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Apple II 68K card

NeXT

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Oct 22, 2008
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I think this is more just a very cool link but while I was researching some info on the MC68000 I remembered Applefreak had its 8-bit cousin on some funky Apple II card.

Googling found this super cool link:
http://www.harrowalsh.de/Elektronik/APPLEBOX/MC68008pageGer.htm

68008CPUkarte01.jpg

68008CPUkarte04.jpg

68008CPUkarte05.jpg


Well this is kind of cool. It's a Build It Yourself version of the 68008 coprocessor card for the Apple II, complete with schematics, parts list and trace layouts.
Was there much that was actually made that could use a 68008 on an Apple II or was it a code-it-yourself deal?
 
I don't think so--and the 68008 was a real dog on performance, more so on the Apple II bus. I'm not aware of any commercial software written for this gizmo. Less than 64K of memory (uses Apple II memory)--and probably relies on the 6502 for most of the I/O (floppy, certainly).

To put a fine point on it, consider the average length of a 68K instruction vs. the length of the average 6502 instruction.
 
BuMP.

For the hell of it I went over the board layout and reformatted it so that you could directly print it to a transparency sheet or whatever you desire should you not want to hassle with CAD. Annoyingly it seems I can't attach the original and uncompressed PNG to this post.
MC6800.png
 

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I suppose. One could have just as easily put an 8088 on the same board. But then, what would you do with it?

Applied Engineering put a NEC V30 on an Apple II card with up to 768k of RAM to run PC software.

PC%20Transporter%20-%20Schematic.jpg


Apple used cards with 68000s inserted in Apple IIs early on to develop the Lisa.

This wasn't the only 68k card either.
Stellation%20Two%20McMill%20-%20Ad.jpg

IBS%20AP20%20-%2068000%20Card%20-%20Front.jpg
 
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