Re: 200 apple II clones confirmed

["David Wilson" <mcs6502@gmail.com>]

Michael J. Mahon wrote:
> David Wilson wrote:
> > The model 312 was only about 95% software compatible with the IIe.
> > Replacing the ROMs with genuine IIe firmware bought it up to 99% with
> > the following differences:
>
> Hard to see why they would shrink from copying the ROMs after they'd
> illegally used the ASICs!

The MPF-III actually has 3x 8KB ROMs. The usual CD & EF (with the C0xx
range mapped into C1xx space to support the on-board parallel port).
The extra ROM was mapped into A000..BFFF when required (the rest of the
printer code lives there) along with BASIC extensions and the self test
code).

MPF-III BASIC has additional keywords not found in Applesoft:

BASS 0-8 (stop,waltz,rumba,tango,march,cha-cha,blues,rock,swing)
EFFECT 0-3 (whistling bomb,explosion,laser gun,machine gun)
INSTR 1-4 (piano,bell,xylophone,organ)
PLAY buffer,rhythm
SONG tone,length
TEMPO 1-15 (640-52 beats/sec)

These are to control the on-board AY-3-8912 PSG chip.

The keyboard also has 12 function keys which can have user defined
strings assigned to them (the keyboard is actually 8-bit with the 8th
bit read at another location).