Re: Apple//c newbie questions

[spec@vax2.concordia.ca (Mitchell Spector)]

In article gkomatsu@Hawaii.Edu (Galen Tatsuo Komatsu) writes...

>Mitchell Spector <spec@vax2.concordia.ca> wrote:
>>    No, as it does not have an RGB port. What it does have is a
>>video expansion port, providing the necessary signals to use a

>       So then, this means, in order to use this switchbox with
>my IIc, I'll have to find a special cable?

    Well no, since the box/adapter that converts the signal into
usable video output would include such a cable. I've not seen a
Video 7 RGB adapter before, but I would assume one end plugs in
to the DB15 port in back of the IIc and the other end would have
a standard CGA/EGA connector. It is more than merely a cable, it
is a little convertor box.

>>    Well some software hardcoded to work with a Disk II connected
>>to a controller card sometimes won't work (Broderbund's Drol and
>>Karateka come to mind, which is also a problem with the IIgs and
>>its disk port).
>
>       NOOOOO!!!! =^)  I was investigating some stuff the other
>night using an emulator and while I was ftp'ing the disk images I
>grabbed Drol and tried playing it.  I couldn't get the speed and
>joystick support "juuust right," so I figured, hey, dig up my old
>disk and play it on my "new" IIc.  I guess not... =^(

    I know there was a patch you could manually apply (requiring
a sector editor to change several bytes of data) to get it to
work on both the IIgs and IIc disk ports, though I never bothered
as I have several IIe and II+ machines hanging around (in fact I
have every revision of the Apple II, minus the ROM 4 firmware
for the IIc, so backwards compatibility rarely worries me). ;-)

>>    You should also know built-in devices are mapped to virtual
>>slots, such as the mouse mapped to "slot 4" (moved to "slot 7" on
>>the ROM 3, 4 and IIc+) the internal floppy mapped to "slot 6" and
>>a UniDisk 3.5 mapped to "Slot 5".
>
>       Out of curiosity, where does the third 5.25 get mapped?
>I assume the internal is S6,D1, the first external is is S6,D2, how
>about the second external?

    Sorry about that, I was thinking about the Apple IIc Plus
when I wrote the newer IIc's support two external 5.25 drives.
The fact of the matter is all Apple IIc's (ROM 255, 0, 3, 4)
support only *one* external 5.25 drive. You can use a DuoDisk
5.25 drive, but the second drive will be ignored.

    So to review: If you have the original IIc, the only thing
you can add to the disk port is an external 5.25 drive. With
any other IIc model, you also have the option of adding up to 
four UniDisk 3.5 drives and a floppy port based hardrive, such as
the Chinook or Pro-App (not sure of the limited, though I would
assume it would be treated the same as a UniDisk 3.5, therefore
the total number of UniDisk 3.5 and Smartport hardisks should not
exceed four altogether).

    Once I'm adding things to mention, I forgot to answer your
question about the "Keyboard" switch in my first reply. What
it does depends on whether you have an American IIc or a foreign
IIc (foreign also includes Canada). On the American IIc, this 
will toggle between standard QWERTY layout and DVORAK layout. If
you have a foreign IIc, it switches between the local language
character set (you can get the little accents and special 
characters printed certain keys to show on screen) and the 
American character set. The U.K. version added only a change 
to the "#" symbol, changing it to a British pound sign.

>>[...] There were two major motherboard revisions, four firmware
>>revisions and of course, the IIc Plus which was a whole new machine.
>>I'll leave the discription of the differences between them all for
>>another post. :-)
>
>       Take your time, I'm not going anywhere soon. =^)

    Well the differences between the 5 IIc's have been described
in the past here, so I'll try to do it as briefly as possible. So 
in a nutshell, without going into too much detail, and off the
top of my head...

[Original IIc]

- First IIc revision had a 16K ROM firmware (ID: "255"). It had
  a motherboard that used a 74LS161 to get the timing for the
  serial ports which was 3% too slow, so modems operating above
  300 baud didn't always work. IIc's manufactured between its
  introduction in April 1984 until around December 1984 had
  this serial port fault (a crystal replaced the TTL chip, and
  Apple upgraded boards). The keyboard was beige in color and
  had very mushy feeling keys (due to an anti-spills rubber
  mat and wire bits between keys to make an audible "click").

