PAL Apple IIe (was Re: Apple III?)

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

T. Sean <snertking@my-deja.com> wrote:

> The diffrence between the original II MB and the plus mb is that the II
> had jumper blocks by each ram bank that allowed the selection of 4k or
> 16k drams in each bank. The apple II+ only allowed 16k drams, and the
> apple II+ had the solder jumper pads to allow the "euro apple" mod to
> make it work with PAL (the two could only do NTSC)

This isn't actually an "Apple ][" vs "Apple ][+" change.  It is
dependent on the revision of the motherboard.  I think the features you
describe are part of the "Revision 7" motherboard, which is used in most
(but not all) ][+ machines.  I believe Apple was still shipping some
Apple ][ machines after this motherboard revision was released, so it
may be possible to find an Apple ][ with the same features.

> I think they dropped the pal on the IIe beacuse no-one actually hooked
> those things up to a tv anyway....

They didn't "drop" PAL: I have a perfectly good PAL IIe.

For the IIe, the product was split into two versions.  The US version
has NTSC, while most of the international versions have PAL.  (I'm not
sure if the French IIe is PAL or SECAM.)

The PAL IIe runs at a slightly lower clock frequency than the NTSC IIe,
and has a 50 Hz vertical retrace.  The motherboard layout is quite
different: the auxiliary slot is in the centre of the motherboard, in
line with slot 3.  (It is not possible to have long cards in both slot 3
and the auxiliary slot.)

Another difference is that the international versions of the IIe have a
switch under the keyboard which changes the keyboard layout and
character set between the US and localised versions.  New Zealand and
Australia got the UK version of the IIe, in which the only effect of the
switch was to change the "#" (hash/pound) symbol into a "�" (UK pound).
There is no keyboard change for this model, but other languages probably
do change (e.g. shifted or unshifted digits).

Since our currencies are "dollars", this wasn't particularly useful.
Once the enhanced IIe was released, some people modified their video ROM
to replace the "local" character set (with the UK pound) with the
unenhanced IIe character set, so you could switch between mousetext and
the old inverse characters, for running old applications which used the
"wrong" inverse character set.

Interestingly, it seems that for the platinum IIe, they dropped the PAL
version and went back to NTSC; it is still an "International NTSC" model
(with the US/local switch and character set).
-- 
David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz
Snail mail: P O Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand