Re: Foundling IIe left on curb, now what?

[mshaslam@gmail.com]

Ziggy wrote:
> mshaslam@gmail.com wrote:
> > It's been 20+ years since I booted an Apple II, but when I found
one
> > sitting on the side of the road, well I guess I'm a sucker for hard
> > luck stories.  I was hoping I could get some pointers on getting it
> > into functioning condition.
> >
> > The case is in fairly good condition.  It's dirty and the cap for
the
> > keyboard light is missing, but all the keys are there and seem to
> > function, and it has two 5.25 drives.  However it has no disks.
> >
> > Internally it has three cards in the expansion slots, the floppy
> > controller, an Epson parallel port controller, and the last one,
which
> > is a only labled as 'Microsoft Consumer Products'.  My wild guess
says
> > it's a CP/M card.  It also has  an '80col/64k' card in the 'aux
> > connection' slot.
> >
> > It boots into ROM just fine and I managed to dust off my BASIC
enough
> > to make it say 'hello world'.  The only problem so far is that the
> > colors bleed quite a bit on the screen unless I get the cable just
> > right.
> >
> > My questions are:
> >
> > Are there known issues and solutions to the color bleed problem?
More
> > wild guesses on my part say either a solder problem or corrosion,
but
> > I'm not yet ready to take the thing apart until I'm a little more
sure.
> >
> > What OS does an IIe run and how would I get a copy?   I remember
from
> > the long ago days that the apple drives are totally incompatible
with
> > IBM drives, so bootstrapping seems to require getting a hold of
actual
> > boot disks.  I currently have no access to a functioning Apple II,
but
> > I do live in the Seattle area.
> >
> > What the heck is that Microsoft card, and/or how would I find out?
> >
> > Thanks for your help,
> > MSH
> >
>
> The microsoft card, if its got a Z80 on it should be a CPM card..

I'll take a look after work.

> Must be nice finding stuff like that out at the curb..

Yes, and good timing too.  Seattle was hit by a nasty squall just as I
found it.  Of course I wasn't in time to get it before some punk tagged
the monitor bridge, but hey, at least he didn't get the case  and
drives.

Aside from the missing cap on the keyboard light, it's in darn good
condition.  The 'chrome' lettering is still completely intact.  It
should clean up pretty nicely.  I'll see if I can post some pictures
this weekend.

MSH