Microsoft Softcard problems

[nparker@cie.uoregon.edu (Neil Parker)]

Does anybody out there by any chance have a Microsoft Softcard plugged into
their Apple IIGS?

I was recently given a Microsoft Softcard CP/M system.  I plugged the card
in and booted the disk and it works--my screen says "A>".

The problem is that after a while it starts flaking out on me.  After an
hour or so of operation, it just sort of fails--sometimes it just locks up
so that I have to press control-apple-reset, and sometimes the disk starts
spinning.  Once it wrote garbage all over a disk.

The "native mode" side of the system doesn't seem to affected at all--the
problem occurs only when the Z-80 is active.

I'm wondering if perhaps the Softcard is adversely affected by the heat
inside my GS's case (which has never been a problem before).  After one
failure I took the cover off the machine and felt the chips--you could have
fried an egg on the Z-80.


I'd also be grateful if anybody out there can tell me why the Softcard has
trouble directly accessing the IIGS keyboard.  It has no trouble at all
accessing other I/O locations, but the Z-80 seems to think the high bit at
$C000 (E000 in Z-80 mode) is always 0, regardless of whether or not a key
has been pressed.

               - Neil Parker

(Yes, I know I'm probably crazy for actually USING this fossil, but what
the heck...I'm actually enjoying this look back at the ancient history of
computers.)
--
Neil Parker                 No cute ASCII art...no cute quote...no cute
nparker@cie.uoregon.edu     disclaimer...no deposit, no return...
parker@corona.uoregon.edu   (This space intentionally left blank:           )