A lot of my Apple II videos are made with a genuine Apple IIc+ machine. This machine has a fun history and some good upgrades.

The Apple IIc+ was the last 8-bit Apple II machine Apple manufactured, and is the most recent addition to my collection. I found a listing for two non-functioning machines on eBay for $75 in 2017 or so, and I thought I could maybe make a single working machine from them. Turns out, I got both of them working, so I have a spare. These come from the Victor Jr. High School in Victorville, CA, and were originally inventoried by the school district in 1990. Wikipedia has a full article about the IIc+ and how it is different from its predecessor, the Apple IIc, but the big differences are: an accelerated CPU running at about 4x, a 3.5″ internal floppy disk drive, 8-pin serial ports with proper hardware flow control, a great keyboard with Alps Salmon or Orange switches, an internal memory expansion port, and internal modem port, and the latest ROM/Firmware to support a variety of storage devices on the SmartPort drive connector.

Over the years, I’ve added a variety of upgrades (most of which will have reviews shortly):

• A ROM 5x chip, which adds accelerator control, diagnostics, boot options, and RAM disk reformatting tools.
• A RamExpress II+ from A2Heaven, which adds a battery-backed-up and bootable 1MB “Slinky-style” ramdisk along with a real-time clock. It plugs right into the memory expansion port on the motherboard, and AppleWorks automatically recognizes any free RAM to increase the size of the AppleWorks Desktop, and a few other programs like ProTerm and PublishIT!.
• An A2CDVI video adapter plugged into the Video Port, which makes the computer output very clean video over an HDMI port, suitable for using with a modern LCD display, HDMI capture hardware, etc. It can be set to output full color, monochrome in Green or Amber or White, and it can emulate “CRT scan lines” to mimic what monitors looked like in the 80’s. It is very authentic. This replaces A2Heaven’s excellent VGA adapter.
• A very early version of the FloppyEmu hard disk emulator from Big Mess O Wires, which plugs into the SmartPort and let’s you use Hard Drive images stored on SD cards with your Apple II.
• An updated and modern IIc+ Universal Power Supply from ReactiveMicro. The computers were occasionally rebooting after an hour with the original power supplies, and now it works smoothly.
• The keyboards were scratchy and needed a full disassembly and rebuild, but I found a new-in-box keyboard for this model which was just perfect feeling – really like when this was new (I used a new model at Beagle Bros for about a year as my daily driver, so I know what “new” feels like with these) – so that went on.

Additional peripherals include:

• A Viewsonic VA1655 16″ LCD monitor, which accepts HDMI input from a side-mounted port and comes with an adjustable stand perfect for sitting on top of an Apple IIc+. (Buy it with this affiliate link to send a little $$ my way.)
• A Kraft IIc joystick, which has a switch allowing it to emulate a mouse OR a joystick. This is useful because the IIc only has one port for both the joystick and the mouse, and some software will confuse a normal Apple II joystick for a mouse and freak out. When that happens, you can switch the joystick over to Mouse mode and keep on truckin’. Joystick models are a highly personal thing: and whenever Kraft joysticks come up, some will say “They Suck,” and other will say “You misspelled ‘Great!'” I think they are great, and I have 3 different versions of these for my 3 main Apple II machines – one I’ve owned sine 1985.
• An Apple IIc Mouse model A2M4015, which looks slightly different than the normal Apple II/Mac Plus mouse and has slightly different electronics inside to accomodate the IIc/IIc+ joystick/mouse port properly. Not ever Apple II mouse works on every IIc, and this was the mouse I needed for this computer.