Re: Very Early Apple II board???

[Patrick Schaefer <Patrick.Schaefer@topmail.de>]

"Robert L. Doerr" schrieb:

> Here is a link to a picture of the board and one of the keyboard that
> was connected to it:
> 
> http://www.robotswanted.com/pictures/apple2.JPG

This is the regular 48k Apple II clone from Taiwan. There were a few
companies who made them, much more companies who imported them and a lot
of dealers who sold empty boards, finished boards or complete computers. 
In the US this may be somewhat rare because the guys in Cupertino had
better lawyers than the guys in Ireland. In Europe 90% of the 'Apple II'
systems were clones. They were much cheaper than regular ][europlus and
Apple Europe never managed (or even tried?) to stop this.

In the '80s you could buy such a board for around $50, the chips
required to assemble it did cost around $100. And then you needed a
(pirated) copy of the Applesoft Basic or the IBS Forth.


More interesting clones were the 64k+Z80 board from Taiwan (this one had
a build-in Z80 softcard and language card and used 4164 RAM chips) and
machines like the Basis 108 (with 256k, Floppy, SSC, Printer card and
much more on board), the Prometric and the IBS Space series. IBS made
professional rackmount boards for 19" systems (same size as a VME card).



> http://www.robotswanted.com/pictures/apple2kb.JPG

never seen this type, but the number of Apple compatible keyboards was
not smaller than the number of Apple compatible computers.

The keyboard I used with my Apple II had command strings assigned to
each key. Instead of typing 'CATALOG' you just pressed Func+C.
Additionally, ten function keys were user-defineable.



This is a pirated Apple //e mainboard:
http://www.ebay.de/static/auction/45/4504/450458/45045852.html
Even the model number has been copied, only some typos in the silkscreen
print tell us that the slit eye who made this board had some problems
with the latin alphabet...


Patrick