Re: Rarity and Pricing

[CUTblakeney@home.com (Jeff Blakeney)]

On Tue, 21 Nov 2000 17:36:45 -0800, "Christopher N. Russell"
<chrisrussell2k@yahoo.com> wrote:

>Looking through auctions and newsgroup posts, I could only ponder about the
>value of Apples and their rarity. Personally, the rarity of Apple IIs, in my
>opinion, goes like this, in order from rarest to most common:
>
>Apple ][, original (not upgraded rom)
>Apple ///+
>Apple IIc +
>Apple II +
>Apple ///
>Apple IIgs Woz
>Apple IIe, IIc, IIgs are about the same rarity

I'd probably put the Apple /// as being more rare than the Apple II+
but I don't have any data to back that opinion up.

>One more thing: there was an apple IIe - IIgs upgrade kit offered by apple.
>Can anyone describe it to me, like what it came with, how much it cost, etc.

The IIgs upgrade was usually done by an authorized Apple dealer.  I
got one when the price for it dropped from $800 CDN to $600 CDN.  As I
only had an extended 80 column card and a Disk ][ controller in my
unenhanced Apple IIe, I figured it was worth upgrading as I ended up
getting the equivalent of an accelerator, memory expansion, two serial
cards, mouse controller, 3.5" drive controller, AppleTalk interface,
graphics card and sound card.  Quite the deal for $600.  :-)

The upgrade kit came with a IIgs motherboard, usually a ROM 0, that
was already mounted on a replacement bottom/back plate.  Basically,
you just popped the plastic case with the IIe keyboard still in it off
the old bottom/back plate and put it on the IIgs bottom/back plate.
It also came with a replacement name plate so that the front of the
computer said Apple IIgs instead of Apple IIe.

There is a couple problems with the upgrade, though.  If you didn't
have a platinum IIe, you don't get a numeric keypad unless you hook up
the old external one that was available for the IIe.  Also, the
keyboard isn't ADB so it wasn't as nice in my opinion.  The biggest
problem was with the IIe case itself.  You couldn't insert certain
cards that were designed for the IIgs because they didn't have the
slope cut on the top/front of the card to match the slope on the case.
There was an even bigger problem with certain memory cards because
there was a large piece of plastic descending into the case near the
memory expansion slot.

However, I used my upgraded IIgs for quite some time as I collected
all the other parts needed to make it a real IIgs.  ROM upgrade, ADB
keyboard, mouse, 3.5" drive and memory expansion card.  After I got
all that, I think it was before I got my first hard drive, I ordered a
IIgs case through an Apple dealer and moved my motherboard into that.

I'm not quite sure whatever happened to my IIe case with the IIgs
bottom/back plate and name plate.  I kept it for a good long time but
I think I might have left it behind in one of my moves and the people
I left it with probably threw it out.  Too bad.  I know have at least
six IIgs' sitting around here, including my upgrade motherboard, and I
could have put one of there motherboards back in that case.

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