Re: Mystery cards

[mjmahon@aol.com (MJMahon)]

Vincent,

>1) Mystery card no 1: no maker's name nor details. Only marking is on rear
>side
>of card: EP ROM (just like that). On front a Motorola XC 6820, a
>two-position
>slide switch marked 78A, an EPROM (AMD AM2732DC 8214NPP), six socketed ICs
>and
>sockets for three more. What gives the game away is a lever-operated clamp
>with
>14 pairs of pin holders. Obviously an EPROM burner - but how is it used?

Almost every EPROM burner for the Apple has controlling firmware
onboard.  Just put it in a slot and PR#n for a menu of operations,
such as reading an EPROM or ROM, burning an EPROM, verifying
that an EPROM is blank, or comparing an EPROM to a memory
image.  Newly created data (not read from another ROM) must be
BLOADed into the right place in RAM, often $2000.

>2) Mystery card no 2: marked on the front MICRO MINT INC and A-II SWEET
>TALKER.
>Eight socketed ICs, two large capacitors, two variable resistors(?) marked
>FREQ.ADJ and VOLUME and a two-prong connector (one marked +, one -). Is
>this a
>sound input or a sound output board? What hooks up to the two-prong
>connector?

It is a 64 phoneme speech synthesizer based on the Votrax SC-01 chip.
(Verify this by checking for the SC-01.)  The card and its use are well
described by Steve Ciarcia in Byte magazine, September, 1981.  I don't
have that issue at hand, but you will also find an LM386 amplier chip
on the board, which can drive a speaker directly with a fraction of a
watt--plenty for the desktop.  The two prong connector is for a speaker
or headphones (set the volume appropriately).  You can PR#s to the
board and then send characters, the low 6-bits of which select the
phoneme to be sounded.  See the article for rate control and text-to-
speech algorithms.  (The first Mockingboard also used the SC-01,
and its text-to-speech will do the job.)  The frequency adjustment
allows the pitch and tempo of voice synthesis to be varied.

>3) Apple Silentype printer: will this work only with its controller card,
>or can
>it be hooked up to a //c or IIGS serial port? (I'm just curious - I don't
>need to
>use it as a regular printer)

Nope--special card (and its firmware) only.

>4) Hayes Micromodem II (internal card and external coupler box) - I presume
>this
>is a 300 baud modem? (again, I'm just curious - I have a 33.6 on the GS and
>a
>14.4 on the //c, so I don't need to put it into service...)

Yep.  And a very reliable one in its day.

>Thanks

You're welcome!  ;-)


-michael

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