Cracking Open the Apple IIc

Already partially cracked

This poor IIc came to us damaged during shipment. It lost two keys which are snapped off. The plastic around the monitor was already yellowed with aged and it broke apart during shipment.

Broken monitor

As you can see the frame around monitor is completely gone.

Missing keys

We have the keys that are missing, but the posts are broken off. Too bad because the keyboard has a nice feel to it. It's a solid unit as we'll see later

Manuals!

Our IIc came with a complete of manuals.

Limited Warranty

The IIc comes with a 90-day warranty. Looks like ours is a bit out of date.

Things you can do with your IIc!

You can do lots of stuff with your IIc, including creating a Data Base.

Easy to hookup

The manual clearly shows all of the connections for the IIc and what they do.

Diagrams!

Apple takes care to point out how things work with the IIc and key concepts.

New features!

You can increase the Apple IIc's memory from the base 128k up to a whopping 1Mb with an expansion card!

Programs!

These programs came with our IIc.

A mouse!

Our IIc came with an Apple IIc serial mouse. Here it is with all the accessories.

One button

Like the Mac of the day the AppleMouse IIc had one large button.

How much?

The AppleMouse IIc cost $89 in 1986 dollars. Today that's $166 in today's money.

One ball

The mouse has a single centered ball. As you can see, it was made in the USA.

Serial port

The AppleMouse IIc has a standard 9pin serial connector.

Register your mouse

Here's the complete warranty registration. Interesting because it's a scantron sheet.

Ready to get cracked

Here's the IIc by itself waiting to get cracked.

Right view

Right hand view showing the integrated floppy drive. The Apple II series used 5 1/4" drives for most of their run. The Apple IIc was the first Apple II to have a built in drive.

Take me with you

The c in IIc stood for Compact. It was made to be transportable. As such, it had a handle to make carrying it easier.

Left view

Not much to see here. Just a volume control and headphone jack under the keyboard.

Bottom view

Underneath the unit. As you can see the speaker grille is dented along with the other damage. The IIc uses several standard Phillips screws. Easy to find and disassemble.

Smudged serial number

You can't read the whole serial number. But you can see the rest of the engrained information.

Lifting the lid

The screws come off the bottom and there's one catch on the front near the keyboard. After that, the lid comes right off.

Top lid

Nothing to the lid except for a fine filter over the grille, that you can barely see in this picture.

Above view

Here's the view of the IIc from above.

Keyboard removal

The keyboard isn't screwed in. Instead, there's a tab that tucks under the floppy cage. Otherwise the keyboard is held in place by the now missing case.

Keyboard

The keyboard is disconnected. You can see the connector ribbon at the top.

Keyboard flipped

As you can see, the keyboard is pretty clean on the bottom. No traces to be seen.

Copyright Apple

Apple seems to have made this board themselves, not OEMed it out. At least, it has an Apple logo on it.

Removing the floppy cage

They floppy drive is only held in place by this cable and pressure from the case. There are no other screws attaching it to the case.

Cable

This cable does double duty. It transmits power to the drive as well as data. There is no separate power cables as in modern PCs.

Drive out

Here's the floppy cage removed. The Apple IIc floppy drive is only 140k in capacity.

Underside

Here's the bottom of the drive. You can see the drive belt clearly.

Top of the drive.

Reasonably clean design. Large driver motor can be seen in the lower left.

All lined up

You don't see electronics like this much anymore. Only a few ICs, but the controller is dominated by rows of resistors.

Made by Alps

A popular component maker of the time, Alps provided the floppy drive for Apple.

Above view

Here's the Apple IIc exposed with the keyboard and floppy cage removed. As you can see, the board design is pretty minimalistic. There are few visible resistors and capacitors compared to machines of the same era.

Power supply

Here's the power supply unit. It's small because the AC/DC transformer is external to the unit. This is merely the voltage regulator. As you can see, there's no significant shielding around the power supply on our unit.

Power Supply removed.

