Re: $1225 for an Apple IIGS???

[Mitchell Spector <mitch2gs@hotmail.com>]

lemonherb1@netscape.net (Herbert Fung) wrote:

>Unbelieveable what some people would pay for an Apple IIGS today.
>
>Doesn't really look like anything particularily special about this
>one. It looks like a ROM 3 motherboard with socketed onboard RAM with
>some EPROMs in the ROM sockets.
>
>The seller stated that the serial number was 20, and in the photo the
>label looks off center. Could someone have faked the sticker for the
>serial number and doctored a ROM 3 motherboard, or do these bidders
>have too much money for their own good?
>
>http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=4610&item=2075241587&rd=1

    I saw this auction and gave the seller more details on what it *appeared*
he had, told him I thought it has relatively little value over a regular GS,
though unfortunately (or fortunately for him) those bidders thought
otherwise.

    It looks to be a prototype of 'The Apple IIGS with 1 Megabyte of RAM', 
or what we now refer to as the "ROM 3" motherboard. All the 'Fast RAM'
1MBx1 chips are socketed, as is the Ensoniq. The firmware is stored on
a pair of EPROMs (instead of masked ROMs) which I've seen before,
but instead of an Apple part number it has printed: "UJ9 FE-FF 17" and
"UJ11 FC-FD 17".

    The serial number is "0000000000020" which to me means NOT the
20th Apple IIgs manufactured, but possibly the 20th 'ROM 3' machine.
Apple IIgs serial numbers began I believe with 6xxxx and worked upwards
until hitting 0xxxx, around the time of the ROM 3. My own ROM 3 started
with 013xxxxx.

    Everything indicates this machine was manufactured early to mid 1989.
(the official production run of the ROM 3 started August 1989, prototypes
obviously would have been around a few months earlier). Also note the
box is the plain style Apple started using in 1989--before that they had a
IIgs box with color photographs on it.

    The other parts with this machine are not from the original package.
The floppy disk is the 1986 version of the IIgs Tour, and there is an
RF modulator and RF switcher box from a 1984 vintage Apple IIc
(these were removed from later run IIc's and absolutely never shipped
with the IIgs--in fact that RF modulator is incompatible with the GS).

    All in all, it looks like a left over from either an Apple dealer or a
developer. Certainly not worth US$1,225--this *isn't* a Mark Twain 
or original 1986 Apple IIgs prototype. eBay never fails to surprise me. :)

Mitchell Spector