe, and included as standard in each machine at no extra cost. Prior to that you had to purchase either the 80 Columns (1K) or Extended 80 Columns (64K) Card and install it separately. By the time of the Platinum IIe, the 5.25 controller with the single D-19 connector was standard, as was the Apple UniDisk 5.25 or Apple 5.25 drive. The Liron card (I've always pronounced it "Lie-ron") was fairly atypical, most schools only had 5.25 drives, not the intelligent UniDisk 3.5. Beside being more costly, very little 8-bit Apple II software shipped on 3.5" floppies. There was a different "Platinum IIe" available in Europe that reused the old keyboard and case design from 1984, but still included the newer IIe motherboard from 1987. It's a sort of a rare hybrid. Still missing a Platinum IIe from my own collection, I could kick myself for not grabbing one (boxed and brand new) for US$99 from Sun Remarketing the mid 90's!
@@timcarpenter2441 - I still consider it a cosmetic change. Key presses from the numeric keypad are simply mirroring the keys from regular keyboard, the computer does NOT recognize them any differently. This is very different from the numeric keypad on a IIGS (or your typical PC once you toggle Num-Lock). Granted it makes entering numeric data easier, sure, but I still don't see it as a new functionality per say. I think it was added mainly to bring it in line with the Apple IIGS and (upcoming) Mac ADB keyboards. Ironically, even in a IIe upgraded to a IIGS, it won't recognize the numeric keypad.
I'd agree. When I was a kid I wasn't always a saint. I used to program a delay and an annoying beep on the BBC Micro, timed to go off in some other class. And pressing the break key would just start it all over again....
@@BilisNegra I imagine it would not be a software hack. More likely a specific hardware intervention. Probably even a hack performed by damaging the speaker through the chassis speaker grill - But I'm really just brainstorming. I really don't know
My highschool still had a lab filled with these machines in 2000. And then a couple years later they got a new lab with the eMac machines, I believe. I wasn't sure why the eMac needed to be designed for aerodynamics....but the technological leap between the two was massive.
Karateka playing in background when Adrian got the lyres card working. Loved that game, the sound / music on it was very appropriate. Only ever played it on Atari’s though
You hit a GOLD mine! There was a time at a flea market where I live, a seller was selling Apple II/IIe's for $25 a machine! I should have gotten them ALL!
There were "network" systems that could simultaneously boot an entire lab of Apples from a floppy image stored on a server. They required a SmartPort card and used dongles to daisy chain the machines via more conventional network cabling.
Two Liron cards at once. Those are close to unobtanium. I'm so so glad you finally looked them up, I was getting tired of yelling at the screen. "Only works with 3.5 unidisk!" Those are pretty scarce too.
I'd been looking for an affordable UniDisk 3.5 forever. Finally found one for "only" $100 one time on ebay. The Liron controller that allows it to work in the old non-enhanced Apple IIs was much harder to find. That popped up on eBay recently at a bargain price of $167. Whenever I get the impression that this is an expensive hobby, I remind myself that normally the prices for these are about 3x what I paid, IF I can find them.
Soak a rag with DOT3 brake fluid, lay it over the paint. Add a bit of fluid as needed to keep rag damp and let the rag sit there for 2-8 hours and it will soften the paint without harming the plastic.
I would leave the painted on school name and engravings. I think it's kinda cool to see the history of ware the machine started out life at. I have also ran into the old sharpie issue. My c64 had the origional owners name written on the bottom. I did manage to get it about 80% cleaned off with the dry erase marker trick. But it took so many times to get there the machines texture is noticeably worn down. I'm really glad it's on the bottom side so it's not seen usually.
I would do an eBay charity auction for the working machines, where you keep 1/2 to help fund the channel, and give the other 1/2 to a worthy cause like Child's Play, or juvenile diabetes.
@Mike Haha!, seriously though not funny, Child's Play is a legit charity that donates toys, and video games to hospital for kids in long term stay like those with cancer.
My thoughts were that the school purposely killed the speakers to cut down on noise especially if there were just one of these in the classroom and other students were working. We had a lab full of IIGS computers at my school that were not disabled. Lots of Oregon Trail, Number Munchers, and Odell Lake sounds going off at once. Ours booted off of a server and had a blue screen where you could select which game you wanted to run.
You'd think, though, that the easier way to do it would be to unplug the speakers. Or if they wanted to make sure kids didn't open them up and plug them back in, just remove the speakers instead of intentionally damaging them but leaving them plugged in. I guess that if they have been purposefully scuttled, there should be pretty obvious evidence of it, like the wire leading to the speaker coil being cut. And if you wanted to permanently disable many speakers without spending an inordinate amount of time doing it, the quickest way would probably be to cut one of the wires running from the board to the speaker, rather than doing microsurgery on the speakers themselves.
I was an arsehole at school. I wrote a TSR for what I guess were 286s or 386s back then, that waited a random amount of time then play a tone right at the top of audible range. I then installed it on every PC in the lab.
Honestly since they are engraved on the side with the school district info I would keep the painted logo on there as a show of their history. It's unique and honestly doesn't look that bad. As far as what to do with the machines, if you have the time and energy you could do a giveaway at a certain sub number?
I have to agree, sometime school/buessness/ government marks are interesting and can add to a PC (I have a few older server casses from schools and government facilities with unique markings. Ive also use a decent beige IBM netvista case for my LAN party pc)
@@victorvangrimgamming6784Exactly, it's interesting to think about how many kids learned about computers on those machines back in the late 80s and early 90s. It gives it a sort of provanance that I feel needs to be kept. The font that was chosen and the placement isn't bad either in my opinion.
I agree. In future we will have 1,000's of clean retro brightened computers that have no history. The high value computers will be those that have some history of previous owners.
Purple cleaner on the paint. Purple Power and Super Clean are two good brands, available at any auto parts store. Won't damage the plastic, unlike acetone. If you don't want to risk the factory lettering by soaking the whole part, saturate a paper towel set on top of the paint, let it sit overnight.
i soaked a trs80 with a pained on college logo in purple cleaner overnight then scrubbed it with a toothbrush. it worked great. I frequently use it on resin cast miniatures and unless its Gloss acrylic paint it does a great job.
