Watch This Happy, Happy Man Refurbish An Old Apple II

This charming man, Todd Harrison, bought a used Apple II and some drives from Ebay and did what any self-respecting geek would do: he gave them the attention and respect they deserved, cleaning all the parts and getting it ready to run some BASIC again.

The machines were in pretty rough shape. He powered the CPU on and it seemed to fry a little and as he dug through the box he found packing peanuts in the casings and a number of special treats including a Hayes Microcomputer modem. Todd grabbed some rubbing alcohol and some Clorox and got to work. Why? Because he loved Apple IIs.

The very first computer I ever used was an Apple II Plus in high school and I couldn’t get enough time on this machine. I was more than fascinated by computers I was obsessed. Every minute learning on the Apple was a joy to me but later my parents got me a Commodore 64 home computer which consumed me for years. I still took every computer class I could in high school where all the assignments were on the Apple II Plus and I think we had Apple IIe computers by my senior year.

The results are pretty exciting. He was able to clean up the whole kit, including the CRT and the drives, and was typing in BASIC programs right away. It’s rare to see someone offer this much reverence and respect to old hardware and I wonder what my kids will cherish when they get into their 40s and look back on the wild and crazy world they grew up in. They’ll probably be booting up old iPod Touches, commenting on the size and lack of biocircuitry.