Re: apple II roms side not...mousetrap ROM chip

[quadrajet1@aol.com (Quadrajet1)]

>I thought i'd ask these guestions due to the recent discussion thread on
>eproms and roms on the apple // and //e etc
>
>I have an exotic product called the "moustrap" chip....for the //e ..it was
>made (briefly till apple sued them) by a
>company that took a switchable ROM (ie. able to hold the old pre-mousetext
>char set and also the new mousetext char set) on the same EPROM chip and
>switch back and forth between char sets...
>and it was all incased in a hard plastic with a nice little label called
>"mousetrap" w/date (shinny metal foil label whoo who) with a cable off the
>end of it and a toggle switch...so back in the day..(1983 or so)

 I made a number of them mods back in the day, right after the enhanced //e
came out.  Never got sued since I didn't commercialize it, but probably made
40-50 sets total.

  But what I did was take the 3 ROMs and switch from regular //e and enhanced
//e. The 2 ROMs and the video ROM got switched.  It was so simple with an EPROM
burner.  Take a 27128 and burn the lower half of CD ROM with regular //e code
and the upper half with enhanced //e. Same with EF ROM and the Video ROM,
except it used a smaller EPROM. Obviously a 65C02 was installed.

  All that was needed was to toggle 1 pin high or low on each ROM to switch
back and forth.  Tie all three pins together, all done with 1 wire. You would
have to reboot once you switched over of course.

  I did this mainly because when the enhanced //e came out, there was some
programs that had problems with the enhanced //e ROMs, and not just the new
Mousetext characters.

  I think the market for these fizzled out around 18-20 years ago.  Wasn't long
before the software guys made their software compatible.  I may still have one
installed in my personal Frankenstein //e, can't remember.

Raymond