Re: Bell & Howell questions

[mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon)]

Simon Williams wrote:

>Michael J. Mahon <mjmahon@aol.com> wrote:
>
>> >Finally my part-time high school janitor gig pays off... today I managed
>> >to walk out with a nice Bell & Howell II+ with the A/V interface and a
>> >pair of matching drives. ;-P
>> 
>> Bingo!  Although highly prized by collectors for its low production
>> numbers, the computer is really just a ][+ with a paint job.  ;-)
>
>Yes, I was quite surprised to find out how rare these things actually
>are, though I'm determined to use it rather than keep it as a "museum
>piece"... It'll be the new home for my DX-1 sampler. 
>BTW, I should clarify that I didn't simply walk out the back door with
>it... in fact the teacher who was in charge of it seemed quite happy to
>to regain a couple feet of shelf space ;-)
>
>> Remember that it is a ][+, and therefore has only upper-case.
>
>Actually, it seems that B&H added the shift-key mod themselves (of
>course that's of no use to me since I don't have game paddles for it).

You won't need the paddles for the shift key mod.  It connects the
shift key to PB2 input, so that software can tell when the user is
holding down the shift key.

The normal monitor will ignore this and deliver upper case, but
there are applications (mostly word processors) that check the
shift key, and there are patches for Applesoft that allow you to
type and edit programs in upper and lower case.

Of course, lower case is not worth much unless the lower case
character generator EPROM is installed (toward the very front
of the main board).  Usually, installation of the shift key mod was
done hand-in-hand with replacement of the character generator.

>It was nice to have this rare opportunity to correct you, Michael :)

I'm sure there are plenty of such opportunities, Simon!  ;-)

Enjoy your new toy!  (BTW, this is one of the reasons that I wrote
DAC522 to run on 1MHz 6502's--so _any_ Apple II could use it.  ;-)

-michael

Check out amazing quality sound for 8-bit Apples on my
Home page:  http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/