• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Apple II

Jimmy

Jimmy

Veteran Member
Joined
Feb 19, 2012
Messages
593
Location
Fort Walton Beach, Fl
I am thinking about obtaining an Apple II, I know very little about them especially as to what they are worth. There are at least 3 listed on eBay that are supported to be Apple II. Can anyone offer any advice and to what I should look for, what to stay away from. Are any of the current auctions on eBay worth investing in. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Jimmy
 
Jimmy, just to be clear; you are wanting information about just the Apple II, not the Apple II+, IIe, IIc or IIGS. Is this correct? Or are you just looking for any machine in the Apple II line?

Tez
 
I just paid almost $700 for a revision 3 Apple ][ (serial no. A2S1-22365, manufactured in March (11th week) of 1979) on eBay with a bad keyboard encoder. Other than that, everything works. It had no disk drives or controller, just a printer interface and a Microsoft 16k card. I did make sure to get one that had the original ROMs (look for two empty ROM sockets on the right, or one empty socket second from the right).

It did come with a lower case character generator mod that I transplanted into my rev. 4 ][plus. I took the keyboard encoder (and will be taking the keyboard) out of my plus to fix the ][. The keyboard has been replaced on the ][ sometime in its life, since it's a later "The Keyboard Company" model and not the correct one, so I'll put it into my ][plus (along with a new encoder) and put the correct one in the ][.

In good working original condition, current prices for a rev. 3 like mine are around $1000. The earlier models with the raised keycap style power light are worth even more, the lower the serial number, the more they're worth. One recently sold for almost $4000 that had the raised keycaps and a 3000 series serial number.

Be careful to look for replaced motherboards (unless you don't care), as that is the highest hit on value, followed by the keyboard then the power supply.
 
Now your going to kick yourself for not buying that raised key one the other week. It was pretty original.

If the three you are referring to are the Apple II I'm looking at in eBay. I think every single one of them is a Frankenstein machine. II+ power supplies are wrong and integer ROMs are missing and replaced with applesoft, and I can't tell for certain but the power indicator height (the correct datanetics power cap sits a little higher that the case, not as high as the raised one, but not recessed or flush) indicates the keyboard has been replaced with an RFI compliant keyboard.

So basically you are buying a case as the motherboards could be II or early II plus, can't tell but without the integer ROMs it is essentially a II plus as of 1979.

So essentially your getting a II plus at II prices.

Unless you are willing to spend the time and $$$ to restore them to Factory II condition. I wouldn't bother and to restore them will take more money than they potentially are worth, except for the fact a restored machine is perfect and a non restored machine is not.

I'm going though this right now with my II, though luckily it had the ROMs, supply (which needed repair) and keyboard which needed a lot of repair. And of course the case which I am at least 100 bucks into repairing and refinishing and I'm not done yet and I have restoration skills. If you don't it could get much worse.

Cheers,
Corey
 
Tezza:
Yes I would like an Apple II, I realize that they are going to be premium prices even for one that may need work.

Corey:
I was offered the machine (that I posted the listing here) for quite a bit less that it went on eBay. I would like to acquire one, but at a fair prices to everyone. I do appreciate the advice, about the ones on eBay. The old IBM's i know a lot about and have owned one since late 1982. Still have quite a few left over from work, but the Apple's I really need some advice.

I do not mind acquiring one that needs work. I have a 10 year grandson and it would be a great project for him and I to work on. If you see one posted or listed somewhere I would greatly apprecaite any advise.

As always, thats for all the advice here.

You are right Stone, I am going to have this one shipped to my work address, but keep that ticked to Cuba ready in case I need it.

Thanks,

Jimmy
 
lmao.. i've considered the work shipment before. Yeah, original II will be somewhere in the high hundreds usually these days depending on condition. Pretty hard to find them under $800 lately. I don't think there's too much to worry about legitimacy wise. I'm sure there are several rom revisions but I'm not familiar enough with them to know if there are any desirable changes between them.
 
Actually ROMs are a big deal in the Apple II.

There was an overlap in Apple II production and the early non RFI II plus. The difference being the Integer ROMs. Many IIs have had their Integer ROMs pulled and replaced with AppleSoft Roms essentially turned into an Apple II plus. Integer ROMs can be hard to track down and expensive. Typically they are "pulled" from Apple add on ROM cards (Integer version), but those can cost 250-300 alone or more. As time goes on these will be even harder to track down.

Also there were some weaknesses in the Apple II line that were corrected in the II plus around mid 1980. Many pre-mid 1980 Apple II series machines especially II systems by then had these weaknesses repaired using replacement components not "fixes", no one back then cared if you had the original keyboard, they wanted one that worked. Or if the powersupply failed either for fuse or switch (which required drilling out rivets to replace), they simply were replaced. The replacement parts were improved but different.

These days the really valuable systems have original parts, not because they were left broken, but because someone cared enough to fix the machine and not bring it in for service where a part was swapped out, or that someone has gone back and located the correct part and restored the machine.

