- VCF South West - June 14 - 16, Davidson-Gundy Alumni Center at University of Texas at Dallas
- VCF West - Aug 2 - 3, Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA
- VCF Midwest - Sept 7 - 8 2024, Schaumburg, IL
- VCF SoCal - Mid February 2025, Location TBD, Southern CA
- VCF East - April 2025, Infoage Museum, Wall NJ
-
Please review our updated Terms and Rules here
Does anyone recognize any of these 2 screens from my 2 Franklin Ace 1000s
- Thread starter mudmin
- Start date
So far no symptom changes, but this is what I've done so far.
I swapped the entire daughter board at the bottom. Did not make a symptom difference on either machine. Swapped CPUs and roms. No symptoms changed. On the second one, I checked all 24 ram chips. That's about as far as I've gotten.
I swapped the entire daughter board at the bottom. Did not make a symptom difference on either machine. Swapped CPUs and roms. No symptoms changed. On the second one, I checked all 24 ram chips. That's about as far as I've gotten.
cryu
Member
The socket that the color daughterboard plugs into at ZA6 isn't making good connection with the color daughterboard's pin headers. The same thing happened on one of my ACE1000s; that socket isn't rated for too many remove/insert cycles. I ended up having to replace both the socket and the pin headers.
cryu
Member
There's a schematic about midway through the PDF Adrian posted at https://archive.org/details/franklin-service-1-of-2/, and I posted the contents of the PROM in this thread.
The SAMS ComputerFact (available for sale via their website) is reasonably useful for troubleshooting as well.
If you don't need color, though, you might be better off converting the ACE1000 to monochrome -- the video becomes rock-solid, and the color artifacting that was present even in text mode with that (expletive deleted) daughterboard is gone. I've written up the procedure at https://www.disavowed.jp/?p=288.
After the conversion, the ACE1000 can be further converted to Apple-style color generation by adding a choke and capacitor per the instructions in Adrian's PDF. I haven't gotten around to writing up that procedure, as I'm happy with monochrome, but it's straightforward.
The SAMS ComputerFact (available for sale via their website) is reasonably useful for troubleshooting as well.
If you don't need color, though, you might be better off converting the ACE1000 to monochrome -- the video becomes rock-solid, and the color artifacting that was present even in text mode with that (expletive deleted) daughterboard is gone. I've written up the procedure at https://www.disavowed.jp/?p=288.
After the conversion, the ACE1000 can be further converted to Apple-style color generation by adding a choke and capacitor per the instructions in Adrian's PDF. I haven't gotten around to writing up that procedure, as I'm happy with monochrome, but it's straightforward.
Last edited:
Thanks for this information. I was looking for the programming / user guide on how to use the color daughterboard. Without this information it's essentially useless.
cryu
Member
Oh ... sorry, I have never seen documentation on the special Franklin graphics mode provided by the daughterboard.
From the schematic, it appears that it's activated by putting the machine into GR; that enables the special glyphs in the high half of the chargen 2532 ROM. Beyond that, ENOCLUE.
From the schematic, it appears that it's activated by putting the machine into GR; that enables the special glyphs in the high half of the chargen 2532 ROM. Beyond that, ENOCLUE.
retrobecanes
Experienced Member
Does the reset button work?
Thanks, do you know if there are any BASIC graphics commands which take advantage of the extra capabilities?
cryu
Member
I don't think so; the Franklin AppleSoft ROM is identical to Apple's.
I think the way it was supposed to work is that the program would switch into GR mode and just print characters, which would be in the alternate charset in the top half of the chargen 2532. Maybe, just a WAG based on the schematic. There was a former Franklin employee lurking on the forum a few years back; if he's still around, perhaps he'll chime in.
I think the way it was supposed to work is that the program would switch into GR mode and just print characters, which would be in the alternate charset in the top half of the chargen 2532. Maybe, just a WAG based on the schematic. There was a former Franklin employee lurking on the forum a few years back; if he's still around, perhaps he'll chime in.
Thanks for this information. It makes me wonder if there's any real value add to this board.
cryu
Member
I personally don't think so; it exists only to work around the Apple patent on color signal generation.
The color signal generated by the board is so lousy that I converted my ACE1000 that had the board to monochrome. Apple-style color can then be had for the cost of a few passive components, if you absolutely need color display.