Hi, Its teardown time. Even better than that, it's Retro Computer Teardown time. We love Retro computers here on the Eevblog there with online more popular tear downs. today.

we've got the classic Apple to see from 1984 haha. Let's check it out and still works Beauty and thank you very much to Oliver who I gave this to me at the recent Maker Faire in Sydney Here's Oliver Thanks Mate! Um, he actually found it on local hour curbside garbage collection so it came with the machine, the original couch controller, the original power supply we're going to mouse, and a whole bunch of floppies as well. Awesome Thanks! Oliver So the To See came out in 1984. It was not a successor to the Apple 2e.

they actually sold them at the same time. They see in the to See actually stands for compact and as you can see, it is possibly a pretty small and compact unit considering that it has a built-in five and a quarter inch floppy drive. that was one of the big selling points of this puppy back in the day, and it even having a carry handle on the back carry handles actually falling off this one so you can actually carry it around I Don't know if anyone really did that because you got it actually like around this huge big brick linear power supply as well this big huge transformer. So yeah, it wasn't really compact.

It wasn't really portable in that sense because I didn't have a battery external power supply and it didn't have any built-in display. The most common display for this thing was the small CRT which I do not have unfortunately which went sat on a case. This thing was actually tilted up like this so that you could you know it was more ergonomic to use the keyboard and then the display would come over the top and it would sit in are probably linking a photo there or there was also an optional one color I believe it was LCD screen which sort of sat on the top here and kinda made it look like a little laptop but it wasn't really no internal battery. but still.

you know this was a reasonably popular machine back in the day and a lot of people compared it to the IBM PC Junior at the time has a bit of a fire and I guess it Maybe a lot of people will say that you see was a fire as well, but it is a classic machine now. It differed slightly from the Apple 2 in that it while used a 65 80 to process it used the 65 C over 2 which is the new CMOS version of it. as such a lot slight differences in there which meant that not all software which made use of some quirks in the original 6502 they couldn't run on this to see, but it was pretty much compatible. Basically a compatible our chip in the end and it worked at the same screaming just over one megahertz beauty.

It came with 128 K a Ram 140 k5 and a quarter inch floppy built-in as well. whereas the Apple 2 of course all that sort of stuff was separate. It's got an 80 column mode as well that was all built-in so this had a lot of stuff built in serial ports as well. on the back built-in mouse port, this rayul optional extra on the 2e the 2.

We of course had all the expansion slots in it or the original Apple to Ollie as well as the 2e all the expansion slots in that this has no expansion capability at all, but it's most of the stuff you needed to have a functioning computer were built in. so it was. You know, it was pretty decent in that respect. Didn't really need expansion capability in this sort of thing, but I guess it wouldn't be nice, but you can't fit it in a nice compact case like this and I have both RGB monitor and composite monitor outputs.

We use the composite output today to actually see if we can play Zork on this thing. Beauty and it whopping 560 by 192 Graphics 15 colors. It wasn't that shabby for the time I guess. But yeah, there were better machines out there, but still, it was fairly reasonable for the time.

The original retail price about 1300 US dollars. That was from 30 years ago. Nineteen Eighty-four dollars here. Whoo! That was a lot of money.

but hey, it was a fully functioning computer with like 128 K a RAM and everything. and I Also used the integrated was machine custom ASIC chip to actually replace the dedicated disk controller in this thing. So I'll be interesting to crack this puppy open. and here it is.

It's not in bad condition for its age. Yes it has that yellowed very common for the time that comes from the bromide in the plastics that they used to use are leaching out. so very common. You can fix it, but it's yeah, it's not that easy.

Five and Quaritch floppy drive. as I said, there we go. haha look at that. 140 K per disc.

double-sided to beauty. We've got some ventilation nut slots here in the top. it looks like it's got a filter on the top of it so you can't actually see the circuitry down in there to keep all the dust and crap out. and the keyboard is actually really nice.

