Replacing the RAM in My Trash-Picked Apple IIe!
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- Опубліковано 6 чер 2024
- The Apple IIe I found going out for scrap was in good condition, but didn't work quite right. What was ultimately a simple fix started as an odyssey of my own making. So what did I do wrong?
Apple II error list: apple2.org.za/gswv/a2zine/faq...
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Intro music by BoxCat Games (www.box-cat.com). - Наука та технологія
That SYSTEM OK screen was instant joy!
oh f*ck yeahhh
And how its starts with looking ooh crap...
This is a perfect reason why we need a right to repair! Access to schematics and documentation for these older devices is taken for granted.
i love em beige nuggets
Literally "This does not compute"
But now... It does. 😳
Lol.
I liked your excitement during the machine's "SYSTEM OK" boot. Thank you, This Does Not Compute!
As a fellow UA-camr, I can appreciate the frustration of wasting time while working on a video. I have a dozen or more I never completed and wasted many hours on. It's awesome to see you figured this one out and shared the experience with us all. Congrats on success and 200k subs!
100% in favor of non-destructive quality of life improvements to old tech, such as adding sockets to a MoBo and CF cards in place of hard disks. Such mods can easily be reversed back to stock for authenticity if need be.
About "inauthentic" RAM chips, I think we can all agree there is quite a bit of gate-keeping in the retro community, be it cars, electronics, etc. Often times the gate keeping is unrealistic given the modern circumstances. Sure, if you can find a NOS OEM replacement from 1982...go for it...but often there isn't. In that case, I'd argue it's infinitely more important to get a machine working for the experience of using it than moth-ball it because you can't locate the *exact* part.
Get it working to share with the world, *then* keep your eyes peeled for the exact, period correct part.
Just my 2 cents.
Here’s to the people insisting on keeping their hot stuff for 1972 Bosch mechanical fuel injection working on their Ferrari or Porsche.
@@johnsimon8457 - If it works, sure.
I had D-Jet electromechnical Fuel Injection on my 1974 Mercedes. Some parts you can still get brand new from Bosch/Mercedes! For like... more than I make in a month.
So I replaced some parts with analog/digital equivalents. That made people in the W116 community so mad!
I also swapped in a modern fuel filter. "Are you crazy!?" I made sure it fit the flow, profile and other specs. Only difference was it probably filters better.
Honestly, with how expensive retro hardware can be to get a hold of and maintain, the only "retro" style hardware I really want to get is the Commander X16, especially since it's been a fun project to watch.
Also been tinkering with making a 3D printable "retro style" super bulky laptop case for a Raspberry Pi 4, just for the fun of it
Your F* yeah made me laugh so hard. Anyway, this diagnostic soft is kinda tricky then. Reverse labeling of chips... I didin't expect that.
I wouldn't have either. I'd have expected two lines of display.... the 1 or 0 for bad or good and above it the U7, U8 ect... designation
That's a lot of ambiguity (although, I suppose you can only interpret it two ways but still... I'd figure an engineer would have a more definite output.
But that duck noise tho...
He said Duck Yeah!
its "Oh f[duck] yeah!!"
Imagine me who thought from tye previous video he should have replaced the ram marked 10 on the board. Like i didnt even know the binary system existed....
the "oh (quack) yeah!" was so satisfying haha
duck yeah! 😀
I have heard the same thing about those RAM chips being flaky - but people seem to forget that they are failing on 35+ year old machines that were probably rated for 3-5 years of useful life at best. Just the fact they have held up this long is impressive!
I agree it may be survivor logic. We're basing reliability on those we observed to fail versus the unseen hundreds of thousands which haven't failed. Half of a percent out of a million may appear big without knowledge of the number made.
A lot of these 8-bit machines are bought by inexperienced people who thought that owning one would automatically solve their bookkeeping problems. When they realised that one either have to buy extra software to do those things, or get their hands dirty by programming it themselves, they put the whole thing into their attic, where they stayed unused for decades, so most of the components could stay intact under decent conditions.
@@negirno If you're lucky the components won't suffer. Bad swollen or leaky capacitors and even dried up caps that look ok are common items I've had to replace. The soldered in nicad batterries are also sources of damage if they burst or leak.
