Re: Lego board, memory expansion questions

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

adrianw@cassius.ee.usyd.edu.au (Adrian Whichello) wrote:

>Hi Gang,
>
>I was given a Rom 01 box last week. No keyboard, no monitor, but it does work,
>so it'll be useful for spares. Inside there was a IIgs Memory Expansion Card
>(25 6K installed) and a Lego 9767 interface card. My questions:
>
>1) can somebody tell me about the Lego card, like what it does and what would
>be needed to use it (both Lego and Apple II ends)? There's a 6522 VIA chip, a
>couple of 74LS TTL chips (for address decoding, I expect), a transistor and it
>comes out on a male 20 pin IDC (like a disk ][ plug) that clamps on the IIgs's
>case.  Weren't chips like this documented in one of Rodney Zak's books?

The Lego card is an interface for controlling motorized Lego kits...the
little plastic blocks and motors you could put together to build little
cars, trucks, buildings, boats, etc.  The card let the computer control
the simple robotics kits...

>2) If I ever wanted to expand the memory card (unlikely - 1.25M in a rom 01 is
>still fairly useless for gs/os, but you never know, I might be given a rom 3
>next time!), where is a good place to find 256K x 1 bit ram chips nowadays?

http://www.allelec.com/ Alltech Electronics carries them.  It is probably
easier and better to buy a Sirius from them than to try to populate the
old limited card.

>3) OA-control-esc brings up the control panel dialogue like usual, but it's on
>the 80 column screen width (my rom 3 uses the 40 column screen). Is this a
>difference between rom 01/rom 3's?

No; the screen width is controlled by the Display Control Panel
accessed by OA-control-esc...go into the control panel and press
return on "Display" and set it to 80 columns on your rom 3 GS and
the control panel should then be the same.  Personally, I set my
GS to 80 columns because it looks more professional...