At the time, it was a type of capacitor targeting the specific voltage ranges and tolerances to be useful for a computer.
It's a thing that still shows up in a web search (but is far less meaningful).
genter•1h ago
Makes sense, I take for granted how great modern electrolytic caps are compared to 50 years ago.
analog31•1h ago
High capacitance, low voltage. Computers were somewhat unusual at the time in terms of requiring a lot of current at 5 Volts. The line frequency power supplies were inefficient enough even under optimal circumstances. I've seen some giant transformers from minicomputers of the day. And those huge blue capacitors the size of beer cans.
Apple II was one of the early PC's that used a switching power supply, and it wasn't particularly reliable. I worked at an Apple repair facility, and we replaced a lot of them. But our most common repairs were due to the huge number of chip sockets and low quality gold fingers on the disk controller board edge connector. We were a government agency (county run facility serving a bunch of semi rural school districts) and didn't charge a bench fee. If we could fix it on the spot by just pressing all of the chips back into their sockets, the repair was free and we didn't even log it.
greenbit•56m ago
It was about 110 chips on the original II wasn't it? Or maybe it's the II+ I'm thinking of. Anyway, it was a boatload of MSI parts.
analog31•36m ago
I only remember the II+, but both were dense with chips. The IIe had fewer chips as I recall. That level of complexity wasn't unheard of at the time. When the IBM PC came out, only a few of the chips were in sockets (the CPU and RAM/ROM), and people were nervous about repairability, but IBM pointed out that they had studied it to death over the years, and that the chips were more reliable than the sockets.
iwontberude•2h ago
Sick, now loan it to Computer History Museum so I can have a look
barbazoo•1h ago
If I was a billionaire I hope I’d buy artifacts like this and donate them for posterity. This is a really cool piece of history.
qingcharles•1h ago
Paul Allen did this, until he died and really left no continuation for his museum, which is crazy to me.
nereye•58m ago
For folks who are in the area (or might be visiting), the recently opened Interim Computer Museum has quite a collection of vintage systems:
Someone needs to create a Fallout 4 module that has the vibe of “Citizen Kane”.
goldenkey•1h ago
How about "Citizen Kanye?"
voidfunc•1h ago
No.
user3939382•1h ago
I’ve got an Apple II I’ll take 500k ;)
hahahahhaah•45m ago
Apple 1 launch price $600. Googles ai said 1k investment at 1980's IPO worth 2.5m today. So if you invested 600 that is 1.5m. It would have sat idle 1976 to 1980.
So board #0 beat the stock price but only just. And I am comparing board 0 to any old apple 1.
genter•2h ago
monocasa•1h ago
It's a thing that still shows up in a web search (but is far less meaningful).
genter•1h ago
analog31•1h ago
Apple II was one of the early PC's that used a switching power supply, and it wasn't particularly reliable. I worked at an Apple repair facility, and we replaced a lot of them. But our most common repairs were due to the huge number of chip sockets and low quality gold fingers on the disk controller board edge connector. We were a government agency (county run facility serving a bunch of semi rural school districts) and didn't charge a bench fee. If we could fix it on the spot by just pressing all of the chips back into their sockets, the repair was free and we didn't even log it.
greenbit•56m ago
analog31•36m ago