Some Goo Gone / Goofoff type orange oil cleaner might help with the paint. I would *avoid* IPA, IPA tends to melt or soften plastic and it could just make the paint & plastic merge and it'll never come off. Retrobrighting after will probably help too. After using the Goo Gone, since it's oily, use some soap & water to remove the oily residue so that the retrobrighting isn't masked by the oil. Some mineral oil might help too.
Looks like the Cloverleaf School District had an Adrian Digital Basement style operation running swapping out bits and pieces from a large stock of machines to keep the inventory running. Would love to see you interview a person who maintained a large stockpile of retro machines before they were retro, or just after.
When it comes to identical shaped ports, when in doubt check the pinout is my motto. It's way too easy for manufacturers to use the same connector in different ways that cause destructive incompatibility by sending voltage down data lines.
I went to school in Tacoma and most of the computer labs had networked the Apple II computers together with some kind of data base that had all of the available programs and games together. All you had to do is boot up the Apple II and a list would come up with all the programs and games, select one and it would start. To start a new program, you would have to press "open apple" control and reset together, or power cycle the machine.
Knowing that these computers could have been in a school library, it makes sense to me that someone manually disabled all the speakers to keep the noise down. Really amazing find, I vote you leave the Clover Park logos on them. In a way it gives it a cool style.
35:23 I've had this happen with the products used for cleaning car windscreens/windshields (delete as appropriate) when putting the stuff into spray bottles for cleaning the loft windows. The spray assemblies didn't last long in some cases. I guess it depends on the type of plastic used.
33:48 Permanent marker is not permanent. You need to find the solvent to remove it. Three main solvents: Water, Alcohol, and Oil. You already know what dissolves in water, so, skip that. Alcohol: Methyl, Ethyl, Iso-Propyl; from strong to weaker and when cut with water even weaker. Methyl is usually a paint remover. Ethyl requires 80% plus, pure moonshine or contact cleaner sometimes. Iso-propyl 70-99% and elbow grease. Last oil: yes thin oil will work, on a pinch hand cream (moisturizer). *The best for Sharpie Markers removal* is 50-50 Acetone and Iso-Propyl alcohol (used to cut strength). Put on a tissue or rag and buff. Do not get near laminate counter tops or Styrene (foam or bottles). I used this mix on Sharpie marks on Lexan RC molded bodies after painting process.
Getting the paint of can be done with nail polish remover if it’s acrylic (do drip test on the plastic, some plastics don’t like the acetone compound, most do btw). Another approach an ammonia solution (smelly), even 99% IPA sometimes helps, in all cases really soak it on a paper towel, push it down on the markings and let it sit for 10-15 minutes. And then start to rub it. Terpentine (paint thinner) if it’s oil based paint and that often works well on acrylic paints too.
For old sharpie removal with dri-erase markers you must wipe it before dri-erase has dried. Try doing it in smaller sections also. For very old marks I have used a new sharpie over old ink first then immediatly the dri-erase marker technique. I have had good results on a variety of surfaces using these techniques.
Oh man, some of my happier memories are of walking into our school library in the late 80s to an array of Apple IIs and playing Number Muncher, Odell Lake, and Oregon Train. I still remember the MECC logo on the big white binders for the floppy disks. We were allowed to play the sound.
I actually bought one of those Clover Park Apple //e Platinum machines that was rescued out of a landfill and despite some rust, the thing still boots up. Unbelievable! The Clover Park paint came off quite easily with some isopropyl alcohol and some elbow grease. It just needs some retrobrite.
Having just inherited my first Apple //e from my Great Uncle last week, I completely understand how the addiction starts. My unit hasn't been touched in nearly 20 years and I'm going to try my hardest to restore it properly. Waiting on some replacement caps for the power supply so I can give it a test run. Hoping everything runs well, if not the hunt for replacement chips will begin. I'll also start going through the few hundred pieces of software I was given along with it.
Adrian: on the //e, the card you are calling the "RAM card" is actually the Extended 80 column card. The computer cannot display 80 columns without it. There was also just an 80 column card that fits in that slot (no RAM expansion). If populated, slot 3 is off limits (this card uses the I/O resources for slot 3). Just a little //e peculiarity. Oh, and there was an RGB version of the Extended 80 column card, for the very rare Apple RGB monitor.
The gigantic 4 looks like it was written with one of those huge (I call them señor stinky) markers that take a week and a half to fully dry. I dont think there's a way to fully remove it without permanently damaging the plastic
Drywipe trick... its because they used xylene solvent in the pens, but over the last few years more are becoming xylene/toluene free thus it doesn't work any more. If you want to remove inks that isopropanol will not remove then you buy a bottle of xylene, its not as aggressive as acetone but it does dissolve most inks and paints, might even take that paint off maybe depending on the paint type.
Wow that's a lot of Apple IIe stuff! My suggestion for what to do would be either a giveaway on the channel to give back to the great community you've got here, or perhaps a series of eBay listings that at least in some part donate to charity, again as a way to help others! Edit: Also in my experience, if it is paint that you need to get off, honestly baking soda and scrubbing should do it, unless it is really tenacious! Most paint strippers would melt the plastic as far as I know so might be too risky.
It _might_ be worth trying MEK (methyl ethyl ketone) on the inside of one of the lids to see if it melts -- and if it doesn't, then maybe that can be used to get the marker out. It dissolves most of the things acetone dissolves, but is nicer to certain plastics.
Just some thoughts, but on some of them I would keep the schools name just to preserve the history of the machine. Likewise it could be neat to get a few of them up and running and then possibly sell them with some of the proceeds going to either support the channel or support a charity of some sorts. Awesome video!
I hadn't heard of/thought of that before, sounds like a promising option! I usually prefer citrus based cleaners, but I'll have to give this a try next time.
We had a handful of platinum with the mouse card .. it was definitely different seeing a mouse paint program on the //e. Found out later they had a text character set with GUI looking elements
@36:46 - You need to make sure the dry erase marker is not one of the low odor ones, the smellier the better, also the longer the marker has been there the longer you need to leave the dry erase marker on it, so I'd re-do what you did, but I'd let it sit for 20 - 30 minutes and then try to clean it off. In my experience this works reasonably well, though I've never done it on 30+ year marker on a textured surface.
