Apple Monitor /// - Anti glare mesh? (Teardown, Clean and Tune)
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- čas přidán 17. 04. 2020
- It's finally time to clean up and tune up this old Apple Monitor ///! (You may have first seen it on my old Apple /// video.) It may be from 1983 but it woks like it's brand new! I just need to deal with that anti glare mesh.
Model: A3M0039
CRT: Green phosphor P42
Manufactured: Feb 1983
Serial: B3B 201063
Made by Hitachi for Apple
--- Video Links
Apple III Mini Review and Fix:
• The Apple III: My mini...
Pomona Electronics MD 4000 - can't find much information on this probe
--- Tools
Deoxit D5:
amzn.to/2VvOKy1
store.caig.com/s.nl/it.A/id.16...
Jonard Tools EX-2 Chip Extractor:
amzn.to/2VazxDS
www.jonard.com/Products/EX-2-...
Wiha Chip Lifter:
amzn.to/3a9ftWw
www.wihatools.com/precision-c...
O-Ring Pick Set: (I use these to lift chips off boards)
amzn.to/3a9x54J
Elenco Electronics LP-560 Logic Probe:
amzn.to/2VrT5lW
Hakko FR301 Desoldering Iron:
amzn.to/2ye6xC0
Rigol DS1054Z Four Channel Oscilloscope:
www.rigolna.com/products/digi...
Head Worn Magnifying Goggles / Dual Lens Flip-In Head Magnifier:
amzn.to/3adRbuy
TL866II Plus Chip Tester and EPROM programmer: (The MiniPro)
amzn.to/2wG4tlP
www.aliexpress.com/item/33000...
TS100 Soldering Iron:
amzn.to/2K36dJ5
www.ebay.com/itm/TS100-65W-MI...
EEVBlog 121GW Multimeter:
www.eevblog.com/product/121gw/
DSLogic Basic Logic Analyzer:
amzn.to/2RDSDQw
www.ebay.com/itm/USB-Logic-DS...
Magnetic Screw Holder:
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www.harborfreight.com/4-inch-...
Universal ZIP sockets: (clones, used on my ZIF-64 test machine)
www.ebay.com/itm/14-16-18-20-...
RetroTink 2X Upconverter: (to hook up something like a C64 to HDMI)
www.retrotink.com/
Plato (Clone) Side Cutters: (order five)
www.ebay.com/itm/1-2-5-10PCS-...
Heat Sinks:
www.aliexpress.com/item/32537...
Little squeezy bottles: (available elsewhere too)
amzn.to/3b8LOOI
--- Links
My GitHub repository:
github.com/misterblack1?tab=r...
Commodore Computer Club / Vancouver, WA - Portland, OR - PDX Commodore Users Group
www.commodorecomputerclub.com/
--- C64 Stuff
JaffyDOS:
blog.worldofjani.com/?p=3544
C64 Test Harness I use:
• Building a Commodore 6...
C64 Homebrew cartridge PCB: (used for the DeadTest / Diag Cart I use)
www.ebay.com/itm/Commodore-64...
EasyFlash 3 Multi-Cart:
store.go4retro.com/easyflash-3/
--- Instructional videos
My video on damage-free chip removal:
• How to remove chips wi...
--- Music
Intro music by:
Nathan Divino
@itsnathandivino
Outro Music:
Abyss by | e s c p | escp-music.bandcamp.com
Music promoted by www.free-stock-music.com
Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
creativecommons.org/licenses/... - Věda a technologie
![Fault finding and trying to fix the Apple ][ plus](/img/n.gif)
3:45 the sticker on the back says made for Apple by Hitachi! 😁
Crazy, but Apple always outsource their manufacturing, they always have. Makes it quicker (not cheaper obv lol)
@@jameslewis7620 Most computer companies did for monitors. CRT construction is far enough removed from everything else involved in making a computer that even highly-integrated companies tended to pay a TV company to make them a display.
Yes. Compaq for instance used Kyocera for their CRT monitors.
@@stanburton6224 TI used both Zenith and Panasonic during their brief foray into home computing.
Yep, in Europe a lot of monitors were actually made by Philips, or at least had Philips picture tubes
"Take your first shot now."
Uh-oh, he's on to us.
LOL
I'm way ahead.
Hit me with your best shot! Fire awaaaaaay!