It connects with two screws and a card edge connector. Easily removed. The power supply was a whopping 25 watts.

Above view

Here's another view with the power supply gone.

Power Supply hole

Here's where the power supply used to be.

Power to the Apple!

Here's the connectors in the upper left hand corner of the board. There's a small power switch in the upper left hand corner. Next to it, there's a connector for the external power supply. Above the silver capacitor, there's a DIN plug for an external printer.

Top Center

The board is clearly labeled. You can see where all of the interface connectors are across the top. The upper left port is for an external disk drive. Below that, you can see where the floppy cable for the internal drive connects.

Next to that is the composite video out port.

Further to the right, is the connector for a television if you wanted to use that rather than a composite monitor.

Next there's a 9 pin DIN plug for an external modem.

Finally, there is a standard 9-pin port in the upper right for the AppleMouse IIc.

Thanks for the memory!

Here are the memory chips for the Apple IIc. The system came with 128K of RAM, but it could only address memory in banks of 64K. You could expand memory to over 1Mb in size, but this memory was also only available in banks, not as a contiguous 1Mb.

Our Apple motherboard has the base memory soldered on. Memory is expanded via a card whose connector is off the screen to the left. First generation Apple IIc motherboards had socketed memory chips which all had to be removed and replaced for upgrades.

A collection of Apple Chips

Here are 5 main chips on the system board. In the lower right hand corner resides the 65C02 CPU. This is a 1Mhz 8 bit CPU.

The C in the string stands for CMOS. The CMOS version of the chip ran cooler, and took less power, but otherwise is identical to the standard 6502 CPU used on the original Apple II and II+. The chip was manufactured by NCR.

Above the CPU is the MMU and the IOU. To the left is the Keyboard ROM and Firmware ROM. We'll discuss them in the next few slides.

Copyright 1986

This board is silkscreened as 1986. It's not an original Apple IIc. The first Apple IIc came out in 1984 and has a 1983 copyright.

You can see a connector in the upper right. This is for a memory expansion card. Older Apple II motherboard have socketed memory chips that all need to be replaced for upgrades.

Above the copyright, you can see the 65c02 CPU.

Beneath the firmware

Notice the both the Apple and Microsoft copyright notices on the board. The Microsoft copyright is for the Microsoft-produced BASIC that the Apple IIc uses.

Firmware and Keyboard

Above the Firmware ROM, you'll find the Keyboard ROM. This stores keyboard mappings.

IOU and MMU

Above the CPU and to the right of the Keyboard ROM are the IOU (top) and MMU (bottom).

IOU stands for Input/Output Unit. It controls all of the basic I/O on the computer.

MMU stands for Memory Management Unit. It controls how the CPU talks to the onboard memory.

Keyboard Encoder and sound

Here's the KR9600-Pro Keyboard Encoder. It communicates with the keyboard. You can see the keyboard connector above and to the right. Volume controls and the headphone jack are to the left.

Serial Chips

The two main chips here are the serial controllsers.

Unlike a PC which would use an 8250 UART for the serial port, our Apple uses an AMI 8709B. UART.

The WOZ Machine

This chip is referred to as the IWM (Integrated Woz Machine) It's a single chip version of the Apple II disk controller card.

The yellow chip on top is clearly labeled as the video out chip.

Character Generator

This chip is the Character Generator ROM. It's the one that displays text on the monitor.

TMG and GLU

These two chips are the TMG and GLU.

The TMG chip is the Timing Generator. It works with the brass chip on the lower right which is a 14mhz system board oscillator and controls timing on the board.

The GLU chip is the General Logic Unit. It performs logic instructions not handled elsewhere on the system board.

Made in Singapore!

Our Apple IIc came from Singapore unlike modern Apples, most of which come from China.

A clean underside

There's nothing to see at the bottom. The underside is free of wires and solder traces.

Bottom of the case

Here's the bottom of the case. Apple has spray painted it a matte black color. I'm not sure why. Possibly for heat dissipation.

Cracked open

Here's an entire Apple IIc, cracked open.