Re: Caps a poppin!

[heuser.marcus@freenet.de]

Tristan Mumford schrieb:
> heuser.marcus@freenet.de wrote:
> >
> > It is a good picture: It's good enough to confirm that your
> > mainboard looks practically identical to the one in my clone!
> > (I had this suspicion after I saw your keyboard...)
> > Perhaps the clone of a clone? ;-)
>
> What 'brand' is yours?

I cannot even guess ;-)

There is no visible name or company anywhere on the case
and it even says "Apple ][" when booted up. I don't know if
somebody reprogrammed the EPROMs to be as close to
an Apple as possible and overwrote the clone's name.

The only deviation in function seems to be that the keyboard
offers BASIC statements when pressed.
These statements are printed on the front side of the keys
but I don't know how they are generated (maybe with the
keyboard controller).

It produces a sharp mono 60 Hz picture but sadly no color on
my NTSC-capable TV-set (the color trimmer has no influence).
Maybe color generation was disabled to work better with the
amber monitor.

I didn't spend too much time with it as I have no language card
at the moment and this clone really only has one single purpose:
It's serves as a testbed for newly aquired cards - before I put
them into my IIe. A heroic task! ;-)


> It seems to be a fairly generic board. I'd love to get my mitts
> on a schematic of it.

I don't think it will stray too far away from the II(+).
The chip layout looks very similar (the traces are not).


> > Does the machine beep when turned on?
> > Did you try to boot from diskette?
> > Does it respond to keyboard input?
> > Did you try to change the video mode?
> > Do the usual BASIC video mode commands (GR, HGR, TEXT)
> > show a reaction?
>
> 'tis dead.
> See the reply to Charlie Springer.
> Pulling the character rom and the cpu doesn't even affect it.
> At least all the parts except the data on the roms are all
> readily available. And perhaps the RAM, but there's always
> a way around that.

I doubt that it is beyond repair - however, it may take some
time (and parts). You'll have to decide if it's worth your while.


> Yeah, It's hard to say. If it works at all I feel it's more likely to work
> in slot 7.
> I gave it another try in the //e. This time paying a little more attention.
> I go PR#7, whack return.
> I get this
> ]]
> Ie a second close square brace. Nothing else. This is so frustrating.
> I finally get some more cards that I can use in my //e and some of
> them are dead!

IMHO you don't get much use out of a Videx clone in a IIe,
if this is some consolation ;-)


> Oh yeah. Have you identified yours on http://www.apple2clones.com/

Yes, in fact I did - it looks like it is an "Unnamed II+ Clone (1)".

http://www.apple2clones.com/?q=image/tid/43

Woohoo! It even has the cool black power supply!  ;-)

bye
Marcus