Hi Adrian! I find this episode very nostalgic.. I went to Clover Park High School, in Lakewood, WA. I graduated in 1986 which means I may have used one of these in school. I can remember running Castle Wolfenstein on a Apple ][e at school. Keep up the great work, its always fun to watch your videos. Learn something while having some good entertainment.
I remember running a demo on the lone Apple ][ in my school’s library, and when it started blaring out music on the speaker, everyone that was in the library was soon looking in my direction, and the librarian came by to gently remind me that I needed to be quiet, so I could see the school district taking the time to disable the speakers in these.
I would like to say these videos should be limited to 25 minutes at most. If they are past that, make them in two parts. In my experience, videos past 25 minutes get less views. The sweet spot is 20 minutes, but if a video is longer than that, I have a hard time watching it. That is probably just me but it is something to consider. I loved this channel when the videos were shorter, 20 or so minutes, but I am avoiding it with the longer videos. Sorry but that might just be me.
If you want to get the paint off, it's likely latex based. The "camping fuel" alcohol mix Home Depot/Lowes sells that is a 85/15 mix of ethanol/methanol should remove it without too much fuss. Just be careful around any silk screens on the case like the IIe label as it can remove those as well.
To remove some unwanted labels you could try some 800 grade sandpaper that will polish the location this technique is used in polishing watch covers it also removes scratches.
one problem though is that on the wrong plastic, those citrus and certain "Goof-off" products will dissolve the plastic, quickly and permanently. They don't just "not work" in those cases, they cause damage.
@@squirlmy citristrip is fairly gentle, though it certainly will attack some plastics. That said, a lot of people use it on abs. I'd certainly test it on an inconspicuous spot, first.
LOL I just bought an Apples IIgs from ebay recently and it was also marked as Clover Park School District. And just now seeing this video a few months later. I was able to remove the same painted text off the side but even with retrobright it did not come fully off and you can see a lighted shadow of the text. The seller on ebay was selling dozens of them so I snagged one for a huge bargain. Totally working condition and didnt have any issues.
I'm reminded of the "Trash to Treasure" series Neil from RMC made a while back, restoring a pallet of retro DOS computers and selling them and donating the proceeds for charity. 🤔
The warehouse with computers rings a bell with me. 15+ years ago I visited a in-town warehouse to buy a 21" CRT monitor; they had advertised that they had pallet loads of the things. They weren't kidding; 5-10 metre tall racks of every brand of UK computer going; including hundreds of ex-schools BBC Master 128 computers which at the time they were selling for ... ready for this ... £1 each. Sadly I didn't take them up on the offer, and also the warehouse in Northampton is now flats so I don't have a clue what happened to them.
You should make a cluster of Apple ][e's to parallel process Mandelbrot fractals. They must have some serial port or something you could use to communicate between the machines.
Great score! If you're looking to unload any I'd be willing to take a couple off your hands at reasonable rates. Apple II was the first machine I really learned about computers and programming on.
I've actually had dry-erase become permanent on some plastics. One time I tried to use a plastic ruler to dry a line with a dry-erase marker and accidentally marked the ruler. I tried to clean off the ruler, but the marks would not come off with any cleaner I had.
Lacquer thinner is stronger than isopropyl alcohol - sometimes that can help. You have to be careful with it though because leaving it on plastic too long will likely cause cracking. These kind of discussions are always interesting regardless because we can learn more about good restoration methods, and there's nothing quite like saving and old piece of tech from the trash. I'd love to refurb some more stuff myself but a lot of people in New Zealand seem to think dead vintage machines are worth more than working ones half the time... My electronics skills could be better too. I don't know enough to safely work on things like power supplies but I wish I did and could because it'd make life so much easier. I've got nobody to learn from though, so I have to stick to more basic, often aesthetic repairs and restorations.
Fun fact: Liron works on the old Apple IIs ("old" being "older than enhanced IIe"), but you can't auto-start from it because the old auto-start monitors check too many magic bytes, and Liron (and other smartport controllers) fail the check. This is why the UniDisk 3.5 manual tells you to have your DuoDisk or disk][ to start up. That manual apparently predated the Apple IIe enhancement kit. Newer monitor ROM only checks three magic bytes, so Liron auto-starts on these, and the fact that the Floppy Emu worked supports my suspicion that Liron knows if there's no disk inserted (or no device connected), and can also tell whether it was booted from auto-start or if you typed "PR#5". It displays the error messages ("NO DEVICE CONNECTED" or "NO DISK TO BOOT") if you manually booted; otherwise, it makes auto-start search for the next slot that can boot (without displaying any error).
I found this interesting because in the 1980s (with no tech training) I put together a computer lab with a dozen functioning Apple IIe and IIc machines from donated bits and pieces. Eventually I even scrounged Imagewriters (and cards). I may have broken the law making copies of all the best disks, but the copy programs were on the open market, so why not?
Regarding the brittle container. I've had the same thing on the containers it is sold in. Seems they all eventually become brittle. Can make quite a mess if you pick one up and your finger goes through it and the bottle falls.
I have had success with orange oil or Goo Gone for removing the black permanent marker. Also, if the painted logo is latex you may want to try some of latex paint remover used to clean paintbrushes hardened paint
best way to remove sharpie/permanent marker is rain-x, the stuff you use on your cars windshield, just spray a little bit onto the mark and let it sit for a bit, like a few seconds and then wipe off and it melts it like butter, just dont get it onto labels you want to save
I too would keep the logos intact, on most of them anyway, not just to preserve their history but also because they’re very well-done, I like the typeface, and “Clover Park School District” has a nice ring to it. It’s a lot better than the magic marker treatment most of them get, or worse, gouged with a soldering iron/wood burning pencil. If any of them are to be cleaned off, a good scrubbing with a generous amount of isopropyl alcohol should do the trick without harming the plastic. My own hard-won platinum IIe has a code very lightly engraved on its lid, in fact it may have came from the elementary school where I first used the IIe as far as the previous owner knows. I purchased it from him last year; around 20 years before that he lived two doors down from me and I set him up with some software. I got out of the Apple II not long after that, but like many other pursuits I gave up it came back with reinforcements. :-) In the late 90s I happened across quite a few of them in a thrift store and mostly cleaned them out, in a couple of cases using parts from one to complete others, and repairing drive 2 in a DuoDisk with the Alps drive mechanism from a Commodore 1541. They’re a bolt-in swap, only the plastic pieces up front have to be changed and some wiring rerouted. The small circuit board under the front of the drive is also the same.
