Re: Europlus slot 7 PAL colour card query

[Roger Johnstone <rojaws@es.co.nz>]

In <2qcGa.662999$Si4.603546@rwcrnsc51.ops.asp.att.net> Ernest wrote:
> 
> "Dave Dragon" <davedragonuk@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
> 3EE90807.1F56EF12@yahoo.co.uk">news:3EE90807.1F56EF12@yahoo.co.uk...
>> Hi,
>> I recently bought a europlus Apple and in slot 7 there was a card 
>> which I assume is to give colour output to a monitor. I'm keen to 
>> find out how this card is installed or if anyone has got 
>> documentation on it.
> 
> Does the card have an RCA jack on it?
> 
>> Its got "copyright microvitec ltd" and BC0054101 silk screened onto 
>> the component side, there is a large "PL1" connector with 8 pins 
>> which I guess is supposed to be video out and there are 5 jumper 
>> blocks each is 3 pin and 2 have got jumpers on them. The rest of the 
>> board contains 3 rows of TTL 7400 series chips (there are no proms 
>> eproms or PAL encoder chips).
> 
> I'm not sure except to say that Microvitec also produced PAL video 
> monitor. I have one for my Acorn BBC Master and Electron. I have 
> aquired several Apple II clones from Germany, and almost everyone of 
> them has got a weird video card of some kind -most likely 80 column 
> Videx clone cards, and they have all sorts of wires hanging off of 
> them. Usually though, the people who pack the computers up don't 
> bother to remove the cards so when I receive the computers in the mail, 
> all of the cards are loose and flapping around inside the case.
>
> Most of the Apple brand PAL cards are fairly neat and simple, with no 
> wires hanging off of them. I'm not sure what card you have. Can you 
> show us a photo of it?

It sounds like an RGB encoder card to me, made by Microvitec for driving 
one of their monitors. The connector is a good clue too, 8 pins is the 
right number for an RGB output.

I have a Taxan Kaga RGB card and monitor which I've used in my IIe. The 
card goes in slot 7 but also picks up 14M (the 14MHz master clock) using 
a clip to one of the ICs on the motherboard, and gets the video from the 
internal 4-pin video connector. If you want to try it, according to the 
Apple II Reference manual, in a 14M is available on pin 8 of a 74S86 at 
location B2 on the II/II+ board.

The jumpers on the card could be for setting the text colours, as some 
of the RGB cards allowed you to choose a foreground and background 
colour when in text mode.

-- 
Roger Johnstone, Invercargill, New Zealand

Apple II - FutureCop:LAPD - iMac Game Wizard
http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~rojaws/
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