So, this couple month rev 0 is a hot topic, recently one of my friend is kind enough to sell me his Apple II rev 0, which is not in very good condition, the original power supply is gone and many paint chip off and some hacked holes (I would say butchered), though only a few ICs are non-1977. The restoration job was a not difficult one, after putting an Apple II plus power supply, reseating the ICs and replacing the light bulb and speaker, it can boot to monitor and switch to integer Basic after press CTRL-B-ENTER. All keyswitches responded though there is a couple repeated characters, audio jacks work fine as I can load game.
But what interests me is the quality of the casing:
- Paint falls off easily showing poor adhesive between the paint and the base (polyurethane vs later ABS which does not require paint), I saw there should be primer under the paint but it seems it did not do the job;
- It was said that the early run was made using a so called reactive injection molding; the process was fast but left irregular surface and many parts had to be sanded in order to fit together, it seems to appear in my rev 0, there is sign of sanding (very rough)
- The ventilation slots seems to be made AFTER molding and before painting, as shown by the irregular edge and width of the slots; probably this was a "corrective" action after someone buyers said the content would go too hot without ventilation and before new molding die and ABS were used.
Now I have swapped the casing with an Apple II plus and some photos showing their differences.
https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/109866693740649982432/albums/5886330521909645505
Michael