I liked the style of the keys with the sort of the flat part and then they're raised up in the middle and I love and I love to! Always loved the feel of this sight keyboard. The only time I ever used a to see actually uh I didn't know anyone who owned one. The only time I ever got to play with one was at the local library. This was their main computer in the local library.

You had to go in and give you a hand your library. card over. They'd give you the floppy disks and you know you could go over and use it. You know you could book it for an hour or whatever and use the things I used to do that back in the day.

Wow, what was that year? Mid 80s? Geez. Now there was actually two models of the To see. This is the original to see. There's also the To See plus and it came out in 1988 when this one finished selling this.

So this one had a four year lifetime and major. The two major changes in that are they actually replace the 80 40 column switch here switches here with a volume. They actually had a volume slider here and they also change the five and a quarter inch floppy to a three and a half inch floppy and the two C plus also ran at 4 mega Hertz instead of the one megahertz that this ancient puppy did. but unfortunately I think it was a bit of a flop at the time.

The two C plus because Apple had already released the two Gs the graphics and sound model which had a really advanced graphics and sound capability for its day and they didn't include any of that in the two C plus. So yeah, this original to see. it's even worse. It's got like one bit sound and well yeah, okay, you can do 560 by 192 15 color graphics, but yeah, pretty ordinary In the side here, we've got ourself headphones and a volume slider for the speaker that's tucked up under there in there's a label for those playing along at home.

it doesn't I don't think it has a date so I'm not sure what the barcode thing here is, if that's a serial number I'm not or what's going on there I'm not entirely sure, but yeah, basically I'm 80. What's for the CPU Whoa. Jeez, you can fly to Alpha Centauri on 18 watts if we have a look on the back here. We got ourselves a serial mouse port, but got ourselves a modem coms in a face.

That's our RGB maunder output. That's our composite monitor output, which we're going to be using today. Another external second, our floppy disk drive, a serial printer, and the DC power connector using old-school din connectors. of course.

look at that. You can see the connectors there a little bit crusty, but yeah, she still works. Mmm. this thing's seen better days.

And there's the money shot for the fanboys. And as I said, this is where the carry handle goes. And it didn't come with the carry handle but look very different type of plastic. Haven't hasn't yellowed it.

also. maybe yeah, it's like an entirely different type of plastic. Didn't have the bromide in there to actually leach out, so you know fade with all that ultraviolet exposure. So anyway, I don't know how they got that in and out without taking the case off.

Hmm. Anyway, you can carry this around. Oh look. I've got my Apple to see with my big linear transformer as well.

hmm and my monitor. All right. there's the brick power supply for it I see input connector here. but yeah, it's just a whopping great big transformer and that had a nominal output of 15 volts DC at one point two amps or so.

So yeah, that wouldn't that wouldn't be regulated at all that it'd just be a bridge rectifier, full wave bridge rectifier and some output caps. and Bob's your uncle. But it did have all the reckless at type approvals. beauty.

And here's an original Apple Mouse as well. How original? Well look at the serial number. twenty thousand, four Hundred and fifty two G's That's pretty good for a stroller. I xx thousandth Apple Mouse ever made.

It's not many at all. made in the United States of America and the main unit assembled in Ireland To be sure to be sure, here we go. let's try and boot this puppy up. I've got one of these our car rear view mirror LCD reversing camera thingamabobs arm.

it'll do. It's got composite video input we're going to try and play Zork - Fantastic! I Got the original tab. Can you remember putting the tabs on to the right protect tab? side A is Zork to side B nothing. So let's whack that in the drive and clunk that down.

Yet to go clunk back in the day? I'll try not to get clear on the screen and here we go is: try boot it. listen to the sounds of then it's reading the floppy. Come on, you can do it. Hey, doesn't like that and wearing like Flynn it works.

Still reads a floppy disk after like 30 years and more than 30 years. Unbelievable. So we can go. Let's play: Zork Pick up Sward Why does it have to access disk? It's got access to disk you Oh no, it doesn't like that.

Uh, internal error Wow Floppy drives a bit dodgy. I'm afraid. let's try that again. Here we go.

we got our Apple to see we're in and pick up sword. Yeah, why can't it's got 128 K a ram. Why can't it out load? Why does it have to keep reading the disk? Geez just to do it. Trust me, it does work.

