Re: AppleCrate & NadaNet

["Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com>]

iMac wrote:

> Someone recently posted something about Micheal Mahon's AppleCrate on
> AppleFritter, and my curiousity has been piqued.
>
> Several years ago, I picked up a bunch of Apple II+'s for free.   Since
> then I've wittled down the once mighty heap to the point that I've only
> one complete II+ remaining and three or four II+ motherboards.
>
> All of this stuff had just been sitting around collecting dust and had
> been designated as landfill bound until...  Yes, until visions of
> AppleCrate and NadaNet danced across my Mac's browser window.
>
> Where to start?
>
> I have no idea how to program ROMs for these machines.   Actually, I
> have never really been an Apple II user and really don't know much about
> the machines at all.
>
> I have one Apple Disk II 5.25" floppy drive.   That is pretty much the
> extent of my Apple II collection.
>
> Something tells me that I'm going to need a lot of little extras in
> order to get my very own AppleCrate up and running...
>
> Any comments/suggestions/etc. would be greatly appreciated and well
> received.

I'm glad that you are interested in building an AppleCrate!  ;-)

There is one snag, though...  Although NadaNet will work fine
with any Apple II that has a game port, including the ][ and ][+, the
NadaNet boot ROM modification that I did for AppleCrate replaced the
self-test code in the _unenhanced Apple //e ROM_.  It would be a bit of
a job to reassemble the code to replace 1KB of the ][+ ROM, and would
take out much of the monitor functionality or kill Applesoft--neither
one of which is a great idea.

An alternative would be to add another ROM containing the boot code,
which could be switched out as soon as booting was complete.  But,
that, too, is a job that I haven't done.

Apple ]['s can participate in a NadaNet network just fine, but they
are not currently supported as AppleCrate boards.  (Maybe just as well,
since ]['s and ][+'s are considerably rarer than //e's.  ;-)

-michael