Re: Franklin Ace 2200

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

"Otter" <otter@oz.net> wrote:
>Yesterday I found a Franklin Ace 2200 computer at the Goodwill in 
>Tacoma.  Paid $8.00 for it.  Anyway, Does anyone have any info on this 
>system?  It's not like any Franklin I've ever seen before.  It has a 
>nice compact case with detachable keyboard and two 1/2 height disk 
>drives built in.  There are 5 LEDs on the front:  Power, Diag, Disk 
>Error, DBL Hi Res, CPU.
>
>So, anyone out there have any info on this little beast?  I've done 
>lots of Web searches and the only Franklin pages found were for the 
>1000 and 1200, no mention at all of the 2200.

The Franklin Ace 2200 is an Apple IIe clone.  It was designed after
Franklin almost got sued to death over the 1000 and the 1200.
Those earlier Franklins were pure copies of Apple II and II+ models.
The 2200 is has legally cloned ROMs.

The 2200 has two Apple capatible slots, double-speed drives, a
power supply and fan designed with enough power for an internal
hard drive to be added later, and has a PC like case and keyboard.
The unit is black and sleek.  This was one of the best Apple II clones
ever built.  Memory can be expanded with a standard slot card.
It has 128K standard.

>She powers up just fine, but the boot drive just spins  (and yes, I 
>tried it with an Apple II-formatted floppy in the drive.)  I can hit 
>CTRL-RESET and get to the Applesoft prompt, but I can't get either DOS 
>3.3 or ProDOS to load.

The Franklin can use either DOS or ProDOS.  If the disk drive is
malfunctioning, you can stick in a Disk II or Unidisk controller
into one of the Franklin's slots and boot from an external floppy
drive.