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Dark Green Slot Rev 0s

467.jpg Based on my research there were about 250 ventless Apple II's made. The ventless on the cover of Micro The 6502 Journal OCT - NOV 1977 has a motherboard number of 467. If you consider the deviation between the motherboard and baseplate of the last ventless sold on ebay, which was 203, was 215, then you have to assume that there had to be at least 250 produced. The lowest number ventless that I have seen is 25, which has a deviation of 189 between the motherboard and baseplate. The latest one has a deviation of 215, which is number 203. Apparently, Apple continued to sell boards without cases during that time, which accounts for the difference. I purchased one of these board only revision 0's, after I was able to track down the original owner and verify the details.
 
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The trick isn’t how many were made, but how many survived not being “upgraded” to a plastic case for free under warranty.
 
Do collectors put any sort of premium on the Rev 0s that were sold loose, given that it seems some loose boards were sold in advance of the cases machines?

Side note: my Rev 0 appears to have disappeared into the bowels of my freight forwarder. 4 days since delivery and they haven't posted it for shipping out to me. Hopefully just being slow.. but a part of me always wonders if employees might be tempted 'lose' the odd valuable item.
 
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The last separate rev-0 board I saw was sold a few years ago for about $2k, it was not a super low serial number. I think actual desirability and value has more to do with serial # and provenance. Most loose boards would lower serial numbers. As for provenance, if someone had a board with the paperwork showing it was an upgrade from trading in an Apple-1, I would think that would make it worth many times what a regular board is worth. Provenance is the biggest variable in any collectible. The most extreme example of this is in the watch world, where Paul Newman’s Rolex sold for 17.8 million dollars where if it belonged to just about any other person it would have been much less.
 
It's not clear to me that the bare boards were sold in advance of complete units, but it's clear that they were sold at the same time for a while. I had a friend that bought a bare board, while I bought a compete unit. Both bare boards and systems are listed in the first price lists.

regards,
Mike Willegal

falter said:
Do collectors put any sort of premium on the Rev 0s that were sold loose, given that it seems some loose boards were sold in advance of the cases machines?

Side note: my Rev 0 appears to have disappeared into the bowels of my freight forwarder. 4 days since delivery and they haven't posted it for shipping out to me. Hopefully just being slow.. but a part of me always wonders if employees might be tempted 'lose' the odd valuable item.
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Ah. I always assumed the bare boards were offered a little before because the boards in complete machines have serials a few hundred ahead of their pan serial number. Perhaps they set the first few hundred aside and sold as requested?

On the topic of bare boards, I'm not wrong in my belief that it's pretty much pointless to buy a Rev 0 case missing it's board, because more than likely the Rev 0 board it had went back to Apple or was destroyed, right? ie. There are likely fewer than a handful loose boards out there, mostly by luck? We don't know of any cases of Apple repairing/returning Rev 0 boards to service when newer revisions were available?
 
falter said:
On the topic of bare boards, I'm not wrong in my belief that it's pretty much pointless to buy a Rev 0 case missing it's board, because .......
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My logic is that why collect a version of a product that is buggy? This is the equivalent of collecting factory-defective baseball cards, or dollar bills that were not cut correctly. The Rev 0 is technically a lousy and problematic version of the board, hence the multiple reversions of said board. I would think that the case and bottom alone is what is valued, and anything inside is irregardless because, as [falter] pointed out, at the time you actually used the equipment during the late 1970s/early 1980s, you just wanted a working computer, and everyone took advantage of the revisions of the guts of the computer.
 
I think the mystique of the Rev 0 is that it is essentially the Apple II as Steve originally designed it. I know of its quirks, but I've not heard anyone describe it as problematic per se. I'm not sure if Steve regarded things like the purple text as a real problem or not. Maybe those with more experience can comment on that. For me, the Rev 7-RFI just don't have the same personality, or the same connection to its creator.
 
Apple II rev 0 boards were not buggy. There were some improvements, enhancements and cost reductions made along the way, but for all intents and purposes an Apple II rev 0 PCB would reliably run virtually all the software that would run on a rev 7 PCB.

There were a couple of issues, such as the first character being dropped after power up, but none of them would be considered show-stoppers. If you were bothered by the missing features, such as the extra hi-res colors, the changes were small enough that you could always add them to the board.

regards,
Mike Willegal

groink said:
My logic is that why collect a version of a product that is buggy? This is the equivalent of collecting factory-defective baseball cards, or dollar bills that were not cut correctly. The Rev 0 is technically a lousy and problematic version of the board, hence the multiple reversions of said board. I would think that the case and bottom alone is what is valued, and anything inside is irregardless because, as [falter] pointed out, at the time you actually used the equipment during the late 1970s/early 1980s, you just wanted a working computer, and everyone took advantage of the revisions of the guts of the computer.
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So my Rev 0 finally arrived.. I'm going to get to powering it up soon but I'm curious... to me the case plastic feels a little bit.. I don't know... not as dense as the one on my Rev 02. Is that my imagination? Or did they dial in the case making process/material a bit somewhere between the Rev 0 and down the line?
 
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