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Franklin CX luggable

Thanks for the heads up about the CX reference in that book. I’ll have to check it out.

Amazing its really the only apple II portable with a built in screen.
It’s an interesting machine, more in the realm of a CP/M luggable like Osborne or Kaypro. There’s a Franklin 80 (Applicard) in the machine so I guess it is a CP/M machine. The monitor has thick glass and is super sharp. I was impressed with how clear the image is. Wish there was more of them around. I think there must be a collector or two with them, the others are in museum collections from what it sounds like from Bob.
 
There were a limited number of fully assembled units around the time things were starting to go bad for Franklin, two of them were in Franklin's collection of products and those were the two I had possession of. I kept in touch with most of the original core of engineers and none of them had one, but Franklin had a yard sale (I kid you not) and someone bought most of the pieces of CXs that were in boxes, then built whole units and sold them on eBay. So there are an unknown quantity of them floating around on the used market, but not many. I'd best almost all of them were assembled from bits and pieces, not whole units. I can't remember more than one or two sitting in Engineering during development but my focus was the Red Lightning and had nothing to do with the CX.

It should be able to boot CP/M. About 8 years ago I had a CX on display at VCF East running CP/M. Nothing special about it; any CP/M boot disk for the Applicard should work.
 
The guy I bought the CX from, he said he bought about 100 computers worth of pieces from Franklin and then assembled and sold them off (not CX’s specifically probably ACE 1000’s or other machines)

I’ll have to try tracking down a Franklin or Applicard CP/M disk. That would be great to try. If anyone has the means to make one, and send me a copy, please let me know.
 
I think the rarer card is the Color video card. I know the last repair I did on the 1200 The customer wanted me to find him a color card.. I came up dry even after 9 months of searching.

Ill tell you though. I would love a CX just for the portable aspect and I love luggables (with CRT's.. I try and avoid old LCD screens.)
 
At one point there was real Apple color generation circuitry on the 100s and 1000s, and dealers would unofficially install the few parts for customers. Definitely violated a very vague Apple patent. One hardware engineer at Franklin (Mike Wajda) spent a few months coming up with a fully compatible but non-infringing board design. It was ugly; at least one chip pulled from the motherboard, then a very odd shaped board installed, and quite few jumpers back to the mobo.

I do not know if the original color logic was on later motherboards, but it was all right around the back corner by the video connector.

Goofy story. While Mike was working on the color board, contractors were in the building running wires for something. Mike was staring at his prototype board when a ceiling tile suddenly fell onto his work. Broken tile, lots of dust, and a contractor poking his head out of the ceiling apologizing. Mike put on his jacket and calmly left for the day. He spent most of the next day cleaning up the mess and getting his prototype working again.
 
The guy I bought the CX from, he said he bought about 100 computers worth of pieces from Franklin and then assembled and sold them off (not CX’s specifically probably ACE 1000’s or other machines)

I’ll have to try tracking down a Franklin or Applicard CP/M disk. That would be great to try. If anyone has the means to make one, and send me a copy, please let me know.
I managed to rescue a Franklin CX that's fully working and included the Franklin-specific Applicard CP/M as well as the CX Utilities disks. I made images of both disks and have them posted here--> https://retroactivity.net/index.php/topic,12.msg13.html#new

I'll be posting much more about this computer including detailed pictures of the unit fully torn down for documentation and refurbishment purposes.
 
I managed to rescue a Franklin CX that's fully working and included the Franklin-specific Applicard CP/M as well as the CX Utilities disks. I made images of both disks and have them posted here--> https://retroactivity.net/index.php/topic,12.msg13.html#new

I'll be posting much more about this computer including detailed pictures of the unit fully torn down for documentation and refurbishment purposes.
This is great news! Glad to hear there’s another surviving CX in the wild. Thank you so much for posting the CX Utilities disks - I’ll have to grab and try them. I didn’t think I’d be able to track them down as I could only find one reference to them online and that person had already given away his CX and the CX disks.

My CX also has one of those ACE 80 cards along with a few other cards I have yet to dig into. Still need to take apart my keyboard as a few of the keys are stuck down I think from having been closed against the case and stored for 30 years.
 
I could only find one reference to them online and that person had already given away his CX and the CX disks
Well, well - looks like you got the same machine and disks I had come across on Dave Warker’s site, nice!
 
This is great news! Glad to hear there’s another surviving CX in the wild. Thank you so much for posting the CX Utilities disks - I’ll have to grab and try them. I didn’t think I’d be able to track them down as I could only find one reference to them online and that person had already given away his CX and the CX disks.

My CX also has one of those ACE 80 cards along with a few other cards I have yet to dig into. Still need to take apart my keyboard as a few of the keys are stuck down I think from having been closed against the case and stored for 30 years.
By the time I got this one, the Franklin Ace 80 card had been absconded with, but thankfully it's just a CPCI Applicard, so those disks actually work just as well. It's sad when old collectors pass away, but at least this computer didn't make it into the landfill since nobody really understood what this computer actually was. Hopefully those disks work for you - they took a bit of time to get transferred without error. The disks were on the verge of having bad sectors. But yes, it's very clear this computer is the same computer.

The keyboard was totally dead, but thankfully since it's a foam/foil capacitive variety similar to the Franklin 1000, it's relatively easy to refurbish. Other than the keyboard being DOA, both drives work great and actually pass through the fast disk verify of Locksmith 6.0 with my reference disks of all my other Apple IIs.

I will post the capacitor lists for both the power supply and CRT analog board. I did remove the 1 RIFA capacitor on the power supply (it was on the verge)

There was another Franklin CX in the collection I retrieved this computer from, but it wasn't as complete as this one. It was also missing the CP/M card as well as the drive bay containing both 5.25" floppy disk drives. I could have gotten it for $250, but I didn't really realize how rare it was until it was too late.

