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My A2+

M

Micom 2000

Veteran Member
Joined
Mar 6, 2004
Messages
1,284
Location
Manitoba North of 50 degrees Latitude
I have an Apple II Plus. From the additions the previous owner made, he/she was obviously in love with it. There is a plastic Data holder installed on the front as well as several other cards and mods, some of which I'm not sure of. One I do recognise is the UHF connector for TV, and an Orange Grappler + card' but there are several others I've never quite been able to identify. One is a socket plugged in to the game connector. It has a 6-blade socket which ceratainly doesn't fit any Apple mouse I've ever seen.

Another card labeled Multiflex Tech has an RCA output cable, a single wire connected to a point on the MB just behind an adjustable resister(?) behind the game socket. It also has a clip-on connector connected to a chip 9334, labelled with a stylized AP logo and below it TC14. All 3 of these connectors are connected to the card by a 5pin connector. The card has one chip labeled on a paper sticker Character Generator v8.0, another is labelled Firmware v8.0 . There is one large chip which does not seem to be a CPU and all the chips are socket-mounted.

Another card is labelled " Modem 80" and has 2 RJ-11 plugs at the keyboard end of the mother-board and a 40-trace edge-connector at the back. There are 1 green and 1 red LED in the center. And of course the Apple plug-in traces on the bottom. The upper RJ-11 socket is hand-labelled "modem" For me this doesn't compute. If it's a modem card why would it have the 2 RJ-11 sockets as well as the 40-pin connector socket. And the orientation of the 40-pin male edge connector to the rear for easy cable access ?

I took some pictures of the cards and motherboard, but so far my cheap camera doesn't give legible pics despite it's supposed 10 pixel abilities. And so far the shareware photo-viewers I downloaded for my new W2k OS are "whiz-bang", but with no "primitive" photo editing. Even the newer ACDC vers. for W2k has been rendered useless for common use.

Should no one recognize my descriptions I'll transfer the JPGs to one of my W98s with a simple logical processing program and upload them.

I'm reminded of a great line in an old movie. "I don't need your steenking (xxxxxxxx)."
(xxxxxxx) meaning to me "IMPROVED modern graphics processing".

Lawrence
 
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Well after some intensive Googles I can understand better why there where no replies to this posting. Yet surely there must be someone from the early Apple era who has an inkling.I will avoid a paranoid idea that I am being shunned for elderly irrascability.

There were some encouraging leads, like the one from the TorPet newsletter mentioning they had done a group buy of Modem 80s and would be renting them to members at $20 a month, but no real description. There was also a reference to the "famous" Modem 80s in IIRC Wiki. But again, no description. A reference to Tim Mann of Tandy 80 fame mentioning Modem 80 returned nothing.

It was obviously not a modem card since it had 2 RJ11 connectors, one labelled "modem".
The idea that it was some sort of 80 line interpeter still begs the question of why there was the edge connector. Some sort of 8580/Z80 interpretor seems more possible but begs the question "Why" ? What 40-pin edge connector would supply some sort of peripheral ?

The Multiflex Tech card led me to some references in Usenet. One for a memory card for an Apple II Plus, and another for an A-2 Eprom burner. So obviously Multiflex (whose name is now owned by Intel} produced a range of products. But nothing on an Apple 2 graphic card. Which it must be with a "Character Generator", and the piggyback clip to the 9334 chip right next to the "color trim" labelled adjustable resister. Would it have required a program to explore all of it's glory ?

The six bladed connector cabled to the "game" socket may go down in computer history as
the connector to the most obscure peripheral in Apple history.

The "Sup-R-Mod" chanel 33 TV connector unit is fairly well-known, altho I don't quite understand it. It has a cable connector and functions somewhat like the channel 2/3 switch does on some gaming machines, but uses UHF channel 33 in the years before anyone imagined how many UHF channels could possibly be used. Kind of like Gate's pronouncement about "how could anyone need more memory than 640k".

The A-II Plus has an extremely well-populated memory on the MB as well as a memory card. I haven't done the addition of chips to discern it's memory or a software check.