Hmm. Anyway, you can see that it still works 30 years later. Fantastic! I Love it. You know a thing with the Apple to see is that it's really quite annoying if you boot the thing up without a floppy disk in it, then you get the Apple to see up there.

and then you just get what. check disk drive. There's nothing like it doesn't pop straight up into your basic command prompt. So the way you do that which isn't completely non-obvious control reset like that and bingo We're at our prompt and we can find out what version of the ROM we had.

We can go Peek - 108 9. That is completely obvious of course. and we've got ROM Version 255. And if we do call - 151 today, we enter the monitor.

Oh, the power. Can you feel it? You can also do the exact same thing using the command print Peek Six, Triple four, Seven which again, is completely obvious and this is 255 means it's the original ROM version. Kill Grew. What? What? What? Why you don't reset it properly.

Chuckle, Wobbly. And it came with a whole bunch of these discs. They aren't Apple original. they're all like our Apple used Sydney Apple Users Group: Look at that blackjack and cards.

the Applefest 1992 Ah, Fantastic. double-sided I Even a sticker on the bottom integer on flipside. Love it. So there you go.

Anyone remember the Apple or was anyone part of the Sydney Apple users group? Is this your machine? Did you dump it on the roadside? Ah, surely not. Anyway yet. no original discs. We've got masters, beginner, Calc Lair, whatever that is anyway.

but whole bunch of them. Fantastic. Which one do we want? I'll have Global Thermonuclear War. Looks like this was like a monthly disc or something and from the users group and came with a whole bunch of different programs.

By the looks of it, Alright, let's crack this puppy open and see what Cupertino has to offer. Now it's all going to be a through-hole dip technology. Of course that's pretty much what it was back in the 80s, so don't expect any surface mount stuff in here at all. I'm not sure we've got four bigger screws here.

I'm not sure what the deal is there, but anyway. um I Not sure if the world's himself actually worked on this because he after his plane crash in the early 80s left Apple for a bit. he did come back and famously. Um, you know it worked as just an engineer and but I don't think he's ever credited with the Two Seas.

so um, probably working on the two Gs. Ah, more than the to see because this is basically just an Apple 2 and then they just in them. It's just packaging, integration and stuff like that. Probably something that there was wouldn't have been that interested in.

I'd be guessing. So these four here are actually metal threaded inserts where the other ones were just dumb self tappers into the plastic. So I'm not sure if this is the correct order to take it apart. I Guess we all find out we're getting somewhere.

I Can see the crusty phenolic base. single sided board for the keyboard. Something came out here. A bit of rubber, sort of rubber strip that looks like it's surrounding the keyboard, but it's probably clips on the back or something like that.

But yeah, this top plate, obviously obviously just comes off somehow. There we go. There we go. Ah, almost.

Tada, we're in like Flynn Errol that is. and as you can see, there's not a huge amount doing here. We've got it dominated by the big five and a quarter inch are floppy. We'll take that out separately of course.

and that was, you know, 140 cage AAB And of course there was famously, but with the Apple drives. Actually, how he got the cost down was just had the mechanism itself and then developed his own interface electronics and famously did it with like five chips or something I remember the exact number and that was in the original Apple and then for the Apple. Starting with his to see I believe and then the two GS and other ones, they put it that same circuitry into a small arm ASIC chip or peel D or whatever it was and that became the integrated was machine. So as I remarked before the keyboard itself, this is not high-quality fiberglass board.

It's what's called a phenolic base board. It's very cheap, very common in our consumer gear, so nothing inherently wrong with it, and they still use it today. You open up Any you know, you open up your $5,000 LCD TV or something, and you'll probably find that the power supply uses a phenolic card base board. They can shave a few cents off there, so they do.

so. yeah, we've got a ribbon up here that connects that down in there so that actually just slides into there. Put a little cutout in the drive there. It's pretty good.

