Re: IIe sound output

[mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon)]

Simon Williams (originally) asked:

>Anyone tinkered with replacing the IIe's crappy speaker with a line out?
>I'm a little hesitant to connect the wires up to my stereo without first
>hearing from someone who's already been electrocuted =8-O

Although several approaches to this modification have already been
suggested, another was recently brought to my attention by Howard
Katz, who read in an Apple II mag (A+ or Incider?) several years ago
and for whom it works flawlessly.

It has the advantage of delivering a line-level signal (about 1.8 volts) at
reasonable impedance (a few thousand ohms) that is referenced to
Apple ground.  And unlike signals tapped from the speaker side of the
Darlington driver, it is free of distortions caused by speaker inductance.

The idea is to tap the audio drive signal across diode CR4, near the
speaker output on the main board.  The anode of this diode is ground,
and the cathode is the desired signal.  (The cathode is the end of the
diode nearest the black band.)

The tap can be done with miniature clip leads or Minigrabbers so that
no soldering is required.

The ground side should connect to the shield of a cable with an RCA
plug (or to the ground side of a female RCA connector), and the signal
goes to the inner wire (or the central socket of the RCA connector).

This output is suitable for any amplifier or amplified speaker.

-michael

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