Apple IIe Repair and Use

The Apple IIe was the first computer I spent a significant amount of time working on, because it’s the computer they had at my junior high and high school in rural Wisconsin.  I remember playing Oregon Trail and the original Castle Wolfenstein at school in the school library.  But these were also our workhorse computers that we used to learn BASIC programming and for word processing with AppleWorks.

So, it was with great excitement that I started in watching Adrian Black and various other vintage and retro tech YouTubers dig in on these Apple II computers, learning how they work, how to repair them, and work on cleaning and restoration.  Full schematics are avaliable, and really excellent troubleshooting material from back in the day is also up on the ‘Net.

Because I’m always trying to keep my hobby affordable, I didn’t rush out and buy the first Apple II computer I could find, I made several offers, and was finally able to land a nice-looking example from a family that was cleaning out their basement.  The lot of items for sale included the Apple IIe itself, an Apple Color Monitor, a single Floppy Disk drive, and many floppies and manuals.  I purchased this at the beginning of October, the seller “didn’t know if it works”, so I was prepared for the fact that it probably wouldn’t work.

So after getting the unit home, the first thing I did was to take the power supply out.  The RIFA cap had blow, I could still smell it. I wondered if they had tried to test it and let the smoke out of the cap recently.  I removed the RIFA cap and then tested the Power Supply voltages.  Those checked out good, so I tried to power up the monitor next.  The monitor powered up without incident.  Then, the moment of truth, I powered up the computer (without any cards in it), and it booted right to the BASIC prompt.  A very exciting moment!

After poking around for a few minutes, I realized that some of the keys on the keyboard were not working.  The keyboard was filthy.  It seems likely that this machine had been stored in the previous owners basement, perhaps for decades.  The next order of buisness was to clean the keyboard throughly.  I washed the keycaps, and did what I could to clean the keyboard from the top and bottom with liberal use of Isopropyl Alcohol.  I sprayed a liberal amount of DeOxit into each key and cycled each key a dozen times or more.  This brought back about 1/2 of the non-functioning keys, but there were still three keys that I had to remove.  I was able to take these three key switches (SKCC long stems) apart and clean the removable metal contacts, then replace them in the switch housing.  Try that with a computer that isn’t 30 years old!  This restored all the keys on the keyboard to full function, and it’s been working fine ever since.

The next set of repairs centered around the Floppy Disk drive.  I was excited about getting the Apple Disk II device up and running, there’s something so nostalgic for me about the sound that the Apple II drives make when the computer starts.  When I first received the drive, I heard something rattling around loose inside and so before powering the drive up, I needed to open the drive and determine what that rattling sound was all about.  It turns out that the lever on the bottom left floppy disk guide had broken off.  This lever must remain connected, yet flexible, so I used some strong Gaffers tape to get it back in place so that when a floppy was pushed in, that lever would sense the write protect notch and operate the micro switch inside the drive.  I don’t expect this repair to last forever, but it’s been OK so far.

After this, the Floppy Disk drive did work for some time. After going through about the first 20 disks in the collection, it stopped working, and I plugged in FloppyEmu and was back up and running.  Honestly FloppyEmu is such a great product that I’ll probably keep using it, if it wasn’t for that distinct sound, and wanting to check out the programs on these disks that came  with the computer.  So, eventually I opened the drive back up, an found this on the main drive circuit...

Look at the capacitor on the upper right hand corner.  The right end of the capacitor has completely blown out of the device and there’s literally nothing left inside.  I was able to replace all three electrolytic capacitors with caps that I had in my stock bins, and get the drive back up and running.  I hear that not much else can go wrong with these drives, so I expect this drive to be operating when when the last of the Double Density floppy disks wear out.

So, with the Apple Disk II drive as Drive 1 and the FloppyEmu as Drive 2, I was able to boot off of a disk copy program and copy various disk images back out to Floppy disk.  I was able to make ProDos disks this way, and some games like Flapple Bird.

Along the way I made some simple, silly mistakes, too, like accidentally pushing the color / monochrome button on the front of the monitor, then closing the door and forgetting that setting.  I spent almost an hour trying to figure out why the image was monochrome, then remembered the monitor setting, which I now understand is there to help reduce color fringing with text in 80 column mode.

Anyway, the Apple IIe is up and running and I just couldn’t be any happier with the result, what a classic machine!  It’s been my go to game machine for classics like Donkey Kong and Choplifter since it’s been running.  I’ve also been able to use it in testing a much more broken Apple II Plus machine, but more on that in a future article.

Do you have memories of Apple IIe?  If so let me know in the comments below, or send me an email.