Tada. Oh, we're more in like Flynn Look at that. I Actually really liked how they've added this strengthening bar across here. This probably like abs plastic or something, but that strengthens the keyboard so you can see that that braces in there and over in here.

So that alert. So when you've got this in like this, when you press in the middle of the keyboard, it doesn't flex and feel cheap and nasty. So that's A. That's a really nice addition there.

Somebody was thinking and if we take a look at the main guts down here, we've got ourselves a date code. The Main 65 Co2 made by NCR By the way, there you go. It was yet paid by all and sundry back in the day. Date Code: Our fourth week 84 We've got First Week 84.

We've got 30 First week 84, but these are fairly. You know they might have had, you know, a ton of these in stock. d Rams well like these were the precious thing back in data my precious. And we've got a date code of First Week 85th Week 85.

So there you go this. They would have put this into production like weeks after that. So very early 1985 Vintage this machine and here's some attention to detail on the: EMC The electromagnetic conformity for this thing. This is like a steel ring here.

Like a, you know, a steel wool steel mesh ring that connects the one of the ground points here. and this is one of the mounting posts for the floppy drives that just electrically connects the floppy drive down to the main board. They're very nice. they've got two of those and there you go.

That's just for the 6502 faired boys. And of course it wouldn't be an early 80's computer without a couple of bages on it. There we go. Genuine mod wire there and a resistor going between the pen on this gal slash power device over to one of the vias.

They're nice. No surprises for finding the famous integrated was machine. ASIC Up here, there is IWM right next to the floppy port. Of course there's the internal floppy connector.

There's the external floppy connector. so I Haven't actually looked at the schematic and architecture of this thing yet, but obviously like they're just are parallel data and then they've probably just got a different selection or some other miscellaneous control lines for the separate floppy drive. You probably couldn't use both at once. It's interesting to note that this is the original Apple Watusi and you can tell because or there is no memory expansion.

All the memory The Hundred and Twenty-eight K is on the board here. right down here. Now in 1986, they did release a memory expansion version of this. It's a substantially different board layout and it's got a here's a photo of it.

It's got a memory expansion connector down here and this allows you to expand the memory and thing. Not so in this original one. Now you can see there's a few other circuit changes as well. One thing I really like about these old machines is that they put proper silkscreen labels on look.

They told you what all the block parts of the unit were with all the main chips. look IWM Integrated was machine TMG that's the main timing chip Glu that say it's well, it's glue logic but it stands for a right you know, general-purpose our interface logic unit. We've got our character generator up here. We've got video latch here and there's the ad latch for example for the Ad column mode and just everything is labeled.

it's brilliant and the main elements down here I've already pointed out the main not CPU the MMU that's the memory management unit handles all the memory addressing and all that sort of jazz. IOU That's pretty obvious, that's the IR interface IO peripheral type interface. And then we've got our character generator. ROM Here that's of what map stands for the character you know keyboard mapping unit and then Mon down here is monitor of course the old school our word for the firmware and this puppy.

Here is the ink which is our encoder. and of course that's the keyboard encoder. because you need a keyboard encoder to decode all the keys. Of course, like to do the matrix address mapping.

As you can see, there's basically nothing for the sound here. Here's our volume knob over here on the side, our headphone output and just like yet, there's no sound chip. no nothing. it was just single bit sound output.

Beep beep beep. And you might actually have been wondering about this switch here that looks like a keyboard. That's because it is the keyboard switch and what that one does is it switches between your standard layout like this that everything your QWERTY layout and a default school Dvorak layout. So yeah, for those Dvorak fans I Guess you could get like a different key tops and put them on.

and or maybe they actually sold a Dvorak configured machine for those Uh yeah Dvorak fans. So anyway yeah, nobody does that anymore. Do they? Does anyone out there use a Dvorak keyboard? Come on, there must be somebody. So what happens with your keyboard of course is the keyboard encoder takes the keyboard matrix and gives you a matrix location of which actual key was pressed and then the character generator map Rama here Because that's effectively what it is.

