Re: three questions about //e

[dempson@actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

Obsbedia2 <obsbedia2@aol.com> wrote:

> << i)   Is there a card to hang a //e onto an AppleTalk network? Or would I
> have to use floppies to transfer files between my two machines?
> 
> *That would be a Workstation card, I believe.
> 
> ii)  Is there a clock/calendar card which remembers the year, so that you
> do not need a new ProDOS patch every so many years?
> 
> *The latest version of ProDOS, v2.0.3, is fine until about 2039 or 2040.  It
> will work with any clock/calendar card that already works with ProDOS.

The point is that you still need to run the patch program every 5 or 6
years in order to keep the year table up to date.

The Thunderclock does not have a year register, so ProDOS has to
determine the year by doing a calculation based on the day of week, day
of month and month.  This calculation will only work over a five to six
year period for a given lookup table, since there are only seven days of
the week, and there will be one or two leap years which waste entries in
the table.

If you want to avoid this regular patching process, you need a different
type of clock, and you will also have to patch ProDOS to replace the
clock driver (or run a loader at boot time which replaces the driver in
memory, which is Apple's preferred solution).

One possibility would be to get a Dallas SmartWatch - I forget the brand
name that the Apple II version of this used.  (There is no difference as
far as the hardware is concerned, but you need the driver software,
which was supplied with the Apple II product.)

The SmartWatch is inserted underneath a ROM chip on the motherboard, so
it doesn't tie up a slot.  The installation is somewhat more complex
than a card, of course.

I've also seen a clock that plugs into the game port (AppleWatch?),
though I imagine it might conflict with a joystick, the Apple keys or
the shift key mod.