Enough of my rant, but I'm a car collector and there is a big difference between a 1975 porsche 912 with a VW Flat-4 or one where the engine went and they replaced it with a Porsche Flat 6 changing it essentially to a 911. In that case the 1975 porsche 912 with a VW motor would actually be worth more than one with a porsche engine, because that is the way they came from the factory.

Cheers,
Corey
 
Corey986 said:
Actually ROMs are a big deal in the Apple II.

There was an overlap in Apple II production and the early non RFI II plus. The difference being the Integer ROMs. Many IIs have had their Integer ROMs pulled and replaced with AppleSoft Roms essentially turned into an Apple II plus. Integer ROMs can be hard to track down and expensive. Typically they are "pulled" from Apple add on ROM cards (Integer version), but those can cost 250-300 alone or more. As time goes on these will be even harder to track down.

Also there were some weaknesses in the Apple II line that were corrected in the II plus around mid 1980. Many pre-mid 1980 Apple II series machines especially II systems by then had these weaknesses repaired using replacement components not "fixes", no one back then cared if you had the original keyboard, they wanted one that worked. Or if the powersupply failed either for fuse or switch (which required drilling out rivets to replace), they simply were replaced. The replacement parts were improved but different.

These days the really valuable systems have original parts, not because they were left broken, but because someone cared enough to fix the machine and not bring it in for service where a part was swapped out, or that someone has gone back and located the correct part and restored the machine.

Enough of my rant, but I'm a car collector and there is a big difference between a 1975 porsche 912 with a VW Flat-4 or one where the engine went and they replaced it with a Porsche Flat 6 changing it essentially to a 911. In that case the 1975 porsche 912 with a VW motor would actually be worth more than one with a porsche engine, because that is the way they came from the factory.

Cheers,
Corey
Click to expand...

I am not sure there will be enough people who get as obsessive about their Apple IIs as their Porshes. It sounds like the change in engines would have a real impact on the car, it would drive differently, the acceleration would be faster/slower, etc. Most Apple II repair jobs where something was replaced from the factory machine seem to be more a matter of appearance and ascetics than functionality.

This may not be the case where the replacement motherboard was a later revision and would not be the case where the ROMs were swapped.

What about upgrades? Suppose you had a 16K Apple II and decided to upgrade it to 48K or put in a Language Card for 64K. No Apple II/II+ I know of shipped from the factory with the Language Card installed, unless the dealer installed it when the system was purchased. They still seem more likely to enhance rather than detract from the value.
 
Great Hierophant said:
I am not sure there will be enough people who get as obsessive about their Apple IIs as their Porshes. It sounds like the change in engines would have a real impact on the car, it would drive differently, the acceleration would be faster/slower, etc. Most Apple II repair jobs where something was replaced from the factory machine seem to be more a matter of appearance and ascetics than functionality.
Click to expand...

Actually people can be both as nuts about their computers or cars. Many people call swapping out a VW 4 for a porsche 6 an upgrade, others call it ruining the value of the car these are some of the arguments among car people... and the kind of arguments you bring up about computers. And like the car people we will be debating this for a while.

This may not be the case where the replacement motherboard was a later revision and would not be the case where the ROMs were swapped. [/QUOTE said:
Both are a problem, both can be reversible, just the ROMs are easier. Like swapping the engine in a car or just swapping the heads. Finding the right part to put it back to original is the problem at a reasonable cost to make it worth the expense and time.

What about upgrades? Suppose you had a 16K Apple II and decided to upgrade it to 48K or put in a Language Card for 64K. No Apple II/II+ I know of shipped from the factory with the Language Card installed said:
Those upgrades simply don't effect the value if you have the original parts. If you don't then they do. I was lucky my Apple II used a RamEx card so there wasn't a jumper for the extra 16k so I have all my original RAM. If you had a 4k system and you upgraded to 64 and no longer have the original rams it affects the price. If you had a system with factory 16k of ram and 16k jumper blocks and simply added 32k of chips it also doesn't affect the value as you have not permanently changed the system or removed the original ram. If you changed the silver power supply to a gold or silver IIe supply, then yes you have affected the price.

To put this in a car perspective, you can change your wheels/rims on your classic car and it won't effect the value as long as you keep the original ones in your garage to go with it. However if you change your steering wheel and throw out the old one, you have lost some value.

Cheers,
Corey
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Corey:

So your advice about the 3 Apple II's with modifications on eBay is to keep looking.

Stone: and you selling stuff makes it hard on us that have packages arriving every day, makes our wifes think that someone in Vintage Computing, actually does have a lick of sense.

Thanks,

Jimmy
 
Yes my advise is, if you want a machine for it being an Apple II as a collector and you don't have much experience with restoration. Wait...