In any event, these computers certainly are unicorn-level and I'm happy to have it in my collection.
 
I just installed the foam/foil replacement pads successfully. You can find the set here:


I've attached a picture of how the keyboard case opens. Someone before me kinda murdered mine getting it open, but if you see how the keyboard latches and the shape of the latches (there are 4 of them) then this will help you unhook the keyboard covers with less damage.

You will most likely need to replace yours since mine were nearly turned to dust after all these years.

At my previous link, I also posted copies of both the ROMs found in my system. There is a 3rd ROM on the I/O board I have yet to image but will do that when I disassemble this computer again to complete the recapping work.

Otherwise, it was nice to type successfully at the CP/M prompt! This is a neat little computer. It's a damn shame it never saw the light of day. Apple II + CP/M + Luggable FTW!
 

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I've attached a picture of how the keyboard case opens.
Good info, thanks. Maybe the foam being compressed / turned to dust is why 3-4 of my keys are depressed. I haven’t rehabbed a foam/foil keyboard before so thanks for that link to the repair kit.

Imaging the ROMs was a great idea. I’d like to poke around them for any interesting text and also could be interesting to disassemble in the future.

Agreed that a luggable Apple II would have been pretty cool. Though an Apple //c comes close for portable form factor.
 
Good info, thanks. Maybe the foam being compressed / turned to dust is why 3-4 of my keys are depressed. I haven’t rehabbed a foam/foil keyboard before so thanks for that link to the repair kit.
Another thing to check with your keys is if the spring is missing. There's kinda 2 parts to their function. The first is the foam/foil on the bottom of the key. The second is each key has a spring right under the keycap. So if you carefully pull the key from the top of the keyboard, there should be a spring in each one - yours might be missing a few of these springs. They are totally easy to misplace especially when you are pulling your keycaps to clean them and one accidentally "leaps" away to an unseen 3rd dimension.

There's a couple good tutorials on how to change the foam/foil pads on Youtube including one from the Texelec site that makes the pads. It's a bit of a fiddly process and takes some time, but you get into the groove of it and can knock all them out rather quickly. I cannot stress how helpful having a stainless-steel dental cleaning hook is for the job. They recommend it and I totally understand why now that I've done a few.

Here's a link to where I'm keeping the capacitor list. It's one of my internal lists where I account for all the recapping jobs I've done. Look for the "Franklin CX Analog" and "Franklin CS Power supply" tabs for the associated boards. I have not populated the power supply tab yet, but I will get that done this weekend when I take the computer apart again.

 
I finally got this Franklin CX all sorted out. Foam/foil keyboard works. Both drives are fully aligned. Power supply and analog board have been fully recapped. A whole bunch of little fixes (broken external composite video, missing Z80 card, rerouting video cables for better video quality, etc) This thing really is a brilliant little luggable - it's very sad that it never made it out to the market. I know back in the day I would have done extra lawn mowing jobs to summon the necessary money to buy one.

At my Google link, I've added the capacitors necessary to re-cap the power supply.
 

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At one point there was real Apple color generation circuitry on the 100s and 1000s, and dealers would unofficially install the few parts for customers. Definitely violated a very vague Apple patent. One hardware engineer at Franklin (Mike Wajda) spent a few months coming up with a fully compatible but non-infringing board design. It was ugly; at least one chip pulled from the motherboard, then a very odd shaped board installed, and quite few jumpers back to the mobo.

I do not know if the original color logic was on later motherboards, but it was all right around the back corner by the video connector.

Goofy story. While Mike was working on the color board, contractors were in the building running wires for something. Mike was staring at his prototype board when a ceiling tile suddenly fell onto his work. Broken tile, lots of dust, and a contractor poking his head out of the ceiling apologizing. Mike put on his jacket and calmly left for the day. He spent most of the next day cleaning up the mess and getting his prototype working again.
Hi Bob,

I have a FRANKLIN RED LIGHTING and a CX !!!
 
There were a limited number of fully assembled units around the time things were starting to go bad for Franklin, two of them were in Franklin's collection of products and those were the two I had possession of. I kept in touch with most of the original core of engineers and none of them had one, but Franklin had a yard sale (I kid you not) and someone bought most of the pieces of CXs that were in boxes, then built whole units and sold them on eBay. So there are an unknown quantity of them floating around on the used market, but not many. I'd best almost all of them were assembled from bits and pieces, not whole units. I can't remember more than one or two sitting in Engineering during development but my focus was the Red Lightning and had nothing to do with the CX.

It should be able to boot CP/M. About 8 years ago I had a CX on display at VCF East running CP/M. Nothing special about it; any CP/M boot disk for the Applicard should work.
Hi Bob,

This is Wayne Cherry and my friend Pedro Polakoff (Diable) bought a large bundle from Franklin back in the day When they used MSDOS
 
Hi Bob,

I have a FRANKLIN RED LIGHTING and a CX !!!
Wow, I thought there was only one Red Lightning known to exist, that’s great! I also have a CX I was able to track down locally in the Philly suburbs from some ex-workers that bought a bunch of gear after Franklin closed.

Unfortunately Bob Applegate passed away earlier this year. Sorry to share this news with you.
 
Wow, I thought there was only one Red Lightning known to exist, that’s great! I also have a CX I was able to track down locally in the Philly suburbs from some ex-workers that bought a bunch of gear after Franklin closed.

Unfortunately Bob Applegate passed away earlier this year. Sorry to share this news with you.
Here are some pictures of the RED LIGHTING. I remember that I did get it to work even with a floppy disk hooked up to it with "MSDOS". I have to see if I can Find the label and the external ports. I believe that Pete, Dean and Me were the people that bought the CX's since Pete lived in the Northeast Philly.
 

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