It's so great to see someone who knows what they're doing fixing (now historic) old computers from the 1980s. I love that green text so much, oh the nostalgia.
By the time I was in elementary school (late 80s-early 90s), most of my school district's Apple IIe's in use had color monitors (including all of the IIe's in the computer labs). But there were still a few green-screen monitors around, like on the second machine in a special ed classroom, or the second machine in one of the summer daycare program rooms.
...And now part of me want to go play Oregon Trail, or Path Tactics -> Subtraction (negative results allowed). 🙂
You still learned, which is so important in life. Not necessarily about a computer, but learning, making mistakes and correcting are just as valuable in the end.
Would you still say that if you see the video of the 8-bit Guy trying to fix that rate potentially prototype IBM PC?
@@adventureoflinkmk2 I've not actually seen that. I suppose I should go check it out. I'm also much more patient of a person than I used to be. But, I mean we all get frustrated at times!
@@InfectedChris yes....
Man, between you and Adrian Black I feel like I'm getting a master course in fixing 8-bit machines!
Amen
And in honest problem solving. They don't sugarcoat the issues and processes, which is very nice. Seeing the process of error-elimination also helps understanding the hardware a bit more.
@@TopVersnelling WELL stated!
yeah for real!
I am always amazed by your montage. It surely takes quite a lot of time to write, film and lay out the process. I am an early subscriber and you improved your skills a lot.
Keep up the good work Colin.
Your videos make me wish I had kept my trays of floppy disks of real and pirated software for my Apple ii series. I love your care and expertise at fixing true classics!!!
Seeing this thing getting fixed and coming back to life makes me very happy! In a largely throwaway world, it's nice to see other people out there willing to at least attempt a DIY fix. Your assumption about the RAM chip location was completely valid and at least now you have two new chips in there. If it was surgery, it would be a big deal but thankfully, technology is more forgiving.
Great work and awesome IIe! Great to see it found a new forever home!
When I saw the "SYSTEM OK", I jumped out of my chair and shouted!! So satisfying !!!
I found your channel a couple months ago. Ever since then, I've been engrossed in learning about vintage computing. I recently took the leap and purchased a simasimac se/30. Luckily, the chips were fine and all it needed was a good motherboard clean and a recap. Next is an Osborne 1 and getting the se/30 an expansion card. Thank you for introducing me to a new hobby ❤️
Of all the "Tech" UA-camrs I watch, you have by far the highest technical quality as far as your video picture quality goes. Lighting, Variable/Pull Focus effects. It's noticeable that it's quite a notch-above other similar channels in terms of production quality.
A great journey to be on.
You and I are of the same age; I remember our "Computer Lab" was filled to the brim with Apple II, II+ and IIe machines with those wonderful green phosphor, tilting screens.
Thanks.
Thank you for your content Colin and I hope you're having a great day sir
God bless you and your family
God bless you and
Jeremy Scruggs
You learned something......................we learned something, this is why we watch videos like this. Good show.
defiantly one of my favorite tech youtubers
For a guy my age this retro computer videos are a pleasure to watch
Dear sir .... thank you for another GREAT video. Like you, I sorta grew up with the Apple II (Mine was an Apple II+ I purchased while I was in the navy) .... I would gladly own another if I would be lucky enough to find one in a discard pile as you did! What a great teaching device. I spent all I had on that Apple, so when the time came for a printer, I had to use a Teletype Model 33 with Woz' diagram on how to hook it up to the game port. A little patience (printing was at 300 bauds) and a lot of canary paper, and I was in business! Wonderful times for sure and your video brought back a flood of great memories! :)
"The repair manual lists the chips from left to right, but the diagnostic program lists them right to left". Yep, that sounds like something Apple would do. Glad to know some things haven't changed over the last 40 years.
If the diagnostic was written for troubleshooting at the factory, the orientation of the board on the test fixture may be different than in an assembled system.
