Restoration: Water-Damaged Apple IIe

[PotatoFi]

Several years ago, a friend gave me a pile of vintage Apple stuff! It all been stored in a basement that flooded at some point, and most of it had water damage. None of it seemed to be submerged, but it must have been submerged long enough for very significant rust to occur. The Macintosh SE in particular as flooded halfway up the power supply (and I documented my restoration efforts for it).

I'm moving soon, and need to knock out a few restoration projects before I go, so I decided to tackle the pair of Apple IIe machines.

At first glance, they look okay, but looking underneath the IIe on the left is a bit scary.

Inside is even worse.

This machine is just awful. I suspect that the entire bottom sheet is rusty. The switches on the left side of the keyboard are probably destroyed, and the power supply could be too. Every time I move this machine, it dumps rust everywhere. But then again, so did the Macintosh SE...

I decided to put this one aside, and focus on the other Apple IIe. It had a similar line of rust from partial submersion, but didn't seem as bad.

Looking inside confirmed that it was in better shape.

Given the likelihood of this machine living again, I decided to focus on it first.

 

[PotatoFi]

First, I removed the screws from the bottom and popped the case off. I've never taken apart an Apple II, so I figured it out as I went. You can clearly see where the water level was - thank goodness it didn't touch the power supply.

Next, I removed the power supply.

I bought a $5 wire wheel for my drill at the hardware store, so I could knock all of the rust off.

There was some rust on the power supply...

The wire wheel made quick work of that.

With the majority of the rust removed, I found some paint in the garage to cover the bare metal with. I think this is the same stuff I used to paint the chassis on the flooded Macintosh SE.

I had to wire-wheel the bottom as well, as the rust got underneath whatever the coating is. I wire-brushed as little as possible, and masked it for paint.

I would love to find out what this coating is and "do it right"... but I'm pressed for time, and just want to keep it from rusting again. I can always come back and fix this later.

Here it is with some paint!

Next, I decided to clean up the logic board. I cleaned it under tap water with Dawn dishwasher detergent and a toothbrush. After cleaning, I took it directly to the air compressor and blasted all of the water out of every nook and cranny to be sure not water deposits would be left.

Finally, I could start putting things back together! It would have been nice to paint the entire inside, but for now, I'm just doing the bare minimum to get it functional.

 

[flag4]

Nice work! I'm going to grab some popcorn and stand by for the next installment!

 

[retr01]

Popcorn!

 

[rikerjoe]

Cool, I’m going to follow this thread while I work on my Apple //e. Mine has rusty screws although the chassis, PSU, and logic board appear fine.

 

[retr01]

And now I am tempted to get an Apple IIe platinum! Lol!

 

[flag4]

And now I am tempted to get an Apple IIe platinum! Lol!

Go for it! They don't take up much room! Though I'm kind of partial to the regular IIe, it's an iconic work of art . .

 

[PotatoFi]

Next, I decided to tackle the keyboard. I pulled all of the keys off, and found this mess.

I used an old paintbrush to knock the dirt loose, and vacuumed everything up.

I didn't get a photo of the results, but I did mask off part of the keyboard and hit the rust with the wire wheel. It's all shiny now.

After cleaning up the keys with Windex and re-installing them, it was finally time to test the machine! But first, I checked the power supply voltages, and everything looked pretty good.

I grabbed my trusty Sony PVM-8045Q, plugged everything in, and flipped the power switch...

The good news is that there was no RIFA cap smoke! The bad news is that I only got a couple of corrupted characters on screen.

When I tried holding down Option + Open Apple while power cycling it to run the self-test, and got this mess:

The only obvious variable that I could see was the 80 column card in the expansion slot (there are two other expansion cards that I left uninstalled, for now):

I pulled out the 80 column card, and tested it again:

Success! I did try the 80-column card from the other IIe, and got the exact same results. If anyone has insight to offer on this issue, I'd love to hear it!

 

[3lectr1c]

That 80 column card only has a few chips on it, can't be that difficult to figure out what's amiss with it. Does it have any RAM/VRAM on board? That would be my first suspect.

 

[retr01]

Did the water go under the bottom of the motherboard? Are any lines compromised running to and from that aux slot where the 80-column card is? Maybe reflow?

Are those resistors okay?

 

[retr01]

That 80 column card only has a few chips on it, can't be that difficult to figure out what's amiss with it. Does it have any RAM/VRAM on board? That would be my first suspect.

Yes, four 16K RAM chips for the 80-column buffering. The underside of the motherboard first?

 

[retr01]

Paging @jajan547 and @skate323k137...

 

[jajan547]

I'd say resistors are okay just need some cleaning. Is this a few trace breaks?

Aside from that I'd say this could potentially be causing you some issues. I have linked the iie schematics HERE and they should help if not I suppose it could be a bad LS chip or something custom like a ROM, the last of which is worst case scenario.