@Adrian's Digital Basement .. if you want to put a "new" anti glare filter at 13:50 ... you know for historical proposites or something like that.. you can get one from this vintage Anti-glare fiber "fultra fine nylon mesh" (image 4)
»» www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Computer-CRT-Screen-Anti-glare-Color-Monitor-Filter-1988-MAC-IBM-NEC-/174168256917
According to the "Phosphor Handbook", P39 and P42 are both "yellowish-green" in color. The P-numbers are the EIA designation for the different phosphor types.
In my nearly 45 years on this planet, I have never ever been disappointed with anything that said Hitachi on it. Looks wonderful!
Had a "lemon" of a hdd from hitachi (came in a toshiba laptop) once, several diagnostics told me it was faulted and would soon die. I was still running that faulted drive about 6, 7 years later. It hadn't gotten any worse, still worked fine, read wrote, and absolutely never crashed. Every review of that drive i found said it was unreliable. I found that not to be the case. I just finally retired it about 2 weeks ago, as i had built an lfs system on it and want to rescue it off of it before it does actually stop working. Do indeed respect hitachi, even the lemons never die.
I bought 4 30GB Deskstars about 17 years ago. I had them in RAID5 so if something happened I could recover stuff. Just retired them almost a year ago (they were holding unimportant stuff lately) still going strong... I think it was only a certain drive from the IBM days that had problems, but it tarnished the name forever.
When I was a kid my friend had a Monitor /// for his Apple IIE, and I fell in love with the color of that green monochrome tube. I only had a b/w television to use as a monitor for my Atari 400, and by comparison the Apple's green was way, way sexier (a little bit ironic too, as my Atari actually had the better color and grayscale capability). I liked the green Apple display aesthetic so much that I used to POKE my school's C64s to green text on a borderless black background every time I powered mine on. To me nothing recalls the feeling of early home computing more than a monochrome display.
It's only 8am and I'm already doing Deoxit shots... 😂
LMAO
Croissant
My father always taught me to screw backwards before going clockwise. Glad to hear I'm not the only one who does it, it's second nature now.
Pro Tip: If you have to take a CRT out of a monitor or TV and you can't disconnect the yoke from the electronics in an easy way and it doesn't need to be adjusted, leave the yoke on the CRT. If you have to (or prefer to) take it off anyway, use a marker to note the original position.
Great video Adrian! Thanks for posting.
The Apple IIe computer lab at my elementary school had a few of these, and of course none of us could resist scratching our fingernails on that mesh! (Most of the other Apple IIes had Amdek color monitors which had the added benefit of an amplified speaker unused by the //e, so we often connected 2 adjacent monitors to a walkman for stereo music...) Great video thanks!
The image is so clear, really sharp, i love it
16:00 re: going backwards before forwards when screwing in. I've always done that since I was a little kid. Just seemed to make sense that I didn't want to wreck the threads. (Before I figured that out I definitely stripped some screws.)
This is great advice. I learned the same trick about 20 years ago from a plumber working on water softeners. Been doing it ever since.
@@jason50146 in one of the videos on my channel I found an old HP, and inside were a few expansion cards.
Now, instead of taking their time, the previous owner had strong-armed new threads into the post at a 45 degree angle rather than bother to seat the card properly.
Sadly, that was not the first time I've seen someone do that 😸😅
me to, have to do that with plastic devices.
16:07 - this is a wonderful tip/technique that is easy to forget about when trying to teach basic skills to people. This technique applies to many other situations! Almost every time you are placing a screw/bolt into an already machined (threaded) channel, you should back twist until you fall into the existing grooves before tightening.
- CROSS THREADING KILLS -
Nice job! Thanks for showing the whole process and your attention to detail.
Love the daredevil pointing before the warning about high voltages. Nail energising stuff.
12:20 The exact same thing happened to me at my first job, trying to install an ethernet card in a Mac SE for the first time! I shortly thereafter learned how to safely replace a CRT tube. ;)
This was immensely satisfying to watch, rock on sir!
You made a major score on that monitor. Amazing at the quality for its age. Perfect video between tech and safety.
Thank you for spreading the screw in plastic trick !
Very interesting video. CRT repair and adjustment is fast becoming a lost art
Love the enthusiasm, video's like these can be almost robotic but you can hear you enjoying sprucing this up. As for gushing, you gush all you like, its a job well done and the picture was pretty damn good. Well done from a sunless and cold old UK. Keep safe..
