Re: Apple iie with switch under case?

[dempson@actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

Sam Latella <powergs@macgui.com> wrote:

> Okay things just got a little stranger with the switch underneath the Apple
> ][e case.
> 
> I booted the Apple IIe with the switch underneath set to one side and I got
> the following at the top of the screen.
> 
> Apple SS (two ss intertwined in eash other)... what is this?
> 
> Then when I flicked the swich to the otherside.  I got the following.
> 
> Apple ][
> 
> So how do I know this is a IIE?  It has the symbol //e on the outside of the
> case.
> 
> I did the self test twice with the switch underneath set to both sides and I
> got the following message KERNEL OK
> 
> Is this system a total hack?

Sounds like a bog standard International //e, from one of the European
countries. We had the UK English model in New Zealand.

The switch on the underside toggles the character generator and keyboard
layout between two character sets: US ASCII and the local language
variant.

For the UK/AUS/NZ model, this only affected the # symbol, changing it to
a UK Pound ('�', if that comes through for you).

Other language models (e.g. German, French) changed several characters,
and it appears this one has the ']' and '[' characters swapped with
something like the German double-S character '�' or '�', so I'd guess it
is a German model (possibly Swiss German).

If you open up the computer and compare the motherboard layout to a US
//e, you will note that the auxiliary slot is directly in line with slot
3, rather than being located in the lower left corner.

The computer probably also generates PAL video at 50 Hz instead of NTSC
at 60 Hz, and as such has a slightly lower master clock frequency (14.25
MHz instead of 14.31818 MHz).

-- 
David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz