I'd check the PSU as many old PC's seem to be having leaking capacitors or other problems. Usually an easy fix, but you need to "pop the hood" to make sure.

I have an Apple IIe that would do something similar if an external drive (Apple Drive II) was hooked up. Sometimes it wouldn't even power on and you'd hear the power supply rapidly click. It was a bad power supply. If no external floppy was hooked up, it started up to the APPLE IIe screen. There are KITS available on ebay that contain all of the capacitors that typically need to be replaced, but sometimes its something else wrong with the power supply.

I'm also having fun with an Apple IIe external floppy emulator that uses SD cards:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/161826437546?_trksid= … K%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

Thanks guys, I went and ordered (for probably way too much money) a rebuilt one off ebay that comes with a warranty from the seller. I currently don't have a good enough soldering gun to get this job done, maybe in the future I'll get a better one so I can do these things myself but using the little radio shack one I have is an exercise in masochism. 🤣

King_Corduroy wrote:

Thanks guys, I went and ordered (for probably way too much money) a rebuilt one off ebay that comes with a warranty from the seller. I currently don't have a good enough soldering gun to get this job done, maybe in the future I'll get a better one so I can do these things myself but using the little radio shack one I have is an exercise in masochism. 🤣

That might be best, because I spent $20 on a kit to rebuild my apple IIe PSU. It still had issues afterwards...had to get a local repair shop to get the PSU back to full functionality, since there was a few other components in the PSU damaged.

King_Corduroy wrote:

However when the drive is plugged in it gets to the splash screen and then almost seems to cut power to the main computer as it tries to power and use the drive. Some times I have heard the drive begin to spin but in all cases the power light on the main computer goes out and the drive light stays on.

Inspect the floppy drive internals.

It could be that something inside the floppy drive is fried/shorted, so when the computer switches on the spindle or stepper, an overcurrent situation occurs and the PSU goes wonky.

Edit: The IIgs outputs standard 15kHz analogue RGB + composite sync on its display port. Should be easy to whip up a cable to connect to any 15kHz monitor you might have.

None of the Apple II machines shipped with a fan in the power supply. Steve hated them. The downside is that it typically roasted the caps after a while. My IIe and II+ did the same thing where they worked as-is but as soon as you plugged in a disk drive or anything that drew a heavier load the power supply freaked out and stopped playing nice. Switching out all of the lytics (and the AC mains filter caps as well as they like to harmlessly blow up) normally brings the power supplies back though.

My supply came today and it worked great after installing it. 😁 I really like how both my Macintosh LC, LC II and Powermac 6100/66 as well as this Apple IIGS are totally tool-less. IBM could have learned a thing from Apples designs. 😜

King_Corduroy wrote:

My supply came today and it worked great after installing it. 😁 I really like how both my Macintosh LC, LC II and Powermac 6100/66 as well as this Apple IIGS are totally tool-less. IBM could have learned a thing from Apples designs. 😜

Actually it's the other way around, Apple jumped on the tool-less wagon from observing what IBM was doing with the PS/2 line. The ThinkPads were also tool-less at the time as well (the 360 and 850 for instance: you pop up the keyboard like a car hood with no screws and any component can come out of the machine with no tools since they use special cradles--of course that means some stuff is proprietary, the downside of convenience).

As far as I know, apple didn't have tool-less designs to that degree on their portables, ever.

Huh! That's pretty neat I didn't know that. I was just going on the fact that the IBM PS2 can be a real pain in the butt to get apart. 🤣

raymangold wrote:

Actually it's the other way around, Apple jumped on the tool-less wagon from observing what IBM was doing with the PS/2 line.

Are you sure? Apple II's predate PS/2 by some years, and all had tool-less access. (Except maybe the IIc?)

It's worth noting that the IIGS predates the PS/2 by several months...

That said, toolless assembly is definitely something that IBM was working with to reduce costs before the IIGS launched - here's a video on the IBM ProPrinter, which used rather extreme amounts of toolless assembly, in 1985: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spDYSKl3kmo

As far as the assembly of an Apple II, while you could pop the lid on a ][, ][+, or //e to install cards or connect a joystick or RF modulator without tools, pretty much everything else required tools. The motherboard tray was screwed to the plastic case, the motherboard had screws holding it to the tray IIRC, the power supply had screws holding it to the tray, and the keyboard was screwed to the plastic case. The IIGS was, I believe, Apple's first fully toolless machine.

And, the //c was a fully tooled machine - everything screwed into the chassis except for the keyboard, then the lid screwed on over everything and captured the keyboard.

Yeah I have a IIc and that is all tooled for sure. In fact iirc it can be a real pain to get apart.

The trick to opening a //c is to remove the screws that hold it together (that's all of them but the four that hold the floppy drive in, although you can remove those too), fold the handle down (as if you're going to use it), lift the rear of the machine about 3-5", and drop it on its handle.

The handle will pop the case free.

bhtooefr wrote:

The trick to opening a //c is to remove the screws that hold it together (that's all of them but the four that hold the floppy drive in, although you can remove those too), fold the handle down (as if you're going to use it), lift the rear of the machine about 3-5", and drop it on its handle.

The handle will pop the case free.

I read descriptions like this and have to laugh when people say disassembly is "easy." Granted, it's not modern laptop levels of difficult, but it becomes Monty Python-esque after a while.

"Oh, you want to get at the hard drive? Simple enough. First you rub the top panel in gradually widening concentric circles (counterclockwise only), wiggle the rabbit ears, hit the secret catch under the bottom in morse code to spell out the magic word, give it a kiss, and pray."