The Case of the Missing Screws


I have come into possession of a medium sized pile of Apple IIe hardware. Its completely disassembled. Cases, power supplies, motherboards, keyboards, expansion cards are just piled up in anti-static bags in a cardboard box or two.

I’ve started tested and repairing things to get them up and working again.

Started sorting things around, and there’s definitely two IIe enhanced units and two IIe standard models in here. However, I quickly realized that there was a ton of missing screws. Figures.

I looked around the Internet and asked a few vendors. Nobody seems to have the actual screw types and sizes that are needed for the Apple IIe. None of the various Apple service manuals nor the Sams versions indicated what they were. If you were repairing a machine, it most likely came with the machine.

I’ve made an attempt here to list the type and sizes of screws that I was able to use on my reassembly projects.

Apple IIe “Enhanced”

The keyboard for this unit shares screws between its mounting brackets to the upper case and the secure screws that hold the keyboard together. These are fairly common 3/8 inch 6-32 machine screws. Easily obtainable from your any American hardware store. Sorry metric-land, these are definitely American spec screws. You’ll need 4 to mount the keyboard in the case and another 6 if you are missing the screws that hold the keyboard “sandwich” together.

In order to mount the upper case plastic to the lower case metal sheet that the motherboard is mounted on, you’ll need another set of sheet metal screws and lock washers. This is assuming that the mounting clips are still on your upper case plastics. I see from the Internet that these have a tendency to evaporate over the 40 years or so that these have existed. I was able to find a compatible set of 6×1/2 sheet metal screws that worked great with some #8 simple external grasping lock washers.

Now that you can mount the keyboard to the case and you can mount the bottom to the top of the case, we can look at how to mount he power supply to the bottom of the case.

For this, you’ll need 4, 4-40 1/4″ screw with 4, 1/8″ #6 lock washers. This will give you a secure set to hold the power supply in place.

For simplicity sake, here is a small table with all the relevant screws. I can’t believe how hard it was to find this information and I hope it helps whomever finds it once again.

Screw Type and Name, Part Number, Quantity
Base Case Machine Screw, 44705-A, 9
Base Case Lock Washer, 1387-L, 9
Case Motherboard Machine Screw, H90120, 4
Flat Motherboard Washer, 1235-A, 4
Case Keyboard Machine Screw, H90120, 4
Keyboard Machine Screws, H90120, 6
Power Supply Case Machine Screw, 1962-A, 4
Power Supply Case Lock Washer, 1386-K, 4

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