I had the 3.5 drive on my //c with external 5.25 plugged into it. With the internal I had the three drives running a BBS at night. The 3.5 was for warez..
The Ebay for charity is good. It is a confidence to watch 5 min of video showing the diagnostics you ran on that computer that is up for auction. Not to mention a few follow up videos on re-capping, retro bright and other tasks. I think the marketing wankers call this 'vertical integration'
Guess about the speakers: If not disabled intentionally (which would have been the easiest by just unplugging them), I think it was humidity in the storage area - the coil got stuck. It's just paper with some glue and a coil, and humidity and paper don't play nice together... Sometimes a strong impulse can help to unstuck it, but it may happen it sounds scratchy afterwards.
I read somewhere when the Apple IIe originally came out, Apple sent one computer to every school in the nation. I heard that while expensive, the school districts around the country bought many more Apple IIe computers.
For getting off the 4, try some Everclear. Sharpie is ethanol based (poison, don't drink), so putting Everclear on it will reactivate it and you can wipe it off.
It depends on the type of paint, I would try olive oil or sunflower oil, leave it on there for a few hours and see if it will then wipe off; the oil should not damage the plastic.
I’ve had success using Domestos brand “thick bleach” to get stubborn soaked-in marker out of plastic. Don’t ask me how it works but if you let it sit on the area for a while it often does.
Pretty amazing that this school had so many computers in the late 80s. My primary school only got its first (and only) pc in 1994 or so. Maybe these Apple IIs were issued to staff rather than students? I'm not from the US, so I'm not sure if it was common to have this many machines for student use.
At school we had 2 apple ][es with the 80 col/memory expansion cards with green monochrome monitors and dual 3.5 floppies in the teacher's office and 20 Franklins in the main lab with 5.25 floppies. He said anyone who wanted to use the ][e could. Since they had different drives, once you chose your disks, you were really locked in. Fortunately, i was one who got to use one. We used them for apple pascal in the AP Computer Science class. At home we had a C64 and later a 128. I liked the commodores better, but Pascal was leaps better than Basic.
I'd try some hydro-alcoholic gel on that mark for half an hour, makes the alcohol less likely to evaporate all at once. Worked quite well on brown sticky tape residues.
Permanent marker removal from plastic, perhaps try acetone (found in nail polish remover). It's stronger than IPA and should penetrate ABS plastics better. May also work on the paint.
IPA and a toothbrush are your friends, may take a while but it has always worked for me. I would try that on the paint too, alcohol is a pretty good solvent for most paints.
My experience with action cams like the GoPro are that they use very "low effort" encoding algorithms, resulting in huge filesizes relative to their perceived image quality. Re-encoding using the same codec on a PC can often result in files a third the size or less, with no visual difference in quality. My guess is that this is done in order to reduce the computational requirements of encoding the video onboard, and hence extend the battery life. Since many people buy action cams based on their battery runtime, manufacturers "trade off" storage efficiency for this since they can always simply go and tell you to buy a bigger SD card (since that doesn't cost them anything, as it's the user's expensive purchase). No good fix, other than to bite the bullet and buy a massively oversized card. At least they're much more affordable these days than they used to be...
Fascinating...I went to school to in the Clover Park school district from 2nd('77-'78) through 7th('82-'83) grades. It's about 40 miles south of Seattle.
Clearly, your video about replacing power supply capacitors needs to be titled "Rifa Madness".
This must happen.
So that's why they call it The Magic Smoke!
FYI: The Platinum IIe, released in 1987, is basically a cosmetic update of the original IIe with some cost-cutting measures. I documented it thoroughly on Wikipedia (I'm the author of the article!) if you're curious about every minute detail, but essentially it is identical to the Enhanced IIe.
The only functional difference is the shift-key mod is active by default, and the Game I/O socket has some filtering that lowers bandwidth to cut down on RFI noise (no effect on joysticks or paddles for the most part). The keyboard layout differs slightly, mostly to match the IIGS and Macintosh.
Only the original 1986 Apple IIGS motherboard (ROM 00/01) has the connectors or solder pad locations for the IIe powersupply and numeric keypad. They were completely removed from the 1989 (ROM 3) motherboard, as the IIGS upgrade for the IIe had been discontinued by that point.
The Extended 80 Columns Card (what provided the extra 64K RAM, 80 columns text and Double-Hi-Res graphics) was drastically reduced in size for the Platinum IIe, and included as standard in each machine at no extra cost. Prior to that you had to purchase either the 80 Columns (1K) or Extended 80 Columns (64K) Card and install it separately.
By the time of the Platinum IIe, the 5.25 controller with the single D-19 connector was standard, as was the Apple UniDisk 5.25 or Apple 5.25 drive. The Liron card (I've always pronounced it "Lie-ron") was fairly atypical, most schools only had 5.25 drives, not the intelligent UniDisk 3.5. Beside being more costly, very little 8-bit Apple II software shipped on 3.5" floppies.
There was a different "Platinum IIe" available in Europe that reused the old keyboard and case design from 1984, but still included the newer IIe motherboard from 1987. It's a sort of a rare hybrid. Still missing a Platinum IIe from my own collection, I could kick myself for not grabbing one (boxed and brand new) for US$99 from Sun Remarketing the mid 90's!
Adding a numeric keypad is a bit more than a cosmetic change, surely?
@@timcarpenter2441 - I still consider it a cosmetic change. Key presses from the numeric keypad are simply mirroring the keys from regular keyboard, the computer does NOT recognize them any differently. This is very different from the numeric keypad on a IIGS (or your typical PC once you toggle Num-Lock). Granted it makes entering numeric data easier, sure, but I still don't see it as a new functionality per say.
I think it was added mainly to bring it in line with the Apple IIGS and (upcoming) Mac ADB keyboards. Ironically, even in a IIe upgraded to a IIGS, it won't recognize the numeric keypad.
@@Apple2gs Fair points. Thanks
Seems logical that schools might disable sound. That cacophony of 8-bit micro bleeps and bloops would drive a teacher mad.
