Re: what apple is this? (more photos)

[Mitchell Spector <mitch2gs@hotmail.com>]

dempson@actrix.gen.nz (David Empson) wrote:

>Michael J. Mahon <mjmahon@aol.com> wrote:
>
>> Guillaume Tello wrote:
>> >     Here it is:
>> > http://pagesperso-orange.fr/gtello/whatapple8.jpg
>> > 
>> >     But why are there four Roms places?
>> >     One is clearly labelled F0-F8 Apple (Prodos)
>> >     And I think the other one is BASIC 8K, but I might be wrong.
>> 
>> I'd guess that the card is set up to accept ROMs of different
>> sizes, so there are more places for ROMs.
>> 
>> In the photo, one ROM is 4KB, replacing the F0 and F8 ROMs, and
>> one ROM is 8KB, replacing the four (D0, D8, E0, E8) Applesoft ROMs.
>
>As to the ROM saying "F0-F8 Apple (Prodos)": that doesn't make much
>sense, since ProDOS doesn't live in the ROM. It operates out of the
>language card RAM (in the D0-FF pages, also using part of the second
>D0-DF bank). Whoever wrote the label was probably confused.

    I believe the hand written "(Apple) ProDOS" is referring to  
bypassing a copy protection mechanism used by the ProDOS
operation system (version 1.0.1 or higher).

    ProDOS checks for the word "Apple" in the actual firmware
at boot, and if it's not present, it locks up during start up. Almost
all Apple II clones replaced the cold boot splash screen message 
"APPLE ][" with their own name, so Apple took advantage of 
that to prevent clones from running their OS by doing a checksum. 
My Golden II for example displays "GOLDEN64" and my Fugu 
says "Elite-5", so neither one can boot ProDOS--unless you 
manually patch it with a sector editor. The other way was to burn 
a copy of the ROM, but modified to say "APPLE ][" at start.

    Looking at photos of this clone, couldn't help but notice it 
has the very same Seasonic powersupply as my Golden II. :)

Mitchell Spector