Price Advice Apple IIsi with monitor, keyboard

[wayneandlinda]

I have our old IIsi from 1990 with the monitor, keyboard and a Kensington trackball. There’s even a monitor stand we added later. The keyboard still has the original keyboard cover-so at least it’s clean. The computer last ran in 2022 before it was boxed and stored for my move. I unpacked it and turned it on, it lit up but wouldn’t finish the boot. I fear now that too much dust has done it in. I unplugged it after a few minutes. Any ideas on how much this could be worth to someone perhaps for parts or someone who maybe wants to take it apart for a good cleaning? It’s vintage now after all this time. Monitor stand not shown in photo.

 

[dmr727]

What happens on the monitor when you attempt to boot it? Flashing question mark? Nothing at all?

It's very possible it'll need to be recapped, but from your pic it looks to be in good shape. The case is trivial to pop off - maybe take a look under the hood and let us know what you see!

EDIT: You wanted advice about a price, and I dropped the ball. A quick unscientific search around ebay seems to have non-working examples of the IIsi for about a hundred bucks. Hard to tell if the monitor helps or hurts - it really increases the shipping price, but it's also the 'correct' monitor for a IIsi, so someone might value that...

 

[velocityg4]

What happens on the monitor when you attempt to boot it? Flashing question mark? Nothing at all?

It's very possible it'll need to be recapped, but from your pic it looks to be in good shape. The case is trivial to pop off - maybe take a look under the hood and let us know what you see!

EDIT: You wanted advice about a price, and I dropped the ball. A quick unscientific search around ebay seems to have non-working examples of the IIsi for about a hundred bucks. Hard to tell if the monitor helps or hurts - it really increases the shipping price, but it's also the 'correct' monitor for a IIsi, so someone might value that...

And while in there. Remove the old battery.

 

[dmr727]

And while in there. Remove the old battery.

YES. Dumb of me to not mention that!

 

[wayneandlinda]

What happens on the monitor when you attempt to boot it? Flashing question mark? Nothing at all?

It's very possible it'll need to be recapped, but from your pic it looks to be in good shape. The case is trivial to pop off - maybe take a look under the hood and let us know what you see!

EDIT: You wanted advice about a price, and I dropped the ball. A quick unscientific search around ebay seems to have non-working examples of the IIsi for about a hundred bucks. Hard to tell if the monitor helps or hurts - it really increases the shipping price, but it's also the 'correct' monitor for a IIsi, so someone might value that...

Thank you. Wayne would have done all that in a heartbeat (sadly he passed a few years back). I might tackle that, though probably not today. The computer did make the familiar initial sound upon first attempt and a nice bright screen lit up. That was all. No flashing, no words or messages. Nothing more. I think a good cleaning, a battery, all that makes sense, to me. Don’t know if I burnt out wires or circuits—hope not. I don’t know if we had any spare cables left from other old computers any longer (which were all recycled years ago). This was our first and so we always kept it and it was relegated to a gameplay machine only.

 

[velocityg4]

Thank you. Wayne would have done all that in a heartbeat (sadly he passed a few years back). I might tackle that, though probably not today. The computer did make the familiar initial sound upon first attempt and a nice bright screen lit up. That was all. No flashing, no words or messages. Nothing more. I think a good cleaning, a battery, all that makes sense, to me. Don’t know if I burnt out wires or circuits—hope not. I don’t know if we had any spare cables left from other old computers any longer (which were all recycled years ago). This was our first and so we always kept it and it was relegated to a gameplay machine only.

The most common issue with your symptoms is that it needs to be recapped. Most Macs from that era need new capacitors.

You could try reseating the RAM. Be careful of brittle plastic on the RAM clips.

 

[dmr727]

Thank you. Wayne would have done all that in a heartbeat (sadly he passed a few years back). I might tackle that, though probably not today. The computer did make the familiar initial sound upon first attempt and a nice bright screen lit up. That was all. No flashing, no words or messages. Nothing more. I think a good cleaning, a battery, all that makes sense, to me.

You might also want to head over to https://68kmla.org/ and ask your question. There might be more than a few folks over there that'd be happy to give your IIsi a good home.