So, this couple month rev 0 is a hot topic, recently one of my friend is kind enough to sell me his Apple II rev 0, which is not in very good condition, the original power supply is gone and many paint chip off and some hacked holes (I would say butchered), though only a few ICs are non-1977. The restoration job was a not difficult one, after putting an Apple II plus power supply, reseating the ICs and replacing the light bulb and speaker, it can boot to monitor and switch to integer Basic after press CTRL-B-ENTER. All keyswitches responded though there is a couple repeated characters, audio jacks work fine as I can load game.
But what interests me is the quality of the casing:
- Paint falls off easily showing poor adhesive between the paint and the base (polyurethane vs later ABS which does not require paint), I saw there should be primer under the paint but it seems it did not do the job;
- It was said that the early run was made using a so called reactive injection molding; the process was fast but left irregular surface and many parts had to be sanded in order to fit together, it seems to appear in my rev 0, there is sign of sanding (very rough)
- The ventilation slots seems to be made AFTER molding and before painting, as shown by the irregular edge and width of the slots; probably this was a "corrective" action after someone buyers said the content would go too hot without ventilation and before new molding die and ABS were used.
Now I have swapped the casing with an Apple II plus and some photos showing their differences.
https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/109866693740649982432/albums/5886330521909645505
Michael
I'm not sure about the afterthought vents because many cases including my 3000ish serial number Rev 0 have filing marks on them where they "fixed" parts of the case.
My Rev 0 case has held up well. The bottom of the case had a scratch and the top had some minor nicks that I was able to colour match touch up, but all in all the condition of the case was actually better than my II plus was when I got it early last year. Externally my case looks very close to the II plus case (just rougher) but the paint job is much worse. The splatter pattern is less professional and larger. The inside of the case being painted seemed almost like an afterthought with a quick spray not as thick or smooth as the outside. On the II plus case it looks much more professional. I can't compare to my Rev 4 Apple II since I completely refinished that case and splatter pattern.
You certainly can't compare to a IIe case which isn't painted.
I think the really early ventless Apple II cases were a painted foam type material or something (I haven't seen one in person but from pics of damage on a couple I could see it's a different material than the other Apple II vented cases I have seen). The early cases also were very poorly painted, but to be honest the paint jobs still look better than the last ADM-3 terminal from the same time period I saw.
Compared to my 1975 Altair or my 1977 Sol-20, all the Rev-0 apple paint jobs are really bad (the ventless the worst). The later Apple II paint jobs are night and day better.
Too bad your in Asia and not the New York area, I could show you what I mean
Cheers,
Corey
I have a painted IIe case.
Here's the pic: http://macgui.com/gallery/showphoto.php?pic_id=1405
Is that a very early IIe? or Did you paint it yourself. I have read on one of the boards (maybe it was here), the very early ones were painted (I usually forget that fact since most IIe look like a banana not an apple they are so yellow)
That looks like an early IIe. The key caps can probably use some retr0brite'ing.
The vents were definitely part of the original design for the case; they are in the illustrations in the very first Apple II "Simplicity" brochure from April 1977, well before the first complete systems shipped in June of that year.
I believe what happened was they encountered a lot of problems getting the vents machined correctly, resulting in the first 200 or so systems remaining "ventless".
Then they began roughly cutting the vents into the case, which is why the next (maybe) 1000 systems had vents with coarse, uneven edges.
By the time they got around system 1500, the machining issues had been solved and the vents from then on were perfectly smooth.
Howie
No, they weren't. The vents were added after the first cases shipped. (I'm assuming you're talking about the II and not the IIe. Of course they were part of the case from the beginning of the IIe.)
http://apple2history.org/museum/computers-apple-ii-rev-0/
Yes, I am talking about my rev 0, I am not sure whether later molding technique can make vents in one go but the early rev 0's are clearly made from molding die which could not make the vents and so the first 100s were shipped without vents and I suspected vents started to appear at some serial numbers (several hundred or beyond 1000? I dont know) in the form of post-molding routing process and before painting. The routing process was not good enough to make vents of perfect width and spacing like those we see in later Apple II's. In fact, the vents in later Apple II's look so perfect that I suspect a different die design was used, which could allow the vents to form during molding process. But this is just my guess.
David, I respectfully disagree with you. It is clear that they intended to have vents in the original Apple II cases from the start. I have attached a scan of the very first Apple II brochure printed 4/77 for the debut that clearly depicts them 2 months before the first systems shipped. I believe at first they simply couldn't get the tooling for the vents right, but desperately needed to start shipping systems so the first few didn't have them, and as they tried to fix this they made cases with roughly cut vents. When early customers with ventless systems complained that heat buildup caused the cases to deform, they were offered new replacement cases with vents. Many customers likely took advantage of that swap, so it is unclear how many examples of ventless systems have survived intact.
Howie
BTW: Thanks for the link.
Fair enough - we can agree to disagree. I contend that Steve Jobs very clearly intended to have a ventless system. I'm sure there were those in engineering who disagreed with him, and intended to have vents. Engineering (and reality) won the day. We will have to agree on what we mean by "intend" and "from the start" actually mean. We agree the first systems shipped sans vents.
Indeed. But their very existence shows some intention, does it not?
I think without asking someone who was there, we will never know for sure. Using the image of the Apple II in the add, you can see a few differences from the case that shipped - no keyboard light, funky colors on the apple ][ badge. A similar discussion comes up every so often on c.s.a2. What was intended and what was expediency?
Dave...
Yes, it's an early IIe. It's got a Revision B motherboard in it. I did not paint it, it came that way. It's the same color as the Apple II Plus.