Re: Laser 128 questions

[shelbyb@iglou.iglou.com (Shelby Bush)]

fw060@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Jason Thomas) writes:

>One thing: you can
>only boot off of the internal drive:<. My internal drive is slowly
>biting the dust....I know that it's a 19 pin connection to the
>motherboard, anyone replaced it with a Disk ][ yet? 

You can also boot from a 3.5" disk drive attached to the external drive
mount, if the switch is set for "slot 7-internal", since the 3.5" drive is
phantomed out to slot 7.  Or you can boot from a disk drive or hard drive
with the slot 7 switch set to external, and the drive card in the side
slot. 



> >>I notice the slot on the side and a reference to an "expansion box".
> >Was
> >>this commonly available? How was it set up?  (I noticed the switches
> >for
> >>Interal and external for slots 5 and 7.)
> >
> >I -*think*- it was for devices not included in the ports.

>there is an external 'box' you can buy to put two cards inside the box.
>you can hook one card out of the side, but it's ugly, and
>VERY dangerous in my book.

True, and as I've emailed to the original poster, you can improvise with 
a cardboard box and duct tape.  A company in Florida offers a 'snap on' 
card protecting sleeve for the side of the computer.


>I have no idea about those switches on the bottom, I played with the
>Laser 5 years ago. It's served me well for the past 7 years!

The switches on the bottom allow you to switch from internal (the built 
in port for that slot) to external (the slot on the side of the 'puter).

If you have the expansion box, you get two slots out of the one slot on 
the side of the machine.

Slot 5 = internal: additional memory
slot 5 = external: slot 5 in expansion box (could be memory or hard drive)

slot 7 = internal: 3.5" drive card
slot 7 = external: slot 7 in expansion box (preferred place for hard drive)

You can only have two out of four possibilities.  You can have your 
choice of a 3.5" drive, hard drive, extra memory, and one add-on card 
(say a computereyes, for instance).

Very limited compared to the IIe -- even the II+.  But superior to the 
IIc, which could not be expanded much at all.


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