I remember vendors selling a retrofit kit to add a similar mesh to monitors, back in the 80s. The Amdek monitors had this mesh as well.
Great process. Time to do this to my KFest 2019 Monitor ///!
You only ever forget to discharge the CRT once in your life, especially on very high voltage professional colour studio monitors. I repaired the PSU in a sony rack mount (deep metal enclosure) colour monitor at the TV transmitter site I used to work at when I was in my early 20s. I put the board back in and reached elbow deep into the cage to put the tube EHT plug back in and WHAM I copped a shock that threw me back in the control room and left a considerable amount of skin and blood on every sharp surface in that chassis!
Oh, I had one of these for my Commodore 64 back in the early 80's. Got the Monitor /// second-hand. Good times!
I have one of these on my //e, on my desk at work :) when I first got mine it was missing some of the rubber block feet off the bottom, so I removed the remaining one and fitted four new ones, in slightly different positions so it would sit snugly on top of my //e, which is a different width than the ///. Now I can use it with the top cover of the computer removed, as it sits on the edges, held in place by the slight lip. Thank you again for another interesting video!
when i was in school they had the apples with monitor where you tilt the tube like you mentioned, i have an 1986 iie with the color monitor.
Regarding the CRT number, typically the P in the part number indicates the phosphor used. With televisions, P4 indicated a black and white CRT while P22 indicated a color CRT. I’m sure there are similar numbers to indicate the various phosphors used on monitor CRTs.
I had this monitor on my Apple II+ and distinctly remember how sharp it was and the texture on the screen.
My first computer when I was a kid was an Apple IIe with one of these that my dad bought in '84. For a while we had both this and a TV hooked up, so we could game in color but dad could actually work in 80-column applications. It's a really wonderful monitor! I've still got the whole rig in storage.
Somewhere along the line the mesh got a nasty rip right in the middle of the screen. The idea of cracking the thing open and taking the mesh out entirely never occurred to me!
This video was very interesting and entertaining. As always Adrian, Thank you! Multiple thumbs up.🙂
I always go backwards first when putting screws back in, not just with plastic. Only recently found Blanche's channel but I enjoy it.
I had one of these, circa 1988-89. It was the first "Long-Persistence" monitor that I ever came across. Plug it into an Amiga composite port, and set it to interlaced video. You'll be surprised at the result. SERIOUSLY Long Persistence.
15:59 Great piece of advice for reinstalling self tapping screws in these older plastic cases - thanks for sharing!
Isn't that how you insert all screws? That's how I've always done it
Always nice somebody tries to use a green or amber monitor instead of searching for a color one. Good that people like you still know how those worked and how to handle/adjust them. Also nice you took the info from Fran! Haven't repaired a crt in ages myself so enjoy these video's since they bring back both good and bad memories (yeah the high voltage is one of the bad things lol)
27:17 Adrian, you get to gush. Great work and great results.
My Technical school had Apple 2e computers and we used these monitors . We had amber . Love how you save these old relics that could fade away in to the dust of history in someones garage . Or as Moe says : " car hole " .
I worked on the assembly line in a small computer company called Syntrex, and one of the jobs I did was adjusting and centering the picture on the monitors and installing the back casing. This was in 1985.
Fascinating, I've never heard/seen this before in all my years with computers, an actual anti-glare cloth.
Awesome job! Thank You. 👍 I am pretty sure this is the monitor our high school library used for the Apple II+s that were available to use. It didn't even occur to me at the time that they were for the Apple III since I was a C64 user in 1983 so I didn't pay much attention. But that is a nice screen and it is amazing how good that monitor turned out for being as old as it is.
the "going backwards a bit first" thing to the screws is great advice for most all screws/bolts/threaded stuff/etc.
I just recieved one of these for free, I couldn't be more excited. I hooked it up to my Coleco ADAM and Atari XEGS to test it and it looks amazing.
From how clean the back of the CRT is you might have a low hour set. Most high hour sets will contain lots of dust. Very cool part of vintage computer history.
I have that same monitor, and it came with that same kind of smear down it. Wiping it off doesn't help, you just end up with more gunk stuck in the netting. You have to pull the picture tube out and flush the mesh out. I think the Pxx is the name of the phosphor itself. For example, P39 is a green long-persistence phosphor used in displays. The Monitor III is notorious for having a really smeary display, so it makes sense that P39 would be used in it.
