Re: BASIS 108 anyone?

[david@wraith.cs.uow.edu.au (David E A Wilson)]

michael.schael@auge.de (Michael Schael) writes:
>The IIe was designed to avoid
>cloning. I think it had some special circuits? There was no official
>clone. And I think no real inofficial to.

It did not work then. My first Apple compatible computer was a Multitech
MPF-III/312. It manages to do all but a couple of the //e specific softswitches
without the MMU or IOU chips (it does have 3 PALs to a genuine //e's 1).
The Multitech MPF-III/327 then came out using MMU and IOU chips.
The other differences between the MPF-III and the //e were:

	66KB of RAM (2KB video RAM and an additional softswitch for
	selecting the 2nd video screen while PAGE2 was used for Aux
	selection). This confused ProDOS 8 no end as it assumed that
	//e systems had 64, 65 or 128KB of RAM and it took 66 as 128
	and tried to put /RAM in it...
	The MPF-III/327 had 128KB so fixed this problem.
	I programmed a GAL to replace a PAL and added 64KB to my
	312 to make it work the same as a 327 or a //e with 128KB.

	No ALTZP switch (no aux zp or LC to switch)
	I changed this when I made the above change.

	Builtin parallel port in slot 1
	External slot on side of box for slot 2
	Internal slot 4 for Chinese Character Generator card
	Internal slot 6 for Disk ][ compatible controller
	Internal slot 7 for clone of Microsoft z80 card

	Keyboard separate from CPU box

	All internal slots used dual row .1" pitch connectors
	(female on motherboard, male on cards) with the cards
	lying flat inside the case

Note: The MPF-III ("Micro ProFessor" I think) followed the MPF-II which was
an Apple compatible educational board. 

This machine still works well today (one power supply failed and the keyboard
membrane was replaced but since then it has been fine).
-- 
David Wilson	Dept CompSci Uni Wollongong Australia	david@cs.uow.edu.au