I'd agree. When I was a kid I wasn't always a saint. I used to program a delay and an annoying beep on the BBC Micro, timed to go off in some other class. And pressing the break key would just start it all over again....
Isn't anything that doesn't drive a teacher mad?
Maybe, but could they not just unplug the speaker? How come those speakers aren't working at all?
Yes, but if that was the case, how did they do that? There's actually audio output from the board, as shown by hooking up another speaker.
@@BilisNegra I imagine it would not be a software hack. More likely a specific hardware intervention. Probably even a hack performed by damaging the speaker through the chassis speaker grill - But I'm really just brainstorming. I really don't know
My highschool still had a lab filled with these machines in 2000. And then a couple years later they got a new lab with the eMac machines, I believe. I wasn't sure why the eMac needed to be designed for aerodynamics....but the technological leap between the two was massive.
Karateka playing in background when Adrian got the lyres card working. Loved that game, the sound / music on it was very appropriate. Only ever played it on Atari’s though
Yeah that was playing on a IIe in the college basement..
You hit a GOLD mine! There was a time at a flea market where I live, a seller was selling Apple II/IIe's for $25 a machine! I should have gotten them ALL!
There were "network" systems that could simultaneously boot an entire lab of Apples from a floppy image stored on a server. They required a SmartPort card and used dongles to daisy chain the machines via more conventional network cabling.
Two Liron cards at once. Those are close to unobtanium. I'm so so glad you finally looked them up, I was getting tired of yelling at the screen. "Only works with 3.5 unidisk!" Those are pretty scarce too.
Me Too.
And that's two cards in the first FOUR machines!
I'd been looking for an affordable UniDisk 3.5 forever. Finally found one for "only" $100 one time on ebay. The Liron controller that allows it to work in the old non-enhanced Apple IIs was much harder to find. That popped up on eBay recently at a bargain price of $167.
Whenever I get the impression that this is an expensive hobby, I remind myself that normally the prices for these are about 3x what I paid, IF I can find them.
Soak a rag with DOT3 brake fluid, lay it over the paint. Add a bit of fluid as needed to keep rag damp and let the rag sit there for 2-8 hours and it will soften the paint without harming the plastic.
It will remove paint from your car too, oops!
I would leave the painted on school name and engravings. I think it's kinda cool to see the history of ware the machine started out life at. I have also ran into the old sharpie issue. My c64 had the origional owners name written on the bottom. I did manage to get it about 80% cleaned off with the dry erase marker trick. But it took so many times to get there the machines texture is noticeably worn down. I'm really glad it's on the bottom side so it's not seen usually.
ex school computers with engravings are amazing
I would do an eBay charity auction for the working machines, where you keep 1/2 to help fund the channel, and give the other 1/2 to a worthy cause like Child's Play, or juvenile diabetes.
Good idea. But I'd like to see the money to go to something that supports kids and computers. Seems fitting.
@Mike Haha!, seriously though not funny, Child's Play is a legit charity that donates toys, and video games to hospital for kids in long term stay like those with cancer.
@@russellhltn1396 We also have to remember Adrian was born with diabetes, so helping to fund more research for that is right up his alley.
@Mike Hi! I'm Chucky! Wanna play?? Hahahahaha!!
I'd so love to get one of these and learn to use one, I've never even seen one in person, but I sure love how they look
My thoughts were that the school purposely killed the speakers to cut down on noise especially if there were just one of these in the classroom and other students were working. We had a lab full of IIGS computers at my school that were not disabled. Lots of Oregon Trail, Number Munchers, and Odell Lake sounds going off at once. Ours booted off of a server and had a blue screen where you could select which game you wanted to run.
You'd think, though, that the easier way to do it would be to unplug the speakers. Or if they wanted to make sure kids didn't open them up and plug them back in, just remove the speakers instead of intentionally damaging them but leaving them plugged in.
I guess that if they have been purposefully scuttled, there should be pretty obvious evidence of it, like the wire leading to the speaker coil being cut. And if you wanted to permanently disable many speakers without spending an inordinate amount of time doing it, the quickest way would probably be to cut one of the wires running from the board to the speaker, rather than doing microsurgery on the speakers themselves.
@@joelavcoco probably kids stabbing pencils through the case
I still Have A copy of Oregon Trail for my Apple !
I was an arsehole at school. I wrote a TSR for what I guess were 286s or 386s back then, that waited a random amount of time then play a tone right at the top of audible range. I then installed it on every PC in the lab.
@@raggededge82 Through the bottom?
Honestly since they are engraved on the side with the school district info I would keep the painted logo on there as a show of their history. It's unique and honestly doesn't look that bad. As far as what to do with the machines, if you have the time and energy you could do a giveaway at a certain sub number?
I have to agree, sometime school/buessness/ government marks are interesting and can add to a PC (I have a few older server casses from schools and government facilities with unique markings. Ive also use a decent beige IBM netvista case for my LAN party pc)
Yes, definitely keep the history of the machine. It adds to the nostalgia.
@@victorvangrimgamming6784Exactly, it's interesting to think about how many kids learned about computers on those machines back in the late 80s and early 90s. It gives it a sort of provanance that I feel needs to be kept. The font that was chosen and the placement isn't bad either in my opinion.
Agree, I would just leave the property marks...
I agree. In future we will have 1,000's of clean retro brightened computers that have no history. The high value computers will be those that have some history of previous owners.
#22:00 I wonder if this apple 2e was a teachers computer since it had less markings and was less abused.
Purple cleaner on the paint. Purple Power and Super Clean are two good brands, available at any auto parts store. Won't damage the plastic, unlike acetone. If you don't want to risk the factory lettering by soaking the whole part, saturate a paper towel set on top of the paint, let it sit overnight.
i soaked a trs80 with a pained on college logo in purple cleaner overnight then scrubbed it with a toothbrush. it worked great. I frequently use it on resin cast miniatures and unless its Gloss acrylic paint it does a great job.
I used Apple IIe's in high school back in 1987-1991. Ironton St. Joseph had a room full of these! I personally had a Commodore 128.
Some Goo Gone / Goofoff type orange oil cleaner might help with the paint. I would *avoid* IPA, IPA tends to melt or soften plastic and it could just make the paint & plastic merge and it'll never come off. Retrobrighting after will probably help too. After using the Goo Gone, since it's oily, use some soap & water to remove the oily residue so that the retrobrighting isn't masked by the oil. Some mineral oil might help too.
