Re: Apple II clones?

[jruschme@hiway1.exit109.com (John Ruschmeyer)]

In article <5g1ae5$2rf@inet-nntp-gw-1.us.oracle.com>,
Christopher D. Heer <cheer@i.hate.spam> wrote:
>It was 8 Mar 1997 06:41:00 GMT.  I was reading instead of working.  And P Dueck 
><noemail@no.email.edu> said:
>
>>I have a question.....
>
>>Which companies cloned the Apple II (any given model of II) ?
>>What models were released by Laser, Franklin, etc. that were "II clones"?
>
>The original Franklin was the ACE 100.  I don't think they sold too many.  It 
>was a ][+ clone but did not do colour without an add-on colour card.
>
>It was replaced with the ACE 1000.  The ACE 1000 was also a ][+ clone, but 
>included colour support.  It had 64K of memory and did not require a language 
>card.  It supported upper and lower case.  It had a built-in numeric keypad and 
>a few other extra keys (Break, Pause).  Nice, solid machine.  The ACE 10 disk 
>drive was almost totally identical to a Disk ][.
>
>Another model selling at the same time was the ACE 1200.  It was aimed at being 
>a business machine.  It came with two disk drives "built in" (the bottom of the 
>CPU was the same as the ACE 1000's but the case top was modified with a housing 
>to hold both drives) and a CP/M card.  On both the 1000 and 1200, if you 
>pressed Ctrl-Pause, it turned the numeric keypad into the Wordstar diamond 
>navigation keys.

Somewhere in there was also the ACE 1000+. I'm not sure how it specifically
differend from the 1200, but it also had the drives built-in to the lid.

Unfortunately, the one I bought a few years back had already been stripped
of drives and cards, so I don't know what came with it originally.


On another note, there was actually an ear of Apple ][ cloning that predates
the Franklin era. 

In the real early days of the ][ and ][+, it was possible to buy bare
boards of an Apple ][ CPU and many of the then-popular expansions cards.
These were not legitimate kit boards (like the Apple I), rather they were
cheap off-shore knockoffs. Parts lists and assembly instructions often
came as part of a pair of books entitled "Project Appleseed". Vol I
discussed the assembly of the Apple ][-compatible CPU; Vol II discussed
the various peripheral cards.

Firmware could usually be bought from the same person who sold you the
boards. Needless to say, it was usually a direct dump of the appropriate
Apple (or other) board.

About this same time, many early cheap clones sprung up. These usually
had names like the "Orange ][" and were often nothing more than assembled
versions of the above.

This era ended abruptly with the intervention of customs authorities who
siezed whole wharehouses of these illegal clones.

Can anyone shed some more light on this era of Apple ][ computing?

<<<John>>>