Fond memories with that monitor. I used it with my Apple ///. Dr. Wendell Sanders (of Apple /// fame) created a card for the Apple /// that could also drive this monitor in some sort of double resolution mode where the black lines on the interlaced image would be filled. The feature was controlled with a physical switch added to the Apple ///. Some monitors would flicker with the de-interlaced mode engaged. I tried several monitors at the local computer store until I found one that would not flicker when the de-interlaced mode engaged. Many fond memories from my days at On Three! :-) Thanks for sharing :-)
46 years old, I remember it well!
Nice tip about plastic threads thanks.
Those ring adjustments around the neck of the CRT used to be one of my go-to fixes for convergence being off on CRTs. I didn't know much about the electronics, but as a kid I knew that you could adjust the "knives" as I called them to fix the colour convergence. Lots of old TVs had bad convergence from the factory it seemed. Always bugged me and I had to fix it if I saw it was off.
Nice. .it's certainly a lot harder to adjust those properly on a color set versus monochrome where it simply moves the picture around.
Monitor repair videos still give me the heebie-jeebies but they are super fascinating. I have a tiny 12" VGA monitor which goes yellow until you thwack it just right, which needs servicing but I can't muster the confidence to open it up.
Ahh the good old "percussive maintenance" hehe
Really interesting video! That monitor is a beauty!
Interesting history, that this was the first Apple-branded monitor. My high school had Apple IIs, and had at least as many of these Monitor ///s as they did Monitor IIs. This explains why that was.
Thanks for the link to the squeezy bottles. Mr Carlson is always using them and I wanted some to use with my flux and lubricants.
Thank you so much, this video helped me fix mine
I picked up one of those Apple Monitor ///s real cheap and used it on my C-64 for a while. It also had a few blemishes in that cloth mesh (although it didn't bother me). I used it for my BBS computer. It was a positively wonderful screen.
When I was in school in the early-mid '90s there were a lot of Monitor IIIs and some had the tilting CRT. I don't remember any of them having a dim or worn out CRT.
My first computer had this exact same model monitor. As a kid, I messed with all the knobs, took it a part. But I didn't touch the electronics in the CRT. I only peeked inside. I hooked it up to the family VCR and watch TV on a green display. Those were the days, when you tried everything to see what it can do. I also got yelled at for doing it.
Good job Adrian!
I remember those monitors. Nostalgic...
i love the digital basement
Beautiful screen. Must see if I can find some of that 303 stuff over here 🇮🇪. Thanks Adrian 👍
I remember those mesh anti-glare filters, but I've never seen one built-in like that (not hard to do though). They worked well for monitors up to VGA, but anything SVGA or higher, the moire pattern was far too distracting, and so I stopped using them.
What's possible to use on screens to get rid of the glare instead of the mesh is the same foil wrap used by car wrappers. It's available in transparent matte finish and quite simple to wrap around the crt tube.
Obvious tip for working on CRTs, adjust the picture using a mirror so you are not reaching around, your hand could slip onto something it shouldn't. Especially with big TVs. (A tip from my old dad who was an old school TV repair man)
Gotta love bodily fluids on the hardware...
Thank you Adrian, awesome as per usual.
As a kid I remember a bunch of our Apple IIs had similar monitors (probably the Amdeks you mentioned) and kids would just tear the fabric apart and pull it off from the front, leaving a frayed edge around the sides.
Henry Winkler’s character uses this monitor in the 1982 movie ´Night Shift’.
I have an Amdek Color-I monitor that had this mesh. It was scuffed up and had a few bad spots so I decided to just get rid of it. Rather than removing the CRT which seems like a lot of work along with the risks to the tube and myself, I simply loosened the four screws around the corners of the tube. That allowed me to push it back away from the bezel slightly and tear away the cloth from the sides. One side did leave a bit of of the mesh that I was unable to tear off so I just tucked it up under the bezel and then tightened the tube back down.
You know, that ghosting effect would make a nice Williams memory unit. My dad's name was William so I kinda came across stuff like that a long, long time ago. Nice job with the servicing.
Great video Adrian! Love the content.
