Re: Bringing a //c to life

[johnmorr@servtech.com (John Morrissey)]

claudiak@well.sf.ca.us (Claudia Kulesh) wrote:

>Hi folks --
>I've got my hands on an Apple //c which hasn't been used in years.  When 
>it was used, it was by my younger brothers who mostly used it to play 
>games.  
>It looks great from the outside, but it won't start up.  When i turn it 
>on, there is no life apparent from the disk drive.  The drive light 
>doesn't light up and there is no sound from the drive.

>What's my best option?  I'd like to get it up and running, perhaps to use 
>it at least as a terminal for online work.  Is this a possibility?  
>Should I look for an external drive?  Should I try to get the internal 
>drive working?  Look for a replacement internal drive (yikes!)?  While 
>I'm asking all these questions -- I've got an external 3-1/2" drive attached 
>to a Mac512k for my neice.  Would that work on this computer?  From 
>reading a few posts, I gather that there are some compatibilities between 
>the Apple //'s and early macs.

I'm not absolutely sure if the Mac 512's drive will work. You could
try hooking it up to the IIc's external drive port, and try starting
it up with a ProDOS 3.5" startup disk.

This may sound insulting, but have you checked that everything is
plugged in correctly? The only reason that I ask is because I own a
IIc, and it has not started up several times because the power plug
was not seated correctly or my power strip was not on. Basically, you
can just try wiggling it. The plug on the IIc's rump should go to the
power supply brick (the brick, I believe is only on the IIc, not the
IIc Plus). The power supply brick then is plugged into the wall.

If none of this stuff works, you can always try prying open the case
(don't worry about voiding your warranty; it's LONG expired by now 8-)
and looking around inside. Look carefully at the microchips and see if
any of their pins are not connected to the circuit board. Also look
around to see if any of the traces are cracked/broken. Traces are the
little golden lines *on* the circuit board. They look like little
lines, about 1/8 inch wide.

I really hope this helps. I've had my IIc for about four or five
years, and I still enjoy using it.

John