[UniDisk 3.5 IIc]

- Second IIc revision used the same motherboard, but with a
  32K ROM firmware (ID: "0"), so the first was upgradeable
  with a chip swap, if you cut one trace and opened another.
  The new ROM brought back the mini-assembler, STEP and TRACE
  and new commands for the 65C02, new serial port commands (for
  better SSC compatibility), built in self-test diagnostic and
  of course, the Smartport protocol firmware for support of
  "intelligent" devices like the UniDisk 3.5 (also hooks for 
  an external AppleTalk device that never came out).

[Memory Expandable IIc - revision 1]

- Third IIc revision had a new motherboard which had a socket 
  for adding a Slinky-type memory board (Apple's card came with
  256K and upgradeable to 1 MB). They also reduced the chip
  count making up the built-in 128K (4 chips instead of 16).
  The new ROM firmware (ID: "3") contained all the firmware
  support of the Slinky RAM card rather than on the card itself
  and it virtually lived in "Slot 4"--this bumped the mouse
  to "Slot 7" and totally kicked out the AppleTalk support
  hooks that lived there (it was dead code anyhow, since the
  external AppleTalk device was cancelled). It also fixed a
  bug with write protected 3.5 disks in some versions of the
  UniDisk 3.5 I think. With this IIc, they changed the color
  of the keyboard, floppy drive latch, volume knob and any
  plug connectors from beige to light-grey/platinum. It also
  had a new keyboard, sporting a MUCH nicer feel and keys
  with a sharp and crisp clickiness to them.

[Memory Expandable IIc - revision 2]

- Fourth revision of IIc. Identical to above, but with a bug
  fixed ROM firmware installed (ID: "4"). It had an improved
  method for detecting how many RAM chips were present in
  an installed Slinky card. It also fixed a problem with
  keyboard buffering and some bug when using the built-in
  terminal mode for serial port 2 (for external modems).

[Apple IIc Plus]

- The fifth Apple IIc, though more a completely new machine
  than a revision of the other four. This IIc had a new case,
  new motherboard, new ROM and many major changes. The most
  obvious changes were the built-in 3.5 (800K) replacing the
  internal 5.25, the built-in powersupply with AC plug connector
  replacing the 12V DC voltage adapter and external powerbrick,
  the light-grey/platinum case, new keyboard (same layout as
  the Apple IIgs), replacement of "80/40" switch with a sliding
  volume switch, removal of headphone jack, and standardized
  mini-DIN8 serial connectors (same signal as older IIc though).
  It also had the built-in equivalent of a 4 MHz ZipChip (in
  fact Apple licensed the technology from Zip, but instead of a
  ZipChip used a 65C02-4, an ASIC and two 8K SRAM chips with
  some other logic). They also added some extra logic so it
  could work with external "dumb" Apple 3.5 drives, just like
  the IIgs, and handle two external 5.25 drives, in addition
  to still supporting the UniDisk 3.5 and floppy port HD's.
  There was an internal modem connector, but this was never
  used by Apple or any third party company (at least not
  beyond experimental prototypes).

  The firmware remained 32K in size (ID: "5") and besides
  adding support for the obvious (internal 3.5 drive support,
  accelerator, etc) it was very similar to the last IIc. Hmm,
  I think there is a bug that wouldn't allow it to read 400K
  3.5 floppies, though I'd have to look that up to be sure.
  It still only came with 128K of RAM built-in, and also
  had the same memory expansion socket as in the previous
  IIc, but I think supported an extra signal or two and had
  different timings so the old Apple RAM card may not have 
  worked without modifications.

    Oops, so much for being brief. In summary, the four IIc's
were basically the equivalent of Enhanced IIe's with built-in
devices and no slots. The IIc Plus was then that, plus a IIc
that had been souped up with extra goodies that a user might
add and made more compact. Apple released it to compete with 
the Laser 128 model EX/2, rather than building a better IIgs 
to compete with more worthy business opponents at the time, 
like Commodore and Atari or IBM.

Mitchell Spector
spec@vax2.concordia.ca