It's just a it's just a ROM essentially a lookup table that then converts that matrix value into a particular ASCII character which then can be are displayed on the screen and everything else. And these 2's six Double five ones which are labeled Sixty-eight Five Ones here on the silkscreen. They're actually your to white serial chips cuz this thing had that two serial ports on it and the main clock for this thing. There it is Fourteen Point Two Four Nine Eight, Two megahertz and that in combination with the timing chip here generated all the system timing including the main processor clock so the main process won't run at just over one megahertz.

They would have divided that puppy in here by fourteen. We've got one yes, Triple Five timer. There will a dual triple five time. are the five Five Six brilliant and the ventilation slots on the back here I Don't know how they're working that well cuz there's a metal.

Our grid on there show might be able to see that on the other side. and then there's an insulating card under there. of course because you can't have the bottom of these are dip packages shorting out to the metal on the back. So there's like that just covering up all the all the vent holes are under the air.

What the? That's not going to be effective at all. There they are. We've got a metal screen under there, but yeah, the board just sat flat I'm there. it's yeah you and just for Kicks will check the processor clock.

Now we need the Pin 37 or the 6502 which is the main eye input clock phase and the 6502 actually has a separate clock outputs as well. There you go Mario right? I'll scope 1.0 1, 5, 6, 2 megahertz or there abouts. You can see that it's all a little bit jittery here now. I Don't know if there's like a the odd missing cycle in there or not.

Not sure what's going on. so if we stop it and go in, it all looks uh no. looks fairly fairly normal so you might have some trigger jitter. nah-ah know is that my imagination might have some trigger jitter or something in there, but that looks see a little bit jittery.

Oh What's going on? Oh yeah, I'm not sure that's actually trigger jitter. I Think it's something genuine on the clock so I'm not sure what's happening there. I Don't know enough about the Apple timing chip to to know what that deal is. There you go.

There's the main processor clock and it's rock-solid It's a little bit rounded off there because I've got my bandwidth limiter turned on and not exactly our probe in this properly, hence all the ringing and crap like that. But yeah, it's rock-solid so there's something else. Yeah, so the timing coming out of the timing chip is probably missing a pulse here or there for some particular reason. maybe some sort of you know I don't know, interrupt, wait, stay D type thing and even Apple couldn't escape the clutches of Bill There we go.

Copyright: Microsoft 77 Because there's some Microsoft basic happening in there. we've really got left to look at. Is this brick here? This nice big shield? A brick TDK dead giveaway that's a DC to DC converter. Here's our DC input from our linear plug pack that we've got.

Um, this looks like a melted capacitor on the top, but heads, it's not. think it's a big yeah, it's just a big wrapped wire round inductor. they're just a big choke. And then we just got a big mains input duct filter cap.

Nippon Chemi-con thank you very much. Tell you what though, I do really like how they've got the card edge connector here completely separate shield and enclosure and along with those shielding EMI gaskets. I Told you about going up to the floppy drive Lee they took EMI recently. Seriously? Um, you know it's hard when you got like a a double sided board like this and you just got traces.

Busses, big buses running everywhere, but you know they're done a pretty decent job there. How does that come out? It's got to pull out. There we go. we're in like Flynn Well, I'll tell you what.

I Don't mind that puppy at all that looks actually quite nice and on resistors which were lead formed. end on resistors. very common for the day of course and that's a very nice, clean, neat layout. Huge big gate ground plane on the top.

Nippon Chemi-con caps Fantastic! No expense spared there. as so you know they're they're still going. No leaks in those whatsoever and that's a very nice implementation of a DC DC converter. ID Not sure how many out rails that's got will have five volts and minus 5 volts and 12 volts or something from a 12 to 15 like up to 15 volt input from the plug pack if I put it back together and just take the lid off.

you can see this bracket that they're using at an angle there to hold in and push the switching transistor across against the back in here, which is using this as a heatsink. That's a rather novel, but yeah, a little bit convoluted to try and get in though. And last but certainly not least, this ugly looking floppy drive here. But my hats off, it still worked.