Looks like the Cloverleaf School District had an Adrian Digital Basement style operation running swapping out bits and pieces from a large stock of machines to keep the inventory running. Would love to see you interview a person who maintained a large stockpile of retro machines before they were retro, or just after.
When it comes to identical shaped ports, when in doubt check the pinout is my motto. It's way too easy for manufacturers to use the same connector in different ways that cause destructive incompatibility by sending voltage down data lines.
It is a real pleasure to see a green phosphor monitor after so many years, and all that it brings with it looking back at those times ... thanks !!!
I went to school in Tacoma and most of the computer labs had networked the Apple II computers together with some kind of data base that had all of the available programs and games together. All you had to do is boot up the Apple II and a list would come up with all the programs and games, select one and it would start. To start a new program, you would have to press "open apple" control and reset together, or power cycle the machine.
Knowing that these computers could have been in a school library, it makes sense to me that someone manually disabled all the speakers to keep the noise down. Really amazing find, I vote you leave the Clover Park logos on them. In a way it gives it a cool style.
First part of this video is sponsored by Adrian's analoge living Room
Adrian's Analog Room.
it's the upper basement
I just got into retro systems with a //e Platinum this fall. Last time I had an Apple ][+ was 35 years ago. So cool seeing a truckload of them :-)
35:23 I've had this happen with the products used for cleaning car windscreens/windshields (delete as appropriate) when putting the stuff into spray bottles for cleaning the loft windows. The spray assemblies didn't last long in some cases. I guess it depends on the type of plastic used.
33:48 Permanent marker is not permanent. You need to find the solvent to remove it. Three main solvents: Water, Alcohol, and Oil. You already know what dissolves in water, so, skip that. Alcohol: Methyl, Ethyl, Iso-Propyl; from strong to weaker and when cut with water even weaker. Methyl is usually a paint remover. Ethyl requires 80% plus, pure moonshine or contact cleaner sometimes. Iso-propyl 70-99% and elbow grease.
Last oil: yes thin oil will work, on a pinch hand cream (moisturizer).
*The best for Sharpie Markers removal* is 50-50 Acetone and Iso-Propyl alcohol (used to cut strength). Put on a tissue or rag and buff. Do not get near laminate counter tops or Styrene (foam or bottles).
I used this mix on Sharpie marks on Lexan RC molded bodies after painting process.
I once repaired 250 Apple II's (not e's) Most had power supply problems. I even built one from scratch.
Thanks!
Getting the paint of can be done with nail polish remover if it’s acrylic (do drip test on the plastic, some plastics don’t like the acetone compound, most do btw).
Another approach an ammonia solution (smelly), even 99% IPA sometimes helps, in all cases really soak it on a paper towel, push it down on the markings and let it sit for 10-15 minutes.
And then start to rub it.
Terpentine (paint thinner) if it’s oil based paint and that often works well on acrylic paints too.
For old sharpie removal with dri-erase markers you must wipe it before dri-erase has dried. Try doing it in smaller sections also. For very old marks I have used a new sharpie over old ink first then immediatly the dri-erase marker technique. I have had good results on a variety of surfaces using these techniques.
Oh man, some of my happier memories are of walking into our school library in the late 80s to an array of Apple IIs and playing Number Muncher, Odell Lake, and Oregon Train. I still remember the MECC logo on the big white binders for the floppy disks. We were allowed to play the sound.
I smell a giveaway in your future. For some people without any vintage macs
I actually bought one of those Clover Park Apple //e Platinum machines that was rescued out of a landfill and despite some rust, the thing still boots up. Unbelievable!
The Clover Park paint came off quite easily with some isopropyl alcohol and some elbow grease. It just needs some retrobrite.
Having just inherited my first Apple //e from my Great Uncle last week, I completely understand how the addiction starts. My unit hasn't been touched in nearly 20 years and I'm going to try my hardest to restore it properly. Waiting on some replacement caps for the power supply so I can give it a test run. Hoping everything runs well, if not the hunt for replacement chips will begin. I'll also start going through the few hundred pieces of software I was given along with it.
Adrian: on the //e, the card you are calling the "RAM card" is actually the Extended 80 column card. The computer cannot display 80 columns without it. There was also just an 80 column card that fits in that slot (no RAM expansion). If populated, slot 3 is off limits (this card uses the I/O resources for slot 3). Just a little //e peculiarity. Oh, and there was an RGB version of the Extended 80 column card, for the very rare Apple RGB monitor.
Looking forward to more on these machines, Adrian!
The gigantic 4 looks like it was written with one of those huge (I call them señor stinky) markers that take a week and a half to fully dry. I dont think there's a way to fully remove it without permanently damaging the plastic
Drywipe trick... its because they used xylene solvent in the pens, but over the last few years more are becoming xylene/toluene free thus it doesn't work any more. If you want to remove inks that isopropanol will not remove then you buy a bottle of xylene, its not as aggressive as acetone but it does dissolve most inks and paints, might even take that paint off maybe depending on the paint type.
Wow that's a lot of Apple IIe stuff! My suggestion for what to do would be either a giveaway on the channel to give back to the great community you've got here, or perhaps a series of eBay listings that at least in some part donate to charity, again as a way to help others!
Edit: Also in my experience, if it is paint that you need to get off, honestly baking soda and scrubbing should do it, unless it is really tenacious! Most paint strippers would melt the plastic as far as I know so might be too risky.
It _might_ be worth trying MEK (methyl ethyl ketone) on the inside of one of the lids to see if it melts -- and if it doesn't, then maybe that can be used to get the marker out. It dissolves most of the things acetone dissolves, but is nicer to certain plastics.
Just some thoughts, but on some of them I would keep the schools name just to preserve the history of the machine. Likewise it could be neat to get a few of them up and running and then possibly sell them with some of the proceeds going to either support the channel or support a charity of some sorts. Awesome video!
Removing that paint would be an unforgivable crime for anyone in the retro computer scene
@35:50 Solder Flux remover usually completely gets rid of permanent marker print.
I hadn't heard of/thought of that before, sounds like a promising option! I usually prefer citrus based cleaners, but I'll have to give this a try next time.
