Bloodnose

There will always be us who will actively support and keep watching what you're offering. The a$$h0les will just move on.

I'm willing to chill a very long time for a quality product. Compare the quality differences between the Adam version of Super Donkey Kong with what Opcode has prototyped to see what the hardware is capable of, versus what was released under a high-pressure profit-minded development environment. I propose that the early CV titles, high quality as they are, could have supported even more interesting features to more closely align with their arcade counterparts had the developers had more time. What these early developers produced is super impressive -- I wish the recent Coleco book had found and talked to more of these early developers and had more information on that development environment. Right now it's the time of year when North American people are holed up inside and start thinking about these things, as well as the commencement of cabin-fever induced crankiness.

That's impossible. The IIGS 3.5" floppy drive requires Double Density (DD) diskettes. High Density (HD) will not work. ADTPro is used to transfer disk images from a Windows machine. The Windows machine acts as a server through a serial connection. The IIGS has serial built-in, but requires a cable with specific characteristics (http://adtpro.sourceforge.net/connectionsserial.html#MiniDIN8). I have used a IIGS printer cable (also MiniDIN8) for this using a couple cable adapters on the PC side -- one being a null modem adapter.

Alien Downpour is shipping now. I just got mine.

Ethernet or USB is a smart move. There may be firmware updates that could be flashed instead of having to ship out updated chips.

My only contribution is a tall order. A lot of my favorites are those with unique inputs and outputs -- not just the 4 or 8-way joysticks, two buttons, and not just output on the monitor and speaker(s). Also the ColecoVision's modular expandability was genius. Spy Hunter is a good example. Audio is stereophonic. The steering controller needs not revolve 360 degrees. There are two switches on each handlebar, plus the "horn" button in the middle to call the weapons van. Additionally, that button has a built-in lamp when the van is available. Gorf has external lamps based on your rank. Q-bert had that solenoid inside that clacked when Q-bert fell off the cubes and hit bottom. Sub-roc had a spinning shutter I wouldn't ask for such unique controllers, but the potential for expandability should definitely be considered. Enabling custom I/O devices that we could build ourselves would be cool. Maybe just a card edge connector like the SGM (and Atari module, and the Adam expansion) uses. Perhaps also support for other classic and contemporary controllers besides the Coleco versions.

I'd like to be able to type commands. Like type 'f' and hit TAB to display all options that begin with 'f', then 'fo' would display 'forward'. Cycling is nice to see all possible options, but would also like to cycle backwards -- not always forward.

I'm enjoying both the 8MB RAM card and Sound card.

I was just being snarky on a Friday afternoon. But now looking at the manual for the ZIP GSX, it says, "You may park your original 65C816 in storage if you have the appropriate product." Pretty cool. http://www.whatisthe2gs.apple2.org.za/files/ZipGSX/Manual/ZIPGSX_Manual.pdf

Glad to help someone so persistent. I was horrified to hear your confession about hot-plugging. For the love of God don't do that. Not even the ADB. Whenever I had to stop a hung process, with the drive light still lit, I'd power down, which lets everything ground out. I highly doubt this equipment was engineered to handle hot-plugging, and even a power outage risked damage. Can you trace those pins to an IC which can be replaced, though with quite a bit of solder work. It still makes you consider if it's worth replacing an IC from a working board. The possibility of getting new replacements with exactly the same characteristics is daunting.

I'm reading 4.5 KOhms, with image attached for you to verify pins numbers.

I cannot dizisagree. This is what I had found previously, https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.sys.apple2/M-cLVXpDL18 There is only speculation about the connector, and no known add-on that uses it.

I had read somewhere (can't find it right away) that connector is for manufacturing use only. If I come across it again and can find any more info I'll report back.

I just noticed the Zip GSX has a socketed 65C816 which means you could chain multiple accelerators. I wonder if anybody ever tried this?

Welcome. We will be happy to help identify pieces and suggest a selling price for stuff you might want to pass on. You'll make more selling parts rather than complete systems. You'll see very little demand for printers.