Re: recent Apple IIGS addition and inquiries!

["Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com>]

Luke Forat wrote:
>     Hello folks,
>
>     I just got a IIGS to sit beside my IIe. It is a Euro version and came 
> with 2 5.25" drives, an Imagewriter and it's original color monitor - but no 
> disks. It had no expansion cards, just the memory card with 256K which I 
> replaced as I had another one around with 1MB on I got from ebay with a 
> bunch of other stuff. I had no documentation for these memory cards, but I 
> figured that the 2 jumpers on them should be both set for a full blown 
> configuration. I looked around but found no details or manuals for the GS 
> memory card, but then again, maybe I missed something. In any case it boots 
> and it sees the 1MB (I see it from the internal RAM drive CP).
>
>     I "threw" in some of my A2 disks and noticed that I had also to set the 
> "Alternate display mode" to on for some of them to work properly. Naturally 
> I had already set the system speed to 1MHz for full A2 compatibility. Apart 
> from that, they all worked fine.
>
>    However, the 3.6V lithium battery is dead (not surprised) so it won't 
> retain configuration and clock. I was thinking of replacing this battery 
> with a CR2032 socket and a stanard CR2032 cell. I would fix the socket with 
> some "hot glue" on the MB or some plastic mold. Alternatively, I could place 
> 3 small NiCd cells (a 3 series pack for motheboards) and trickle charge them 
> from the 5V line through a limiting resistor and diode as I have done before 
> on other old motherboards. However, I think I prefer the 2032 cell for this 
> setup as this machine won't be used that often (I don't really have the 
> space to keep them both "exposed" and the NiCd cells will eventually die and 
> short.

The CR2032 should work fine, but will have a shorter life than the 1/3AA
cell originally used.

I agree that NiCads are a bad choice for a machine that will be seldom
used.  They need to be regularly charged to stay healthy.

-michael

Music synthesis for 8-bit Apple II's!
Home page:  http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/

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