I had a white phosphor Monitor III, I took that anti-glare screen off of it too, it came with my apple ][ plus, it also served duty as a TV attached to a VCR, and an amplified speaker that I made from an old tape recorder with a potentiometer I harvested from an Atari paddle controller and installed into a coffee can, powered by a 6 volt lantern battery also in the coffee can. I used the same setup with my old Sega Master System :) it was a great utilitarian monitor.
Excellent video! I didn't know that the anti-glare mesh was so easily removable. That's good news, because of the two /// monitors I have, one has a bad scratch on it. :)
I bought one of these to compliment my apple II+ clone that I built as a kit. There was a guy selling the apple II+ blank motherboards with all the parts to solder on... so it was a cool challenge given how young I was back then. In the early eighties, there was a flood of apple (and IBM) clone parts that hit the market, that made these PC's more affordable (although some of those parts were very cheap).
Any time I had a CRT monitor apart for any repair the one thing to do is resolder all the pins on the LOPT and line output transistor, and the drive transformer, plus the low value resistors around the base circuit of the line driver, plus any diodes attached to the heatsink. They can crack from thermal cycling or vibration, creating dry joints that are near invisible, but which blow up the transistor or transformer. Same for the power supply diodes with the transformer supplies, or the switching power supply. Redo all the power diodes, power resistors, the power transformer, the coupling transformer if there for drive, and the switching transformer, along with the PTC degauss thermistor. Solved a lot of intermittent wiggle problems off the bat. Also a go around the CRT base connectors to do the joins that hold the tube socket to the CRT base board, and the transistors there, plus all the shielding band connections, used as grounds for various parts of the CRT base.
wonder how many of those hairline cracks were caused by people banging their TV to "fix" it...
Hi All, nice video, i remember 'back in the days' we had some type of "dumb terminals" for the accounting system - @ 1988, and they were new and the screens were very bright, the company that done the install came back about 2 months later and upgraded all ( hmm 80-90 ) of them with the anti glare - it was sort of like "flyscreen wire" that was pre cut, placed on the front of the screen and pushed with a plastic spatula into the bezel
The batch next done on the floor upstairs, however this time it was a factory fix, they dissembled each screen and they had a pre cut shape with a reinforcing outer frame like the one you ripped the screen from, however this was a bit loose and they cleaned the screens and sprayed a tacky residue on the screen then pressed on the mesh filter
All of these screens we much duller i think due to the more mesh or thicker material.
Next OHS at work was the reflection of fluro lights on the screen, all fluros had those . how do you describe them , a type of mesh metal frame on top of the perspex diffuser to try and force the light down
Also , i am sure other people commented, that computer shops and magazines were all selling some type of DIY screen filter - i always wonders the percentage of who got zapped or damaged a screen by trying to add the $10 filter
After watching the yolk adjustments, i am glad my oldest VGA screen had analog adjustments for up / down / left / right / shink / strech / rotate - actually now i remember on the yoke some of those ring adjusters actually done a brightness
Regards
George
I'm a Mac SE tube braker as well. Did it once and never did it again. After the back cover comes off... Pull the CRT tube socket ...
Great information - In the mid 1980's school districts and colleges had thousands of these. None I've ever found have been dead, darn near indestructible.
All the best stuff is made in Japan.
Absolutely salute you for skipping the anode cap removal and discharge. :)
I use 303 on the tires and dash of my Bronco that sits all summer in Arizona while also covered with UV blocking covers to keep as much UV from breaking them down as possible.
If you have an Amiga this is an excellent monitor for interlaced high res. The phosphor is so long there is no flicker.
Ur videos are great, keep it up fella
Brilliant video.
anti-glare mesh!!! flashback...! Used to take them off VT132s back in the day: all they did was make the APs turn up the brightness, which reduced the focus. Take off the mesh and discover just how much gack and snot it could retain; turn the brightness down to 50% and return to happy dev bod. Ahhh, the memories, the potential for instant death...!
That reverse spin on the screws is a great tip. Thanks to both you and your source, Fran.
