][+ troubleshooting

[mort@apollo.hp.com (Stephen Moriarty)]

I have a ][+ that I'm troubleshooting for a friend.  For what it's
worth (something, I hope), it's actually for a friend's son who has a
learning disability.  When I got it, neither of it's two disk II
drives worked.  With a friend, we replaced the ICs in each, one by one
with those of a working spare and got them working.  Well, they booted
some disks, but wouldn't run a speed check utility properly.  Since
they did at least boot a disk, we just called it good.  After I got it
back home, I discovered that it wouldn't boot many of my DOS 3.3
disks.  I would get various errors like "Error 6" and "Unknown
language".  The only disks I can get to boot are a very old DOS 3.3
utility disk and a FrEd Writer disk.  The latter is ProDOS and
requires 64K and the single wire shift key mod, both of which I have.
There is a problem with the Fred Writer.  Most of the characters are
just wrong.  The opening screen is a title page and lots of the
characters are just gibberish.  The disk runs fine on my 128K //e.
Now, I get the 64K by way of the language card that's in slot 0.
Also, there's a Videx video display card in slot 4.  I tried running
without the Videx card, and the self test fails, i.e. the screen is
just full of random characters after turning it on.  I also noticed
that one of the ROMs is missing.  It's nearest to slot 5, I think.

According to the FAQ, this is the recommended ][+ configuration.  I
guess some of the pieces aren't quite working.  After I work up the
gumption to attack this beast once more, I expect to swap out the disk
drives with my duodisk drive from my //e to eliminate that.  Other
suggestions are welcome.

--
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ARPA: mort@apollo.hp.com	UUCP: ...{decvax, umix, mit-eddie}!apollo!mort
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