Re: APPLE ][ Clone-Project?

["Bryan Villados" <news002@macgeek.org>]

See what you've done? You've made the gears in my head start to spin!

I've seen this idea mentioned before, and everytime people would say, "Why
bother? Emulators are available!"

Well, emulators are great. I use Bernie to the Rescue quite a bit. But what
we're forgetting here is that there was a lot of really cool peripherals
that can't be emulated. The Apple Cat II modem, for example, was a really
neat music synthesizer. There were also some cool hardware/software projects
you could do, using an Apple II, to learn about electronics,
microprocessors, logic, etc. I have several books on Apple II-based hardware
projects I would be totally afraid to do on a PC or Mac because they're so
complicated. This and more can't be done with just an emulator. Hard to
relate to if you're a software-only kind of person.

The Apple II was a great hardware platform for experimentation, simply
because when you turn the thing on, even without a disk drive, it's ready
for hacking. You can't do the same thing with today's PC or a Macintosh
because these two systems rely on some kind of disk-based operating system
(well, the earlier IBM PCs had BASIC in ROM, and it booted into it when it
couldn't find a boot device).

I know that virtually all Apple II peripherals can be replaced easily with
today's technology running on today's hardware. The Apple Cat II can be
replaced with a 56k modem. But you know what? It just isn't the same! It's
more of an emotion than a logical thing.

So I, for one, would be VERY interested in an Apple II clone using today's
technology. Interested to the point of putting up some cash to support such
a project. I'd like to see a computer with the same slots and ports as the
Apple IIe, using the physical ROMs pulled from a real IIe so it's legal, but
in a modern designed box using modern components. And it'll run all the old
peripherals we grew up with. I wouldn't want the box to have integrated
anything (80-column video, CP/M, etc.) because I'd like to take advantage of
using the old cards to do the same thing. I wouldn't mind integrating the
original Apple II disk controller into the logic board seeing that's the
only controller I'll ever use, so losing a physical slot 6 there wouldn't be
a loss.

And I'd be willing to pay as much as $500 for a finished product. If it
meant putting my real Apple IIe into storage for safe keeping and still be
able to hack, it would be worth the money. Everyday I use my old real Apple
II computers, that's one more day of possibly frying them forever.

If I knew how to design and build hardware, I'd do this myself. I wrote an
Apple II+ emulator back in college about 13 years ago in 80286 assembler,
and I learned quite a bit about that computer. If I could just learn
electronics really well, I could actually build a clone. I visited an
electronics store here in Honolulu just last week and they still carry the
black Apple II slots in stock. So the parts are still available.

--- Bryan

"E.-R. Bruecklmeier" <spamport@eric-bruecklmeier.de> wrote in message
3C5524F8.C3C0AFA@eric-bruecklmeier.de">news:3C5524F8.C3C0AFA@eric-bruecklmeier.de...
> Hello Group,
>
> is there a project out there in the endless net space, to build a 100%
> compatible apple II clone with modern chips? I think it should possible
> to build such a device with just a few components. I've searched google
> but there wasn't any hint.
>
> TIA
>
> Eric.
> --
> When in doubt, hold on to your altitude.
> No one has ever collided with the sky.