Author: Graham

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Apple II GS

Posted on by Graham

I was alerted by an ARC colleague (thanks Jon) of a curious garage sale up at One Tree Hill. There i found, amongst other things, this quite early Apple IIGS. The keyboard is not a GS keyboard, but it is close enough.

This machine was built around the end of 1986, perhaps early 1987. It still had the original ROM 00. The updated ROM 01 was released in late 1987, and it was generally assumed that users would adopt the free ROM upgrade. For whatever reason, this unit missed the boat. I made up an adapter for a M27C1001 which did the job.

The battery was flat but had not leaked. I replaced it.

I added a Booti card for solid state storage and a Garrett 4MB memory card. I have configured slot 7 for Localtalk so i have popped the Booti card into slot 1 (local printer disabled).

I have loaded some pre-made disk images on to the Booti including GSOS V6. I added Appleworks and some games.

I also added Appletalk using the GSOS installer. It connected fine to an Macintosh SE/30 and even with a Macintosh G4 via a bridge.

Apple IIe Platinum Colour

Posted on by Graham

This machine came from a fellow ARC member. It was in pretty good shape when i received it. It came with an Apple 19 pin 5.25″ Floppy Drive Controller, an Apple 3.5″ Disk Controller (which supports Smartport), an 80 column card, and the Apple Colour Monitor.

I have added a printer card, Super Serial Card, Mouse Interface card, and an Apple Disk II card. The original 80 column card has been replaced with a somewhat extreme 8MB memory card.

A FloppyEmu hangs off the smartport to provide a solid state hard disk. With the additional memory, mouse, and solid state drive, the machine becomes quite a capable ProDOS machine.

This is also a very nice machine to set up at an exhibition with Total Replay for a low effort hands-on retro gaming experience.

System 80 Monitor

Posted on by Graham

The System 80 came with a Thorn 7433 black & white TV that was used as a monitor. It had had a couple of homebrew additions.

The first was a composite video input, so modulation/demodulation is redundant.

The second was a green screen, which was appropriately agricultural. The mount has broken and in any case is too rough even for my low standards.

It seems to be working fine.

I have removed the mount, and rubbed back the glued areas. It’s currently awaiting paint and then i’ll attempt to mount some coloured perspex that looks a little more appealing.