The self test clearly just shows which bit is bad, not which chip. And it uses the standard notation of putting the most significant bit on the left. The manual even gives an example: 01000000 -> bit 6 is bad -> RAM chip 12 is bad. Though I guess you could still blame Apple for not marking the bit positions on the silk screen, and not having the self test explicitly specify what the eight numbers mean.
@referral madness No, bits are usually numbered starting with 0 (not 1).
@referral madness According to convention, the rightmost bit is called bit 0, the bit immediately to the left of this is called bit 1 and so on. If you have a string of 8 bits, the leftmost bit is called bit 7 and the bit immediately to the right of this is called bit 6. So in the byte 01000000, bit 6 is 1. I understand this can be confusing and some people use the convention of naming bits starting with bit 1 as the rightmost bit, which is what you are doing. Which convention to use is really arbitrary. The important thing is to be consistent.
The "oh f** yeah" literally broke me.
I didn't compute it. hahahaha
It's aight' man we all screw up at times. I recently tried to do quad channel memory on my brothers laptop that had an downgraded i5 that only supported dual and it did not work. I was panicked until I remembered it had an different chip.
Wonderful channel! I am a collector of ThinkPads, of which I got some 130 machines, and PowerPC Macs and earlier, as well as a tinkerer of all things electronic through the past 3 decades and I really love your videos! What a satisfying ending to the Apple IIe saga! Great job!
I appreciate the additional commentary on everything instead of just doing the repairs. Its very interesting. Thank you!
Love that you showed your mistake and how you went about solving the mystery. Kudos to you. 💙
I'm not even gon pretend I know anything when it comes to fixing computers like you do but my first thought was it's another RAM chip. Great video, thank you
That shout of excitement after a successful fix!! Congratulations once again on this awesome find!
Great video and I always appreciate your lessons learned/insights on what the project taught you.
I learned how to type in 5th grade in 1990 on one of these. They would tape a sheet of paper towel over the keyboard to cover our hands so we would have to remember the layout of the keyboard. I would LOVE to get one of these again. Really wish I would have asked my high school in 1994 to 1998, which still had a bunch of them, if I could buy one.
I love the tiltable monitor. When I was little, we had a II Plus...
The 8 bit guy would love this!
History will thank you dude, Keep up the good work
I bought an Apple IIe back in '84 or '85. With the floppy drive the thing cost me $2,400. I remember the cost so well. I sold my Atari 1200XL in order to be able to afford it. I had one power supply failure, and had to replace it. They didn't mention that a power supply could be fixed so easily. I remember it set me back a little over $200. I wish I had known something about soldering and electronics. I was just a lame consumer back in the day, and sadly I haven't changed.
There was one game I played every chance I got. I don't remember the name; perhaps you do. It was one of those Star Trek knock-off games. You had to go on successful missions across the universe in order to be promoted. When you located the enemy you took shots at it and hoped your shields could withstand the return fire. I spent many late night and early morning hours playing that game. I was 26 years old playing a silly game like that for hours on end instead of getting a decent career started. I doubt any adult could do something so frivolous and wasteful with their time today . . . or could they?
The Apple 2 was a beloved computer of my youth as well. I had so many games and actually never owned my own Apple 2 C,E, Or GS. Thanks for the video!
Again a great video ... being an ekectronics enguneer I appreciate seeing retro hardware being kept operational
Excellent video. Going the long way round to fix something can be very educational. Your exclamation off screen when it worked said it all! Cheers
I love these videos! Love from The Faroe Isles and Iceland ❤️🇫🇴🇮🇸
Very nice video. I worked with those Apple //e's when I was starting my college days. I never really know the electronics part of the computer then, but nice to see how simple circuitry was back then.
I played these games in school as well and brought back memories of me being excited to hear that our class was going to the computer lab to learn but for I wanted to play the games .
Congrats on getting your computer fixed!! Thanks for posting the video!
Excellent. Love the reaction when it worked.
I think every one of us in the retro community has screwed up something at some time or another. At least you DID do research, and found the solution easy, and got it up and running again! Glad you were able to save it and all it cost was two ram chips and some time.
This is quite a piece of computing history. Great to see it rescued from becoming e-waste.
When i was at University i used this one! Lot of memories....and fun!
