The South WTB - Bell & Howell "Darth Vader" Apple II

[HoJoPo]

Never seen the clearlight superstar badge before. The badges on my B&H drives were only in the bottom left of the drive face.

Here's the Clearlight Superstar case badge:



They also painted the computer and drives gray. Apple provided regular hardware to Clearlight, they painted/labelled them in house. The feet on the bottom of my Clearlight drive shifted and there is stock beige paint underneath.

 

[JSR]

Yep, they do. The "Vader" moniker has existed for ages, going back to my high school years, so, 1992 at least. They were referred to as "Darth Vaders" in my class.

The B&H Apple II that I own is oddly unique. For one, mine is actually *painted* black, not injection molded black plastic. To my knowledge, this makes it one of only very few documented Apple IIs to have factory paint jobs It also has two headphone-jack style paddle controller ports, rather than two bracketed multi-pin DIN paddle jacks. There's also a prominent "48K" stencil / stamp on the hood badge I have not seen used anywhere else.

All of these oddities may be associated with very early production runs of the B&H; My unit is serial #977, and it was purchased from its original owner.

 

[dorkbert]

No. The II, II+ and early IIe all had painted plastic shell. Later IIe (before Platinum) migrated to shell molded in beige.

 

[JSR]

thanks snuci. My advice to Bpoag is to NOT seek out a datanetica keyboard as they arent that good and more importantly the inability to source replacement switches. And repairing them is nigh impossible.

Thanks for the advice on this, btw.. I did actually manage to find a comprimise. It's not a Datanetics keyboard, but glossy enough i suppose.

 

[JSR]

Wow! Pictures please!

I’ve never seen one in real life. My school used standard apple II’s. Closest I’ve ever been was one on auction some 8+ years ago for 300.00. Which at the time I thought was high for just a black apple II so I passed. Future me to past me (Idiot!). Though it doesn’t have the same nostalgia to me as I never used one growing up. Now the apple II+ and IIgs and some 486 generic boxes with dos 6.22 and win 3.1.... that’s a different story.

Hi! Just now seeing this..

Here's a few pics for you.. hope you enjoy them. They really are beautiful systems, and pretty striking in appearance considering how everything was so......beige, back then..

 

[JSR]

I remember them being called "darth vaders" back in HS in the late 80's..so, it's not a modern take on it.

To my knowledge, there were only about 30,000 B&H's ever made.. most never made it into private hands, as the bulk of them were owned by schools, not individuals. I'd imagine there's only a few thousand of them left in the wild/in the hands of collectors, at this point. Of those, the ones in good physical condition, even fewer.... and of those, ones that actually power on after 42+ years, even fewer...and of those, ones that have the backpack, even fewer....and of those, the ones that aren't physically marred due to the lease agreement, even fewer.

Beauty's in the eye of the beholder, as they say, and it's not worth what you think it is -- it's only worth what someone's willing to pay for it. I gladly paid $1600 for one that met all of the above criteria back in May.

 

[JSR]

Was at a school auction 15+ years ago where a lot of three of these went for 150. So 50 a pop. Now I see dirty, banged up units going well north of 500. Other than the color is there anything else special about these or are they just desirable variants to a collector?

There's one that was absolutely roached on eBay, and I mean literally destroyed with filth, missing keys, you name it.. even missing the lid, I think, sold for $1000..

Edit: Yup, here it is..it did have a lid tho: