First and foremost:
I would never have done this project with an intact IIe!
Background
One of the fun events they have at Kansasfest is the "Garage Givaway" this is made possible with the hard work and generosity of Sean Fayhe and James Littlejohn. Every year they haul an amazing amount of computer gear to Kansas City Missouri in their post-apocolyptic converted bus/truck hybrid. This pile of retro-goodness is for the attendees to make use of. The last time I was there in 2017 after the pile had been picked over, I found this apple IIe with a very cracked case. This picture shows it with the bottom tray already removed.
I decided to take it for use as a future undefined project.
A mere year and a half later I decided what I was going to do, truncate this sucker!
Step 1: The Concept
I started out by deciding what bits to keep. To help with this I did a mock-up in Photoshop.
Step 2: Getting the Bits
I marked out the bits with with tape, taking extra care to make sure the lid was taped top and bottom so it wouldn't shift when I started sawing.
I sawed it using a scroll saw.
Step 3: Getting it Together
I glued it in sections, one "layer" at a time. The one change I decided to make from my initial concept was to keep the lid as a separate piece. This was done mostly to help keep some of the look of the original IIe. I really wish I'd been able to figure out how to keep a few of the side vents.
The glue I used was liquid nail which was a terrible choice! At some point they've either changed the formulation or the stuff in the small squeeze tube is different form the caulk gun sized tube. It took FOREVER to dry hard and it didn't seem as strong a bond. I really wish I had used JB Weld.
To glue the back of the lid to the front I used epoxy putty which worked very well in filing the gap left by the plastics being cut at very different angles.
After the glue set I screwed the bottom plate back on the front of the IIe, marked the plate and cut it to fit the new case.
Step 4: Mind the Gaps
Next I used plastic filler to even things out. I had to do several rounds of application and sanding to get the pieces looking seamless.
Step 5: Paint
I masked the areas where the badges and the power light cover go so I wouldn't get paint build up in those spots.
The paint color I used is called Satin Almond by Fusion. The first coat was very effective at showing me just how bad my gap filling skills were.
I fixed the imperfections with more filler, more paint and a lot more sanding. All that sanding led to another problem, texture. Where the plastics joined were now silky smooth, completely devoid of the IIe texture.
After looking at options for textured paints I found a spraypaint that had sand in it.
I used this then did a bunch of coats of the Satin Almond to take the sand texture down several notches. This worked just as I hoped. The machine once again had a uniform texture.
Step 6: IIe Got Back
With the outside done it was time to turn my attention to the inside. I decided it would be nice to have all the components attached to a slide-out tray.
I used 3mil pvc sheeting and bent it using a heat gun.
I glued "rails" to the bottom for the tray to slide into.
The ports I decided to include are two usb ports, hdmi, composite out, FKey break out cable (more on that later) and power cord/switch.
Step 7: It's Aaaaaaaaalllllll Coming Together
I thought it would be neat to have a full pc powercord going to the back of the machine. This made life much harder on myself. Because of my cord choice it meant I had to put the AC/DC adapter inside the case. You know. The case I've just spent a lot of time and effort making smaller.
The other items show below are the Raspberry Pi, the various cables and the keyboard shield.
The keyboard shield is what really made this project possible. So, what is it? Here's the description off the retroconnector.com website.
Connect the keyboard of a classic Apple IIe to a modern system, whether you're building a stealthy system for retro gaming emulation, an '80s themed iPad dock, or just really prefer the super clicky feel of those old keys. Perfect for embedding a Raspberry Pi in a retro shell!
Charles Mangin is an extremely smart and inventive individual who has given the retro computer community a lot of great products over the years. He has mentioned that he's no longer producing his shield line of electronics but that www.reactivemicro.com will start providing them soon.
Step 8: Finishing Hardware Touches
So with all the stuff in place there are just a few more things I wanted to do.
The first bit was having extra buttons mapped to Function keys that would be used with the Apple IIe emulator, linapple (more on that in the software section).
The buttons are connected to the gpio pins of the pi. I've got most of the buttons attached to a spare piece of plastic from the IIe but I made two separate buttons that are mapped for loading disk images into S6,D1 and S6,D2
The last cosmetic thing was applying the same paint technique to the monitor as I did to the case to complete the retro look.
Step 9: Software
I couldn't get the autoboot to work on the newest version of 2018-11-13-raspbian-stretch-full. They moved where the autostart is located from
/home/pi/.config/lxsession/LDXE-pi/autostart to /etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart
So, I went with 2018-10-09-raspbian-stretch, which has the autoboot in the old location.
Installing linapple
This was crazy. I couldn't get a proper install using Ivanx or http://linapple.sourceforge.net
I had to install linapple on a pi with retropie then boot into the desktop and copy the folder to a usb drive which I then copied to /home/pi/linapple.
This didn't boot immediately, but after reading one of the text files located in the linapple folder I installed some packages it listed, then it booted!
I edited
/home/pi/.config/lxsession/LDXE-pi/autostart
to autostart linapple
Next hurdle, getting it to boot using the linapple.conf
I noticed that when I got the autoboot done it was booting up with different parameters than when I launched it from the linapple folder, including not launching the default Master.dsk image.
I launched from autoboot changed some of the setting then told it to save the changes. I figured out that it was saving it NOT in the linapple foler but in the /home/pi folder.
Once I knew that I moved the full linapple.conf file to that location as well as the Master.dsk image it worked!
The last thing was installing the software that let me map buttons attached to the gpio pins. I used retrogame from adafruit.
Thank you to Breen Patterson over on the Apple II enthusiasts facebook page for coming up with a much better name than apple IImini