Is there an ascertainable serial number or other unique identifying code for an Apple IIgs ROM 3's motherboard?

Hey speedyG - Thanks for the clarification about what that number printed on the IIgs ROM 3 motherboard means.

Regards -

Hey -- speedyG and Wayne --

Thanks for the input about there possibly being a unique-to-my-specific-ROM 3-motherboard serial number under the power supply and, Wayne, the other component that you mentioned that I need to remove --- I need to check your post again to see what that's called. So it sounds encouraging that, since I definitely haven't found a single chip on my ROM 3 motherboard with a date more recent than with the year 1989, this particular ROM 3 motherboard may be old enough to have this one-of-a-kind, unique serial number (that therefore I imagine can be used as verification that anything related to this motherboard is, in fact, referring to this specific Apple IIgs ROM 3 motherboard that I have.

I'm wondering whether the metal rectangular power supply plus the other component that, Wayne, you mentioned, will just snap off without breaking (as the IIgs's overall CPU cover does), or whether particular screws need to be removed from the power supply and the other device, in order to reveal (if it's there) this unique serial number. I'll take a close look at how the power supply and other component are installed, to try to verify before I start gently trying to unhook it, whether there are screws or maybe a plastic part that I might accidentally break, which hold these 2 components onto the overall motherboard and/or motherboard casing...

Knowing my strong interest in Apple; and in particular the nostalgic for me Apple II line that I first learned to program some BASIC on, I just got as a gift the Isaacson hardcover biography on SJ. I started reading it this morning, and found it incredibly engrossing, like a novel --- due to the passions, tempers, conflicting personalities at the highest level of Apple management, exponentially-increasing revenues Apple was bringing in; the anecdotes of influential meetings with other non-Apple pirates of Silicon Valley, and the (true-to-technological-life-even-then) fast pace of it all, made it incredibly fascinating to me. Way too many thoughts even to attempt to comment coherently on at the moment.

But in any case, in addition to reading several whole sections of this biography, I kept scanning sections of the book that looked as though they chronologically overlapped with the last years of the Apple IIgs, to see whether I could find a reference to Steve Jobs wanting to "kill the Apple IIgs" (given the sheer uncontrollable mayhem that he, apparently due to a somewhat clinically pathologically OCD-ish skewed thought-pattern and deeply-routed need to control things (both rigid, unfriendly traits apparently in his fundamental personality beginning in his childhood when he was given up by his biological parents for adoption).

Plus SJ's apparently more rageful (sp?) and power-hungry, nasrcisistic (sp?) personality than just looking like a self-absorbed/congratulatory metrosexual often for nothing more than a slightly tweaked iThis or iThat being released (accompanied by a Keynote Speech appearance which actually was due in part to his illness-based weight loss).

The bottom line: because Steve Jobs' parents gave him up for adoption, almost 6 decades later a welding torch would be required just to remove the *battery* from an iPad.

Anyway, I'd say that, although I found no such explicit reference to Steve Jobs disliking the IIgs in particular, several well-defined aspects of his personality, combined with the realities of the computer industry, and Jobs' personal experience during that time of having been ousted from his own company(!), definitely would suggest that the Apple II line in general did not serve his personal needs and belief about what was in the best interest of the evolving Apple company anymore.

It's funny that the computer that may have been a contender of the Lisa and the peri-PC way-too-flawed-for-Jobs Newton hand-held device, the Mac-competing Apple IIgs, has the exact opposite meaning in my own life.

My recent now-essentially-complete quest to build a terrific condition Apple IIgs ROM 3 computer system is based somewhat on fate: I missed getting one back in the day, because although a floor model was singing and graphic-ing away happily in the corner of a computer store sales floor that I went to as a kid intending to purchase an Apple //e Enhanced system, the store management explained that the first shipment from Apple of the brand new IIgs wouldn't be arriving for another 3 to 4 months.

I already had wanted an Apple II for so long, that I just didn't have the patience not to buy the (great-in-and-of-itself) //e Enhanced system, as was the plan anyway instead.

But the image of that beautiful, mysterious (I didn't really know about the IIgs then, and there wasn't yet the Internet [or in my case legal age-based eligibility for my Junior Driver's License, which became available a promptly was obtained as of my 16th birthday a few years later] to get super-current news on the Apple II line quickly) Apple IIgs remained one of the few early adolescence memories that, like a brilliant snap shot, remains to this day tattooed in my memory --- perhaps imbuing me for a different reason with some of SJ's driving fire to accomplish a certain thing, and uncompromisingly to achieve ("or I simply just don't want it at all") the result meeting an exacting standard. Although (probably assuming that spending time then with customers on the IIgs rather than on the //e Enhanced and the //c was less likely to yield a sale [because of this 3-4 month wait to get the first group of IIgs's from Apple], the inherently most advanced and visually/audibly dazzling via some sort of software auto-pilot demonstration loop, was both riveting, and at the same time apparently invisible/inaudible/unnoticed by salespeople and customers in the store -- except, of course, for me. What others were ignoring/oddly oblivious to, made such an impression on me for some reason, that its image etched itself in my mind as (regardless of it being 25 years later) "my Platinum-Grey Whale" that slyly had eluded my acquisition by a mere 3-to-4 months, 25 years ago!

It's this history, and the care I devoted to finding excellent-condition IIgs components through a great deal of many months' patience, that I now can't help but smile when I look at that now neatly set-up, excellent condition components machine sitting next to me happily, having been *really* cleaned (like all slats, etc.) as any non-brand-new component was shipped to me soon after I purchased it. I believe that the components of this IIgs, which now get along synergistically as a harmonious whole, happened into just about the best treatment digs that it possibly could have. At some point -- not that I'm thinking of selling it after all of the research, learning, scouting for components of a very high quality, etc. work I put into it, and the fact that I want to keep it(!) -- and given all of the enjoyment I get from using it too! But anyway, at some point, I'd welcome the opportunity to list its components and specs for you guys to see just how much of a loss I'm sure I'd be hit with were I to sell, as one system, this precisely-chosen (component-by-component) IIgs system that I'm sure, through having bought and assembled it in this satisfying, but cost-inefficient piecemeal way, I paid much more for it than I think an eBay Buyer would offer me for it (although I promise I wouldn't be one of those tell-tale "I know/care nothing about this system" IIgs Sellers who includes no photos or specific specs regarding, especially, the motherboard and any inserted cards it might have!

TGISu!; but Sa would be better -- and thanks again, both, for the always-interesting reply comments!

-- redustair