We had a handful of platinum with the mouse card .. it was definitely different seeing a mouse paint program on the //e. Found out later they had a text character set with GUI looking elements
Reefer smoke? Yeah, we don't want that!
@36:46 - You need to make sure the dry erase marker is not one of the low odor ones, the smellier the better, also the longer the marker has been there the longer you need to leave the dry erase marker on it, so I'd re-do what you did, but I'd let it sit for 20 - 30 minutes and then try to clean it off. In my experience this works reasonably well, though I've never done it on 30+ year marker on a textured surface.
Hi Adrian! I find this episode very nostalgic.. I went to Clover Park High School, in Lakewood, WA. I graduated in 1986 which means I may have used one of these in school. I can remember running Castle Wolfenstein on a Apple ][e at school.
Keep up the great work, its always fun to watch your videos. Learn something while having some good entertainment.
I'm very fond of the older versions of the IIe which have the power light in the keyboard and the original Disk II.
I remember running a demo on the lone Apple ][ in my school’s library, and when it started blaring out music on the speaker, everyone that was in the library was soon looking in my direction, and the librarian came by to gently remind me that I needed to be quiet, so I could see the school district taking the time to disable the speakers in these.
I would like to say these videos should be limited to 25 minutes at most. If they are past that, make them in two parts. In my experience, videos past 25 minutes get less views. The sweet spot is 20 minutes, but if a video is longer than that, I have a hard time watching it. That is probably just me but it is something to consider. I loved this channel when the videos were shorter, 20 or so minutes, but I am avoiding it with the longer videos. Sorry but that might just be me.
If you want to get the paint off, it's likely latex based. The "camping fuel" alcohol mix Home Depot/Lowes sells that is a 85/15 mix of ethanol/methanol should remove it without too much fuss. Just be careful around any silk screens on the case like the IIe label as it can remove those as well.
I would leave the paint on it looks awesome it's super retro and part of their history
Do an apple IIe repairathon.
To remove some unwanted labels you could try some 800 grade sandpaper that will polish the location this technique is used in polishing watch covers it also removes scratches.
I remember when these things were everywhere. Gave all of mine away many years ago, wish I would have held onto one of them.
I'd try Citristrip on the paint. It's used a lot in the arcade collecting community. Pretty great stuff. I believe it's safe for ABS.
one problem though is that on the wrong plastic, those citrus and certain "Goof-off" products will dissolve the plastic, quickly and permanently. They don't just "not work" in those cases, they cause damage.
@@squirlmy citristrip is fairly gentle, though it certainly will attack some plastics. That said, a lot of people use it on abs. I'd certainly test it on an inconspicuous spot, first.
LOL I just bought an Apples IIgs from ebay recently and it was also marked as Clover Park School District. And just now seeing this video a few months later. I was able to remove the same painted text off the side but even with retrobright it did not come fully off and you can see a lighted shadow of the text. The seller on ebay was selling dozens of them so I snagged one for a huge bargain. Totally working condition and didnt have any issues.
I'm reminded of the "Trash to Treasure" series Neil from RMC made a while back, restoring a pallet of retro DOS computers and selling them and donating the proceeds for charity. 🤔
The warehouse with computers rings a bell with me. 15+ years ago I visited a in-town warehouse to buy a 21" CRT monitor; they had advertised that they had pallet loads of the things. They weren't kidding; 5-10 metre tall racks of every brand of UK computer going; including hundreds of ex-schools BBC Master 128 computers which at the time they were selling for ... ready for this ... £1 each. Sadly I didn't take them up on the offer, and also the warehouse in Northampton is now flats so I don't have a clue what happened to them.
You should make a cluster of Apple ][e's to parallel process Mandelbrot fractals. They must have some serial port or something you could use to communicate between the machines.
Great score! If you're looking to unload any I'd be willing to take a couple off your hands at reasonable rates. Apple II was the first machine I really learned about computers and programming on.
i have an apple iie enhanced, out of my current computers i think thats my favorite one.
I've actually had dry-erase become permanent on some plastics. One time I tried to use a plastic ruler to dry a line with a dry-erase marker and accidentally marked the ruler. I tried to clean off the ruler, but the marks would not come off with any cleaner I had.
Clover Park school district is in Lakewood, WA, part of the Seattle/Tacoma/Bellevue metropolitan area.
Lacquer thinner is stronger than isopropyl alcohol - sometimes that can help. You have to be careful with it though because leaving it on plastic too long will likely cause cracking.
These kind of discussions are always interesting regardless because we can learn more about good restoration methods, and there's nothing quite like saving and old piece of tech from the trash. I'd love to refurb some more stuff myself but a lot of people in New Zealand seem to think dead vintage machines are worth more than working ones half the time...
My electronics skills could be better too. I don't know enough to safely work on things like power supplies but I wish I did and could because it'd make life so much easier. I've got nobody to learn from though, so I have to stick to more basic, often aesthetic repairs and restorations.
Fun fact: Liron works on the old Apple IIs ("old" being "older than enhanced IIe"), but you can't auto-start from it because the old auto-start monitors check too many magic bytes, and Liron (and other smartport controllers) fail the check. This is why the UniDisk 3.5 manual tells you to have your DuoDisk or disk][ to start up. That manual apparently predated the Apple IIe enhancement kit.
Newer monitor ROM only checks three magic bytes, so Liron auto-starts on these, and the fact that the Floppy Emu worked supports my suspicion that Liron knows if there's no disk inserted (or no device connected), and can also tell whether it was booted from auto-start or if you typed "PR#5". It displays the error messages ("NO DEVICE CONNECTED" or "NO DISK TO BOOT") if you manually booted; otherwise, it makes auto-start search for the next slot that can boot (without displaying any error).
I found this interesting because in the 1980s (with no tech training) I put together a computer lab with a dozen functioning Apple IIe and IIc machines from donated bits and pieces. Eventually I even scrounged Imagewriters (and cards). I may have broken the law making copies of all the best disks, but the copy programs were on the open market, so why not?
Regarding the brittle container. I've had the same thing on the containers it is sold in. Seems they all eventually become brittle. Can make quite a mess if you pick one up and your finger goes through it and the bottle falls.
Standard Configuration back in the day was a 3.5 controller in slot 5 and a 5.25 controller in slot 6
That is indeed a nice haul of Apple IIs! Model kit paint remover might help into the painted logos.