Nice job Colin, there's no shame in getting things wrong. We're all on a learning journey fixing these old devices and as long as you learn, it can't be a bad thing :) Great result!
No shame in getting things wrong you say? You dare to hold that up if you watch the 8-bit guy trying to fix a super rare potentially prototype old IBM PC?
@@adventureoflinkmk2 lighten up, go take your negativity elsewhere
@@MatSpeedle not negative just speaking facts and real shit yo
Well done! Glad to hear you stuck with it. I'm the original owner of an Apple ][ Plus, //e Platinum, and IIGS, and these memory issues will haunt me some day.
Your "error" of replacing the wrong chip is totally understandable. Love how you had a good reaction to it. Honestly, when I first saw the error message, I thought it was chip in slot 10, as in 0000 10. So if I would have been in your shoes, I might have had to replace 3 chips before getting it right.
Excellent video and conclusion to this repair!
I can’t tell you how much I love this video. It’s so much of what I’ve been through in my time fixing computers. I think I celebrated as much as you did when it finally worked! Thank you, again for another fantastic job on these kind of videos. You really do an amazing job. I only wish I knew where to start with my own. I enjoy tinkering just as much. Do you have any advice for someone who doesn’t have the audio and video equipment to deliver great content? If you have one of those I’d love a link to watch that video! :D
Thank you for showing your fans that you are a human being like the rest of us. I'm in the middle of restoring an Apple IIc from my childhood. It's the exact unit I played with 32 years ago. Perhaps I can play super munchers on it along with Pac-Man again soon.
I admire your persistence.
Colin, thank you for taking the time for proper troubleshooting and fixing the problem, and not making a big thing of the fact that you would have finished much sooner had you known about the diagnostic toolkit's little, ahem, idiosyncrasy. Think different indeed.
I just signed up to your Patreon! Keep up the good work!
that self test beep brings me back...
Also, absolutely stunning video quality and cinematography! :D
This is why usenet posts are still handy. I've used them a lot over the past few years
Quack yeah! Well done figuring it out, Colin. ☺️
The self-diagnostic program lists the ram chips the wrong way round, my brain suddenly kicked in and said 'well what do you expect, apple do everything backward they don't want consumers doing their own repairs' and that's why I refuse to buy anything made by apple. Enjoyed the video and I laughed when you shouted out after getting the system ok message.
I feel your pain.
Mine wasn't booting at all (so I had no diagnostic output), so I replaced four of them one by one (reassembling and testing every time) before getting pissed off and decide to replace all of them.
Now I have a brand new (socketed) memory bank on my Apple //e :D
Excellent video! Its so important to collect and share info. Excellent!!
I do love renovating old tech😊👍👍
Colin's video does a great job of showing a CRT display monitor on camera without a visible refresh bar. Adding sockets will not detract from the vintage-ness of the machine. My Apple //e has all chips socketed, but it is a slightly earlier board than Colin's. Desoldering chips can be a very frustrating experience and potentially board damaging experience, especially without a motorized heated desoldering gun.
Wow that was a surprise! More repair videos, i like them.
that level of relief towards the end, nice
Whenever an early Apple is opened, I'm always surprised how clean everything is structured. No cable mess, everything is accessible and easy to replace.
We should definitely document these things, awesome video 👌🏼🙏🏻
Hi, I'm Alexandre and I'm from Brazil. His work is fantastic. I am a teacher and I would like to provide my students with this knowledge.
This is how you do it properly. You don't rush just to get a video done like a certain "guy". You take your time, do multiple parts, people will be happy to see it when it's done correctly.
That's the same problem I have when it comes to fixing CRT TVs. No one makes videos explaining the problems they encounter. They only show the end results. I started making my own videos showing the problems. I next video will be a complete DIY calibration of a Sony Trinitron KD-27FS170 CRT TV that can be applied to almost all CRT TVs. Thanks for the great videos. I ordered the funnygames screen mod for my gameboy. It should be here Monday.
Nice find on Ram sys check orientation vs board layout!