I Found some gunk in here and everything, so it still worked. a treat. It just goes to show the robustness of these things. Really, it's just incredible.

And of course there's our head right down in there. and if we work out floppy in, of course, there you go. and then the stepper motor just moves the head in and out and turns the disk. Not much going on there at all, but I Love the bottom.

Look at this. They've got an old-school timing chart on here so that you can actually get the rotational speed with your stroboscope. Fantastic and made in Japan Hi to all my Japanese viewers arm, it's an Alps drive and serial number only 60,000 That's that's pretty low. This is one of the earlier units really.

I mean how many of these things did they make? a million Apple 2 C's I'm not sure the exact number but as you can see, there's not much on here at all. There's just a motor control stuff pretty much because all of the digital decoding and head amplifier and stuff like that. But apart from that there's you know there's bugger all on here because all of it Arcas was did his own controller famously and that saved a lot of the cost there. Now of course on this because it's a single sided disc.

This top part here isn't the head, it's just like a yeah. it's just like a little uh, felt pad type thing. There is our head right in in there. There we go.

It's got some gunk on it that could do with some cleaning. Oh there it is. Look at that. for those who remember back in the day, um you used to be able to get a five and a quarter inch are cleaning discs.

It was like a cloth instead of having like the mylar magnetic coated disc itself that it actually had like a cloth in there like a microfiber II type cloth. They didn't up microfiber back then I don't know an equivalent type thing and then you'd put your you'd put your cleaning fluid onto that, you'd stick it in and then you start the drive up and clean your head. I Think that's what we need to do here. Mmm what you need is a cotton swab like this and you need some isopropyl alcohol.

This is the pure stuff 99.8% or you can also use one of these medical swabs as well. These are only a 70% alcohol, but they'll do the business so they've actually got a little cleaning cloth inside already pre moisten so you can actually use that too just to get in there and wipe the head. Now we just lift up this up pressure pad here because this is only a single sided. Drive The double-sided ones will have our heads on both sides and they'll actually have a head on this mechanism that lists up so you'll have to do both.

but just repeat it and we can see our head in there. Very very dirty look at that. So we've dipped our cotton bud in the alcohol. Not too much, but just get in there and start scrubbing.

You can see it might take a bit of elbow grease this one. I Don't think this one's been cleaned in 30 years maybe? Hmm. and there we go. Head is perfectly clean Now now just make sure there's no fibers in there.

just get in side because you can actually get fibers that come off these if you get good micro fiber type. our cotton buds, they're the best. Now you shouldn't wipe this at all because the alcohol will just evaporate. So don't worry about it.

just leave it a few minutes and she'll be right here we go. That's one 500th shutter speed. You can see the inner loop which was the fifty almost standing still. almost.

Ah, pretty close. and this disk drive seems to be working a treat after we cleaned it. I Think there's something wrong with physically wrong with the Zork disk. I Can see some physical damage to it so anyway, load in another one checking out high-resolution demonstration or biorhythms.

They will all the go back in the day. Ah, let's go for the USS Enterprise high-res picture. Ah, got to do it. Okay I think what's happening here is this LCD Somehow maybe not can be compatible with the graphics mode perhaps Ice? regardless of what program I seem to run.

if I try and go into graphics mode, it just blank screen. So oh sorry, there we go. You saw it. we had the Enterprise tries to capture that.

Fantastic. So there you go. That's a probably a rather lengthy look at the Apple to see the original one not to be confused with the two C+ or that one with the upgraded memory module 1990. This was like the first early weeks 1995.

So this is just over 30 years old and it still works Beauty: No problems with the power supply because they use top quality caps in there. It's well-built and really not much. I Can wrong go wrong without, you know, 5 volt TTL stuff at all and the floppy drive amazingly still works I've cleaned that and I think I'll just go play some Zork And by the way, I'll link in the full service manual for this thing. It's got the schematics and it's like 560 pages and it's got the wrong dump listing and AH man, everything including the kitchen sink.

It's fantastic. They really did proper technical reference manuals service manuals back in those days. That's fantastic. So terrific bedtime reading.

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