@adrian black, another tip for screwing stuff in, especially if you are trying to get it into a blind or hard to reach area such as crt brackets, take a little neodymium magnet or a big 1, im SURE you have enough of them just laying around from old hdds and such but find a nice small 1 about the size of your screwdriver if you have it and just stick it to the side of the shaft, that is enough to make the screw stick to the end until it is seated, and be glad you arnt adjusting a crt's color culmination!!! i did this on a 27? inch sony grand wega, the adjustment is done by adjusting 5 plastic rings around the neck of the tube, all i can say is you make a video or even do this without video-ing it, good luck, the adjustments are NOT stable for each color, if you move 1, they all move!! the best position i could find actually was nowhere near the factory marks! (take a sharpie and draw a line across all of the rings to keep as a reference of their original positions), hm... its 6 am... i forget if i brought that tv to the alley or its still somewhere in the house.. why am i not asleep
Great job, looks excellent!
P39 is a greenish long persistence phosphor, it also said Hitachi on the rear label.
If you don't connect the dag wire, with a plastic case like this the outer graphite coating on the CRT forms one plate of a capacitor the other is the coating on the inside and the dielectric is the glass.
When you power up because the outer coating is grounded nothing happens, but if you forget and leave it open the outer coating rises up to the EHT voltage and if anything is close enough it will spark over. Usually the closest item is the PCB and this is where it will jump to, very often low voltage signal components.
I usually place a mirror in front of the monitor when i adjust and fine tune the settings to make it easier.😊
What you don't like reaching around blindly pawing all that high voltage stuff?
Excellent content. Sooo enjoyable to watch. Question: why did you not blow the dust of the circuit board?
Well done mate!
I found a parts list for this monitor online, and it accidentally included elements of the wiring harness that connected the TV tuner to the mainboard! So yes, this was at one time a regular Hitachi black and white television. (Search on the alternate picture tube part number, which I suspect is a white phospor version that was in the original TV.)
P39 and P42 are both phosphor colour and persistence, as some were very fast decay, while others had a lot of afterglow.
A lot of the dimness is also caused by resistors in the screen and grid circuits drifting high in value, along with the pots as well. Typically suspect all resistors over 10k in the high voltage side, so basically all resistors around the LOPT and by the controls, check for resistance in circuit, as a reading lower than the value is typically fine, but higher you need to replace it. Use the right resistors, you need the correct power and voltage rating on the replacement resistors.
I am amazed how much of the tube is actually safe to touch while on. While I had seen on your earlier videos that the rings on the back are used to adjust the picture, I honestly had no idea that you can just go in there with the bare hand and adjust them.
Yeah the HV part of the tube is insulated under that anode cap. Most of the tube is painted with a matte black metallic paint that is literally at ground. (Called DAG ground) The coils themselves can have high-ish voltages through them, but they are insulated with clear enamel. If they weren't, they would all be shorting together and the monitor wouldn't work. I'd avoid the metal pins on the tube connector/neck board -- a couple of those can have a few hundred volts on some of the pins... on this monitor you can't even touch those when the connector is on though -- but some neck board PCBs on some monitors those pins are exposed so you could accidentally touch them...
Some older TVs especially in 240v countries can have a hot ground chassis -- where the ground throughout the TV is actually live at mains voltage. I've personally never seen such a TV or monitor, but I know they do exist. In that case, you could get a mains shock from even touching the metal chassis ground inside the TV.....
I always loved the mono CRT's. Compared to the colour monitors of the day, they were so much easier to read text on.
Yeah the sharpness of these monitor is quite amazing -- especially compared to the fuzzy TV quality pictures most of us were seeing elsewhere.
I miss doing CRT repair. I am a relative recent subscriber and didn't know this was also something you did. Nice surprise.
Wonderful! 😍
My first Computer wasn´t h e Apple II or so, it was A Amiga 500 and i used it on my own TV, back in time i had access to a lot of TV´s that i have tried to Fix, sometimes with success and sometimes not. I had somtimes a better TV that my Parents :D And al always thank youz for the Great Video.
Question there were some monitors made that user the mesh cloth to protect from glare and part of the X RAY protection is this one of these it might be a good idea to check you do not want to have any problems this is just a thought i do not know but i would not spend any time in front of this until i checked like the videos thank you
I am very familiar with the Monitor ///. When my dad bought our old Apple //e, the guy who sold it to him included a Monitor ///.
That 303 stuff is a bit on the expensive side. However, for what it does with plastic, leather, vinyl, and rubber, the price is completely worth it. That stuff is amazing!
Any time I take something apart that's older, I really enjoy the tactile feel of the crack of a screw releasing for the first time in years.
Especially if it's never been opened before :-)