Try negotiating. It seems a little high for the problems it has. I know I'd pay $30 in that state, maybe $50 if I was pretty sure I could fix it.

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I advised the seller I would pay $25 for the III in its "as-is" condition. He disagreed with the offer, stating that he would "not give-up" the machine for that amount. I advised him I would pay $50 if he was able to find software disks for the III, and any other documentation, like the owner's manual (although I can download that from apple3.org), or even the original box (he is the original owner, BTW). According to the seller, this III was used in an engineering lab during the most part of the 80s, then placed in storage for 20+ years. Last week was the first time he turned it on to advise me what the operating condition of the unit was.

The repeated diagnostics is bad. It should stop and hunt for a disk in the drive, and stop with "RETRY" on the screen. It's finding something wrong. On the other hand... all of these machines need TLC to keep them running. You would need to pull and reseat all the chips to make sure they're all making a good connection. That cures 98% of failures. The keyboard, on the other hand... that's much harder to fix.

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Thanks for the info. If, and when I do get to see this unit upfront, I will open it up to check the innards. There's probably a monsoon of dust in the cabinet. If the board is good (in the sense there are no cracks, or charring), then I will consider recapping. I figured that the RAM chips had just passed their expiry date after 30 years. Come to think of it, this computer probably overheated, and the chips have expanded overtime.

Unfortunately, this fellow claims he no longer has the boot disks for the III, which makes things a lot more difficult. However, if this III is not worth the time upon inspection, he's also got a IIc, and some other vintage computers as well, so I will look into that.