Re: mystery machine

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

In article Doug Browning <vgt507@freenet.mb.ca> writes...

>My first computer (which I still have, btw) was a ][+ clone in an off
>white case with brown around the keyboard. On each side of the case was a
>cutout for a dp9 connecter and the keyboard had a combined shift-lock key
>and power light as well as a numeric keypad. Certain control key
>combinations created commonly used basic/dos commands such as print,
>init, etc..Inside on the board there was a z80 cpu besides the 6502.
>There was no slot 4, and instead of a slot0, there was a rom slot,
>in which sat a card marked rom0. There was a row of eight 64k roms
>instead of the usual rom array. In slot 6 there was a Shamrock Computers
>Disk Writer II card connected to a half high single sided pc type disk
>drive. When I turned on this machine, it printed "EASY ][" instead of
>"APPLE ][". There are no identifying lables of any kind anywhere on this
>machine.
>
>I was wondering if anyone could identify this computer for me... Thanks
>in advance...

    Sounds very similar to the Apple II Plus clone I picked up for $10
back around March or April (I had no intension of buying it originally,
but ended up grabbing it since it came with a boxed Titan Accelerator II
board and an Apple Super Serial Card with mint condition box and manual :).
Not too mention several Nibble and SoftTalk magazines.

    Mine has a sticker that says "Elite Computer" and identifies itself
as an "ELITE-5" when powered up (rather than "APPLE ]["). The manual
that came with it calls it a Lasar computer manufactured by Fugu or
something close to that name. Probably a generic motherboard that a
few clone companies used, just plug in a different ROM card. Yes, mine
too is missing a slot, has the ROM card in slot 0, a Z80 on the board
for running CP/M software, keyboard macros, etc. The other feature it
has is it uses a detached IBM XT keyboard (there's a small adapter that
plugs into the keyboard DIP connector so it can connect to a 5-pin
PC/XT keyboard. It may not have been specific to this motherboard, I'm
sure you could use this on a real Apple II, though I've yet to test it).

    Another interesting thing is it appears to have a DB9 joystick
connector on the motherboard, but there is no opening on the case to
access it (what makes me suspect this motherboard was used by several
companies). It also appears there were openings to insert internal
half-height 5.25 drives, although mine came with an external Disk II
look-alike drive. It didn't take long before I shoved it into the
closet, along with my Golden II (another Apple II clone, which
incidentally was my first computer :).

Mitchell Spector
spec@vax2.concordia.ca