Re: Help needed for Frankiln 2200

[Rubywand <rubywand@swbell.net>]

Dave Warren writes ...
> 
> I was given a Franklin 2200 computer today but no manuals and have
> a few questions. Any help would be appreciated.
> 
> What are the settings for the option switches on back?
> What is the 9 pin connector at number 6 for?
> Does anyone have a manual or photocopy for this machine for sale?


     The Franklin Ace 2200 looks like a pretty spiffy machine. (There's
a picture on Doug Coward's 'museum' page at ...

http://www.best.com/~dcoward/museum/mfrankli.htm#face2200 )


     Below are some snips from Csa2 posts about the computer. I've
included email addresses because these posters seem to be pretty
knowledgeable about the '2200. One may even know where you can get a
manual.


>>

From: CreatSltn (creatsltn@aol.com)
 
Sir,
The Franklin 2000 series were Franklin's 1985-86 clones of the enhanced
Apple IIe.  The 2000 had no drives installed, the 2100 had one 5.25
half-height drive installed, and the 2200 had 2 installed.  They had
128K
RAM, 2 expansions slots, built-in parallel printer port, external IBM
style keyboard, heavy duty power supply, and cooling fan.  They were
about
95% compatible and were quite attractive machines.  Franklin also made a
Franklin 500 about the same time that looks like a spiffy black IIc.  
 Franklin no longer has anything to do with computers since they are now
into the handheld spell checkers/translators/etc.  As far as I know, we
are the only ones on the planet that still provide any support for them.
Thanks,
        Gene

For Your Info:
I am a certified Apple Technician in Beavercreek, Ohio, who has been
serving the Apple Community worldwide since 1986.  Our company, Creative
Solutions, handles new and used hardware, software, and repairs for
Macintosh, Apple II, Laser, and Franklin computers.  We have a one year
warranty on all our hardware and our repairs.  References are available
upon request.

Please email me at CreatSltn@aol.com or phone (937) 429-5759 M-F 9-5
Eastern or FAX (937) 429-2123.  Please drop by our Web site at
http://members.aol.com/CreatSltn for a visit.



-----

From: Steve Craft (scraft@bigpapa.nothinbut.net)

The Ace 2200 is somewhere between a IIe and a IIc and a PC.  Franklin
always gave a little bit "more" for the dollar.  :)

There are read and write lights on the floppy drive.  You'd be
amazed at what games were actually writing data to the hard drive
(what we'd call a pagefile/Vm these days?) when you thought it 
was supposed to be loading something...  The double-hires light
flipped on whenever aux memory was "locked on", so sometimes
in Wings of Fury the ligth would be on although the game itself
was hires only.  The CPU light was cool, we need more of those,
I think only the BeBox has one now.

OK, on to something useful.

The base 2200 (I read about 2000s and 2100s but never saw one) has
128k of RAM.  You have to get some kind of special RAM chip (I
never figured out what the chip spec was) to increase the memory
to 640k, I think it emulated all "slot0" memory so you could use 
it in AppleWorks or ProTERM, but not as a RAM disk like RAM5-
type memory expander cards.

There are DIP switches inside for what you want to set in terms of
the internal slots.  One was 2/7 and the other was 4/5 or something
like that.  So it's like a IIe or Laser 128 series in that respect,
but the ports on the back are identical to the "standards of
the day", ie Superserial and Epson APL.

The CPU was a 65sC02a, not quite the rock-hard 65c02(a?) you'd
get in a IIe or IIc, and this made some games incompatible.  I mean
things like crash unpn bootup, so you'd know immediately what worked
and what did not.  :)  Then again, it might have been the other
parts that were looking for "II trueness" that was crashing.
Cracked programs with the Tom-e-Hawk Boot never worked on the 
2200.

The speaker sounded better than the IIe/c, and the text chars looked
better.  But games like Star Fleet I were weird in text mode, since
instead of torpedoes being represented by apples, they were represented
by "F"s, whch *really* didn't look like torpedoes.  :)  That 
reminds me of something else.  There is a switch in the back for
MouseText or standard characters.  In this day and age, keep it
on MouseText, it affect something elsebesides text, and you want it
on always.

----------


From: Richard Pirong (rpirong@aztec.asu.edu)

It's a very nice //e and/or //c compatible. has features of both. Some
slots and some ports. one of the slots is fixed as slot 2. the other
can be either slot 4 or slot 7, depending on the position a jumper.
On the right side of the case, is access to slot 5 which was intended
for an expansion box that was never put on the market.
I used slot 7 for the hard drive and slot 2 for a 3.5" drive card.
 
Tell me if there is/are any daughterboards plugged onto the MB. A small
one (by the power supply) would be memory expansion. A slightly larger
one (right side) would be the RGB color board which drives either the
Apple monitor or a CGA monitor.
 
Loved the keyboard. Although those function keys weren't very useful.
Nobody ever wrote software to access them. The ALT key wasn't too
useful either. Version 5 of Franklins own DOS is DOS3.3 compatible
and can program the function keys. I never needed it because Dos 3.3
and ProDOS (all versions) work just fine.
Software compatibility is excellent especially if it has the last
ROM version. (level 6)


<and in another Csa2 posting>

     .... I'd like to add a
few details of the ACE2000 series. After many years of good service, my
2200 was just retired in favor of a //gs. It is an excellent //e - //c
workalike. It has some ports like a //c and some slots like a //e.
came with RGB color and 512k ram on the motherboard. In spite of rumors
to the contrary, it is VERY software compatible. It does run all
versions
of ProDOS. (ver 1.0.1 thru to P8 v2.0.3).  Some early rom versions had
application compatibility problems but not the last ones (level 6).
If things had worked out a little differently, they could have created
one hell of a //gs clone. Instead of duplicating Apples, they had begun
improving them.

<<



Rubywand