Re: Apple ][e

[mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon)]

Steve Maughan asked:

<snip>
>Card 8:
>Another thing that isn't really a card - it seems to plug into the
>expander port thing on the outside of my apple. It has a 3.0v 100mA
>battery on it and says "MICRO WATCH" on the top right, and "(c) GLANMIRE
>ELECTRONICS LTD 1982" on the bottom left.

This is, indeed, a game-port clock.  I found a bunch of them around 1985
as electronic surplus, without software or instructions.  A little reverse
engineering and I had a ProDOS driver for them.

They have one peculiarity which is never a practical problem:  They use
the same input as the shift key mod to send the time, so they cannot be
read at the same time the shift key is depressed.  Not a real problem,
since so few people type shift-return!

They probably went out of production when the //e was introduced, since
the //e moved the 16-pin game port on the main board so that there was
no physical clearance for the Micro Watch any more--a short 16-pin adapter
cable is required to use the clock with a //e, or, as in your case, a game
port extender.

-michael

 Email:  mjmahon@aol.com
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