I have had success with orange oil or Goo Gone for removing the black permanent marker. Also, if the painted logo is latex you may want to try some of latex paint remover used to clean paintbrushes hardened paint
Some Clover Park kids are going to have nostalgia overload when they see those machines with painted labels.
best way to remove sharpie/permanent marker is rain-x, the stuff you use on your cars windshield, just spray a little bit onto the mark and let it sit for a bit, like a few seconds and then wipe off and it melts it like butter, just dont get it onto labels you want to save
I too would keep the logos intact, on most of them anyway, not just to preserve their history but also because they’re very well-done, I like the typeface, and “Clover Park School District” has a nice ring to it. It’s a lot better than the magic marker treatment most of them get, or worse, gouged with a soldering iron/wood burning pencil. If any of them are to be cleaned off, a good scrubbing with a generous amount of isopropyl alcohol should do the trick without harming the plastic.
My own hard-won platinum IIe has a code very lightly engraved on its lid, in fact it may have came from the elementary school where I first used the IIe as far as the previous owner knows. I purchased it from him last year; around 20 years before that he lived two doors down from me and I set him up with some software.
I got out of the Apple II not long after that, but like many other pursuits I gave up it came back with reinforcements. :-) In the late 90s I happened across quite a few of them in a thrift store and mostly cleaned them out, in a couple of cases using parts from one to complete others, and repairing drive 2 in a DuoDisk with the Alps drive mechanism from a Commodore 1541. They’re a bolt-in swap, only the plastic pieces up front have to be changed and some wiring rerouted. The small circuit board under the front of the drive is also the same.
I had the 3.5 drive on my //c with external 5.25 plugged into it. With the internal I had the three drives running a BBS at night. The 3.5 was for warez..
The Ebay for charity is good. It is a confidence to watch 5 min of video showing the diagnostics you ran on that computer that is up for auction. Not to mention a few follow up videos on re-capping, retro bright and other tasks. I think the marketing wankers call this 'vertical integration'
I think, together with your personal Adrian's Digital Basement Quality Check sticker, they would make up pretty good on Ebay for a charity auction.
Yes! I was thinking charity auction too.
Guess about the speakers: If not disabled intentionally (which would have been the easiest by just unplugging them), I think it was humidity in the storage area - the coil got stuck. It's just paper with some glue and a coil, and humidity and paper don't play nice together...
Sometimes a strong impulse can help to unstuck it, but it may happen it sounds scratchy afterwards.
I read somewhere when the Apple IIe originally came out, Apple sent one computer to every school in the nation. I heard that while expensive, the school districts around the country bought many more Apple IIe computers.
For getting off the 4, try some Everclear. Sharpie is ethanol based (poison, don't drink), so putting Everclear on it will reactivate it and you can wipe it off.
Ethanol is not poison. Everybody drinks it. May methanol?
It depends on the type of paint, I would try olive oil or sunflower oil, leave it on there for a few hours and see if it will then wipe off; the oil should not damage the plastic.
I’ve had success using Domestos brand “thick bleach” to get stubborn soaked-in marker out of plastic. Don’t ask me how it works but if you let it sit on the area for a while it often does.
Pretty amazing that this school had so many computers in the late 80s. My primary school only got its first (and only) pc in 1994 or so. Maybe these Apple IIs were issued to staff rather than students? I'm not from the US, so I'm not sure if it was common to have this many machines for student use.
citrus based paint remover and a nylon brush might work to get the paint off.
Every speaker beep and disk drive grunt brings back so many memories. Long live the Apple ][ ! 💖
I’ve got a IIGS from the clover park school district!
At school we had 2 apple ][es with the 80 col/memory expansion cards with green monochrome monitors and dual 3.5 floppies in the teacher's office and 20 Franklins in the main lab with 5.25 floppies. He said anyone who wanted to use the ][e could. Since they had different drives, once you chose your disks, you were really locked in. Fortunately, i was one who got to use one. We used them for apple pascal in the AP Computer Science class.
At home we had a C64 and later a 128. I liked the commodores better, but Pascal was leaps better than Basic.
I'd try some hydro-alcoholic gel on that mark for half an hour, makes the alcohol less likely to evaporate all at once. Worked quite well on brown sticky tape residues.
I like the old school labeling, and would definitely consider buying an Apple II with that kind of lettering.
Permanent marker removal from plastic, perhaps try acetone (found in nail polish remover). It's stronger than IPA and should penetrate ABS plastics better. May also work on the paint.
To remove the paint you try acetone, but it might harm the plastic if you use too much, goo gone, or eucalyptus oil.
I love it when people keep talking yet dig themselves into an even deeper hole.. first class
34:32 hairspray was used to remove marker from walls when I was in the maint line of work.
They contain alcohol which isn't kind to plastic.
You can also try Amodex to get rid of the marker. You can put it on and leave it overnight to really breakup old marker on plastic.
IPA and a toothbrush are your friends, may take a while but it has always worked for me. I would try that on the paint too, alcohol is a pretty good solvent for most paints.
My experience with action cams like the GoPro are that they use very "low effort" encoding algorithms, resulting in huge filesizes relative to their perceived image quality. Re-encoding using the same codec on a PC can often result in files a third the size or less, with no visual difference in quality.
My guess is that this is done in order to reduce the computational requirements of encoding the video onboard, and hence extend the battery life. Since many people buy action cams based on their battery runtime, manufacturers "trade off" storage efficiency for this since they can always simply go and tell you to buy a bigger SD card (since that doesn't cost them anything, as it's the user's expensive purchase).
No good fix, other than to bite the bullet and buy a massively oversized card. At least they're much more affordable these days than they used to be...
Interesting. Makes sense to me, also considering there's no much room in such a camera for the battery.
For paint on plastic, soak in car brake fulid, works wonders on paint!
Fascinating...I went to school to in the Clover Park school district from 2nd('77-'78) through 7th('82-'83) grades. It's about 40 miles south of Seattle.
If the paint is oil based: spray oven cleaner. I used to use this on model aircraft.
I hope this video reduce prices in ebay.
Try nail polish remover for marker (it's the acetone in it), maybe you can test a small spot with paint thinner for the painted surfaces