If you are Apple II handy and want to put it back to original over time, those systems are fine especially if you can get one for under 800 as long as the motherboard has edge connectors with "ears" a tell tale sign that it is a II motherboard (it could still be an early II plus board but without ears it cannot be a II board). But understand you will be dumping money into them as they all appear to be essentially II plus machines and to make them act as a II you will need Integer Roms to start. I do think the sellers are smoking something because in one ad they were quoting that a "working" system went for something like 4k (I'm paraphrasing here), they are smoking because that was a poor condition Rev0 Apple II, the first of the series and yes that is worth a boat load of money if everything is there even when it requires work to get it running or restored.

If you want to get into the Apple II series, I suggest buying a II plus and then moving to an Apple II when you learn more about them. It will be a lot less expensive. Most of the II plus systems are post mid 1980 RFI systems, having one and being familiar will make it very easy to see the differences when you see a real Apple II that is all original. You will also notice the difference when you type on a real Apple II. The datanetics keyboard has a very vintage feeling, where as the most common II plus keyboards typically have a springier feeling as they don't use separate switches, but a single sheet of metal with tabs pushed by plastic plungers.

Anyway good luck with your decision...

Cheers,
Corey
 
Jimmy said:
Stone: and you selling stuff makes it hard on us that have packages arriving every day, makes our wifes think that someone in Vintage Computing, actually does have a lick of sense.

Thanks,

Jimmy
Click to expand...
Don't think it's all that honky dory over here either. When I come home with a carful of stuff I normally wait and unload it directly to the garage to avoid trouble. Hehehe, that rarely works, either. :)
 
Hmmm. My wife stopped complaining about me bringing home old PCs when I started collecting full-size Dodge trucks. Maybe you just need to adjust her perspective. :)
Jimmy, I've got an Apple IIc you can have for the shipping, if you just want to get your feet wet.
 
If you just want the genuine Apple ][ experience, a ][plus would probably get you there (as far as feel goes), much more cheaply. And, it will automatically boot from bootable floppies. :) There is a ROM card with the integer ROMs on eBay that would allow a ][plus to act like a ][, I think they're asking $250 for it. Of course, that wouldn't allow you to have a full 64k of RAM.

A ][plus can run load in Integer BASIC using a DOS 3.3 system master, which would give you a pretty close environment to how the ][ shipped (actually, any Apple II can boot DOS 3.3).

An Apple //c is probably the best choice for getting your "feet wet" with an Apple II, everything built into one simple system, and if you can find the RF modulator that many shipped with, you can hook it up to any TV (modern TVs have composite inputs that will work without the modulator). The IIc+ is also a great all-in-one, if you'd prefer 3.5 disks.
 
Thanks for all the advice as usual it is a great help, in case I have not said thank you lately to everyone here. Thank you, you advice has been invaluable.
 
I will second the Apple IIc idea now that I think about it. If your issue is where to keep it, the IIc is very small and can easily be taken out when needed. That would avoid the significant other issue. How I deal with it is that I don't keep any "non-museum ready" machines above ground (aka in the living areas of the house) and the parts and in-progress systems usually stay in boxes neatly stacked. Right now my workbench is a mess, but she knows that in a week when the weather is better for spray painting it will be clean with a perfect Apple II case replacing my II plus in my home office. I also get a little slack by having my Altair and my Apple-1 setups done like a museum with plexiglass covers and stands so it doesn't look like a mess of old dusty smelly machines.

Remember they are usually just concerned that your collection will grow and take over the house and that it's an eye-sore. Just as you may be concerned that their shoe collection may take over your closet. It's typically a fair concern on both sides LOL...

If you keep it neat and start small, you can start bringing stuff home not the office :)

Cheers,
Corey
 
Corey:

Its kind of a standing joke with some of the old guys here about all the junk that is delivered to our houses. My wife of 42 years is actually very good about it.

The office is easier since I am part owner and General Manager, have more say so that I do at home.

Thank you again for all the advice.

Jimmy
 
No worries, I get the standing joke...

I just wish I had an office to have it delivered to... Then again she is happier that I get computers delivered than a Lamborghini... unless the Lambo matches her shoes ;-)

Cheers,
Corey
 
Tezza already asked the most important question.

If you're looking for a computer in the Apple II family of computers, my personal preference is an Apple IIGS ROM03, which will run all of the software available, including of course that specific to the IIGS. Since you don't have any prior experience with Apple II computers, you don't have the nostalgic need for an earlier model to relive your past.

I have many systems up for sale in my store, cleaned & tested. But they are not cheap because I put work into cleaning and testing them. You can get cheaper items on eBay, but they are generally not cleaned and/or many not tested or [and this is the critical point] tested, known to not work but listed as "untested" so that the seller doesn't have to admit it doesn't work]. Like the circus geek used to say, "You pays your money, you takes your chance" when you purchase on eBay. You can better your chances by going with someone who has an excellent reputation on eBay, but please know that eBay routinely goes through and removes negatives against sellers if those negatives were given during a period of bad weather anywhere in North America even if weather had nothing to do with the negative comment. (It's in eBay's self-interest that they want their sellers to all look as good as possible.)

ken
www.Apple2Online.com
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top