If any of this sparks a memory or conjectures in A-II enthusiasts, could you please pass them on. When I acquired the A-II+ many years ago, I must have used the Multiflex card RCA plug to test it, but I might have been cautious and used the normal MB video connector. I seem to remember it had an impressive display. That was over 10 years ago. I'm even more cautious now from experience.

Lawrence
 
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The pictures would certainly be intriguing to say the least, and a few folks here (not me) seem to have better experience tracing the circuit and noticing the ability of onboard chips to come up with a guess.

I'm not as familiar with Apple II systems but is there a way to dump out a bios or something on the devices or poke at a device via the monitor rom or microassembler?

Maybe one of these listed diagnostic packages could do something if you found a copy or adt of one?
http://apple2.org.za/gswv/a2zine/GS.WorldView/Resources/STEPHEN.BUGGIE/Diagnostic.Review.Buggie.txt
 
Micom 2000 said:
I will avoid a paranoid idea that I am being shunned for elderly irrascability.
Click to expand...
Well, you've fail to take into account that a whole generation of geeks raised under Reaganomics either can't read or not inclined to read detail descriptions of anything (short attention span.) :D That said, a picture is worth a thousand words...
 
I have an old version of the prometheus promodem 1200A that has 2 cards. A CPU card with speaker and a SPU card with RJ11 jacks. The promodem has a ribbon that connects the 2 together. Maybe the Modem 80 is similar and you are missing the other half?

-Matt
 
Ohh Nooo. I refuse to turn into a Reaganite despite the failure of the educational system. 4 days before my 73rd birthday, and I'll take to the high bridge should I see an indication. But in deference to the new world's misdevelopment here's some photo-bucket pictures from my
cheap digital camera on my new MS$ W2k computer from some lousy shareware program which can't even approach the abilities of earlier W98 programs to perfect pictures, cause the marketers are going for the gee-whiz factors wanted by the professionals.

Try this: http://s163.photobucket.com/albums/t311/Bigwok/AppleIIplus/

Lawrence

dorkbert said:
Well, you've fail to take into account that a whole generation of geeks raised under Reaganomics either can't read or not inclined to read detail descriptions of anything (short attention span.) :D That said, a picture is worth a thousand words...
Click to expand...
 
Well, the last few pics of the card appears to scarcely have any gold fingers on the card edge, so I guess it's only using the slot to draw power. If I view the pic correctly, it seems the game connector is attached to the DIY outlet on the case (never seen one like it. very interesting.) Otherwise the card in slot 2 appears to have a bunch of memory chips on it, so it might be a RAM card (probably of Saturn variety.)
 
Thanks Dorbert. I tried to go to an old source of info, the Usenet groups which Google took over from DEJA View but found that google is downplaying it and there are all kinds of companies now attempting to make businesses out of the source. Parasitical swine !

I guess I have to access an Apple II site but even RubyWand has a site only accessible with a registration and log-on, which makes you a victim of the vultures which seem to have taken over the I-net.

Lawrence
 
A bit more info on this card. It's an Electro Arts Ltd. Modem-80. There was a query on Apple Fritter about identifying this card, but no reply. Electro Arts was a Toronto company.

Was there any A-II peripheral which used a 40 pin edge connector ?

"Another card is labelled " Modem 80" and has 2 RJ-11 plugs at the keyboard end of the mother-board and a 40-trace edge-connector at the back. There are 1 green and 1 red LED in the center. And of course the Apple plug-in traces on the bottom. The upper RJ-11 socket is hand-labelled "modem" For me this doesn't compute. If it's a modem card why would it have the 2 RJ-11 sockets to the front and the orientation of the 40-pin male connector to the rear for easy cable access ? "

I'm wondering if it had any relationship to Tandy protocol. TRS had a program called Modem-80.

The other "Multiflex Tech Inc." card must be a graphic card. Perhaps a color. It has an RCA connector. I haven't tried it on my Color II-E monitor. I'm always hesitant about using unknown boards. I'd hate to lose either the card or the color monitor. I likely went thru this same trepidation well over 10 years ago when I got the Plus and have forgotten.

Lawrence
 
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