Re: Foundling IIe left on curb, now what?

["Robert J. Stevens" <atreborz@execpc.com>]

Ziggy wrote:

> mshaslam@gmail.com wrote:
> > It's been 20+ years since I booted an Apple II, but when I found one
> > sitting on the side of the road, well I guess I'm a sucker for hard
> > luck stories.  I was hoping I could get some pointers on getting it
> > into functioning condition.
> >
> > The case is in fairly good condition.  It's dirty and the cap for the
> > keyboard light is missing, but all the keys are there and seem to
> > function, and it has two 5.25 drives.  However it has no disks.
> >
> > Internally it has three cards in the expansion slots, the floppy
> > controller, an Epson parallel port controller, and the last one, which
> > is a only labled as 'Microsoft Consumer Products'.  My wild guess says
> > it's a CP/M card.  It also has  an '80col/64k' card in the 'aux
> > connection' slot.
> >
> > It boots into ROM just fine and I managed to dust off my BASIC enough
> > to make it say 'hello world'.  The only problem so far is that the
> > colors bleed quite a bit on the screen unless I get the cable just
> > right.
> >
> > My questions are:
> >
> > Are there known issues and solutions to the color bleed problem?  More
> > wild guesses on my part say either a solder problem or corrosion, but
> > I'm not yet ready to take the thing apart until I'm a little more sure.
> >
> > What OS does an IIe run and how would I get a copy?   I remember from
> > the long ago days that the apple drives are totally incompatible with
> > IBM drives, so bootstrapping seems to require getting a hold of actual
> > boot disks.  I currently have no access to a functioning Apple II, but
> > I do live in the Seattle area.
> >
> > What the heck is that Microsoft card, and/or how would I find out?
> >
> > Thanks for your help,
> > MSH
> >
>
> The microsoft card, if its got a Z80 on it should be a CPM card..
>
> Must be nice finding stuff like that out at the curb..

I'm running a dual disk drive //e. I can send some boot floppies
Bob in wisconsin