Don't feel like an idiot because you didn't know something before, be happy because you learned something new
Man, I've never felt so much better when the display said "system ok"!! I also guffawed when he said 64 KB RAM. Plus it also brought back memories of me playing carmen sandiego on my pc 30 years ago!! I have the biggest grin ony face now!!! 😁
I have an Apple IIe, we need more videos like this, thankfully mine still works like new but you never know lol
Good lord.. this video was gripping. When you yelled **** yeah! So did I. Lol. Great video. :-)
It's important not jumping into (wrong) conclussions; these days we're oversaturated with info from myriad sources (social networks, forums, etc) but reasoning and experimenting should always get us in the right path (and yes, trial and error is a fundamental part of the scientific approach while at it)
Ingenious hand crafted machinery.
I also don't like manual desolder pumps like you showed. About 15 years ago I dropped a couple of hundred bucks solder desolder station sold as "ZD-987". It's got a desolder gun which has an electric pump built in, it works perfectly. Definitely one of my favourite tool investments. Recommend!
Thank you for saving these awesome Pcs Fellow Minnesotan! :D
3:51 If only it were so easy. You'd revolutionize a whole industry.
I was skeptical about the whole “Micron chips are crap!” theory until I troubleshot my latest Apple IIe (bought non-working off of eBay), where I found 2 bad Micron RAM chips, plus I could see that a 3rd had been replaced by a previous owner. 3 bad chips out of 8!?? That’s appalling!
That being said, I noticed that the Micron replacement you got is 2 years newer than the original chip (8704 vs 8504), so it has benefited from 2 years of factory improvements!
you are not alone, I spent a good part of the 1980s repairing telecumications equipment to component level. This and similar mislabeling issues were commonplace, usualy in service manuals that were the opposite way around to reality. you do feel good when you figure it out however.
That reverse labeling of the chips is stupid on a lot of levels.
Sounds like Apple
It's Apple, what do you expect?
@@echangwang1821 80s Apple Computer was better though.
Doesn’t matter. To be cool on the Internet, you have to hate everything Apple ever was or is.
No time to start thinking for oneself. Lower bits are typically on the right side of a printed address. Chip 7 is the second lowest chip in that row. Yep. Apple is so dumb.
@@nickwallette6201 To be cool irl, you have to worship everything mac has ever done, own every mac product, and display them to prove to your 'friends' that you are a success in life.
I just want to say I love your wave background
That was an awesome restoration i was surprised its still alive
this brings back memories , i used to play Oregon trail and do digital art on a apple 2
Great episode!
That was incredible!
Another great video, thank you.
This was amazing :D.
Be on the lookout for a Kensington System Saver for that Apple IIe if you intend to use it for more than just an occasional game. The IIe ran hot enough during extended use that socketed RAM chips could work themselves loose (which is why they were soldered instead of socketed). Apple learned that lesson the hard way with the Apple /// (the memory was socketed and the system ran hot enough that the chips would work loose enough to generate errors).
Congrats amazing Job. Also a reminder of never assume but check everything. Nice that you got the ram and you fix it. Maybe for paranoia I would socket the rest of the ram so it could be easily change.
Awesome job.
I would have replaced all of the RAM sockets at the beginning. It would have made troubleshooting much easier and you probably would have discovered the left to right issue right away. It also would have made the motherboard look more "stock" than it does with 2 out of the 8 chips in sockets.
@@NicholasMaietta ??? Sure you would. With sockets in all of the RAM positions, he could have swapped the existing RAM chips around and retested it to see what changed. In only a couple of swaps he would have determined which RAM chip was bad and that the diagnostic program was reporting backwards. The cause was always the bad chip. But the new chips were questionable, so he didn't know that they were okay.
Heck you got 2 ram chip socketed I would do the rest of them as well to make it more uniform and give a better ease of replacement in the future.
Amazing system thanks for sharing 💯👍💯 very cool
I repaired 8 bit machines back in the 80's and early 90's, so I knew instantly what mistake you were making. Commodore 64's and their disk drives made up most of my repair time. Atari's almost always had memory issues and commodore's usually had a MOS chip burn out. I couldn't keep VICII chips stocked.
@8:39
The sound of a happy, happy man!