Hi all,
I wanted to offer this drive up to you lovely people on AppleFritter first before I throw it to the lions of eBay - It's a VERY early drive (SN 01718) which I believe to be the Stugart drive as discussed here: http://www.applefritter.com/?q=content/are-low-sn-apple-2-drives-rare
It has not been powered up for at least 35 years so I have no idea if it works, but here are some high resolutions pics! Picture Gallery Link If you would like any extra pictures taken please let me know.
If you're interested, please drop me a message - Aiming to put it on eBay on Wednesday if nobody is interested
-AC
Wow, that is in really nice condition. Good luck!
I'd be interested in seeing the analog board inside and the little PCB on the back. The drive mechanism itself should have a Shugart badge, model number, serial number on the underside. These things should all be pretty easily visible once the case is off, and the case comes off very easily on these. The four screws on the bottom release the top case, which slides off, and reveals I think four more screws that release the bottom/back case and reveal the drive motor (and Shugart badge). Just taking the top case off would reveal the analog board on top. Once the bottom/back case is off, you can see the PCB at the back. The only trick to disassembly/reassembly to consider is that the ribbon cable coming out the back is probably held in place by a plastic clip on the inside of the back cover, which you'd probably want to disengage (or slide a bit) when taking the bottom/back off.
The reason I'm curious about it is I have a set of old drives as well, but one has a very low serial number (145) and is missing its analog board, and the other two have their analog board, but were extracted into an external case and so lack their labels (with what would have been their serial numbers). So, I'm just looking for something that might correlate them so I can better assess what I'm looking at with the two caseless drives (and maybe what I'd be looking for in terms of a replacement for 145's analog board).
(I mean, I'd be interested in owning 1718 too all things being equal, but not to the point of being able to offer a competitive amount for it. But if photos can be taken of the inside (either before the sale or after if it's someone here who gets it), I'd appreciate it. I haven't really investigated this carefully to see what other early serial number drives are out there and documented, but I don't think I turned up anything when I was searching a year or two ago.)