Lee Adamson

I am still an Arduino newb, but there is a way to synchronize some arduino type boards with an external clock from what I've read. So with how powerful these microcontroller boards are getting nowadays, it may be possible to make a disk-II emulator mostly in software, just hooking up gpio pins to the disk-II controller without much interface logic. I dunno. I dream of mine is to build an open-source emulator like this, that can support more than one drive at the same time. And maybe even if one could put a softSP ROM onboard (assuming the softSP creator would allow it), then one might even be able to emulate two floppies and a smartport hard drive on a disk II controller, with a very inexpensive microcontroller board. But as of now I am too dumb to implement it, and I have a bunch of other projects that I need to round up before I start learning more about how to do it.

Personally, I'd keep the IIgs. But it doesn't really matter. Keep whatever machine you like the best. If something won't run on it, there is always emulation.

I wonder if you could make a board that plugs into the keyboard encoder socket (assuming it's socketed; I don't remember) and then the original keyboard encoder plugs into that, but the board also breaks out the parts of the matrix needed to get at the arrow keys and whatever else, which you could then route to some variety of DB connector in the back. Even if it's not socketed, maybe you could use those grabber clips like are used on oscilloscope leads to hook into the matrix without needing to desolder anything. I mean, for boxen that don't have the right keyboard encoder IC.

Just offering my advice. The system isn't designed for a digital joystick. But you do you, buddy.

Unless this thing taps the keyboard port and emulates pressing the arrow keys (which it does not appear to do), you really need an analog joystick for an Apple II anyway.

I am so hyped for Nox Archaist that I am climbing the walls. =:3

I think the USB panel mount thingers have the same screw spacing as the HDMI panel mount thingers, right? I've put an HDMI port in that short round-like knockout, but you have to lengthen the slot a tad with a sharp box knife or something. Just a tad.

Enhanced IIe or IIgs. 128k 80col card if a IIe. BMOW FloppyEmu. One real floppy drive if you have old disks laying around, otherwise not needed. Mockingboard or Phasor clone if you like Ultima III-V. Real CRT monitor (no LCD); 15KHz analog RGB monitor if IIgs, otherwise any color composite. Some kind of small joystick (CH made decent ones, or rewire a cheap PC stick).

If you don't want to spend a pile, get an oldskool 15 pin PC joystick and rewire it to work on the II. There were more and better PC sticks, and they are much cheaper nowadays.

Asimov goes down now and then, but it's always come back up.

It's laid out the same way as an IC socket, with pin one to the left of the notch, and the rest of the pins numbered sequentially down that same side and then back up the other (so pin 16 is across from pin 1).

If all your disks are doing it, you may need to clean your drive heads.

gglabs makes a barebones kit-based clone of the apple scsi card, although they have substituted some NLA components for stuff that is still made, and they supply termination power differently. I don't know if those changes affect reliability or not. I have one waiting to be assembled, but I haven't gotten 'round to it. The kit gets you the PC board, a rom, and a couple of PALs. You supply everything else, including a NLA scsi controller chip (although there are still plenty of them available from the various shady chinese electronics salvage outfits on ebay, though international shipping is stupid slow right now with all the hype and such). It takes some SMD soldering, but nothing too outrageous. The components are fairly large.

When's your machine supposed to arrive? ?

If Apple made an ethernet card for the Apple II bus, it'll be impossible to find and expensive. There is, however, the Uthernet II card, a new production retro-product. http://a2retrosystems.com/products.htm That being said, you may be disappointed with ethernet performance on a IIgs, compared to what you might be used to on old PC hardware. Even though the 65816 can theoretically run up to 14 MHz and better, the expansion bus stretches the clock out to 1MHz to retain compatibility with IIe cards. Another option, which may be cheaper and might be better supported by vintage software, is LocalTalk. The serial ports in your IIgs are actually RS422 ports. When running in RS232 mode they are limited to 19.2kbit, but when externally clocked and running in RS422 mode (ie LocalTalk) they can go up to around 200kbit or so. It is also possible to encapsulate TCP/IP over LocalTalk, and unwrap it on a LocalTalk-to-Ethernet bridge. This ends up being much much faster than a SLIP or PPP connection, because of the port running in RS422 mode. The way I do this is with some Farallon PhoneNet adapters (you also need termination resistors, but they are easy to make if you have an RJ-11 crimper) and an Asante EtherTalk box (LocalTalk to Ethernet gateway). If you have an oldskool 68k or early PPC Mac that has the same kind of serial ports, and the Mac also has an ethernet card, you can also configure it to act as the localtalk-ethernet gateway, instead of buying the Asante box. But yeah, don't hold your breath for good TCP/IP performance. You'll be able to ftp, telnet, maybe surf gopherspace, POP/IMAP, and AppleShare, but there just isn't enough machine to do HTTP reasonably, or any sort of encrypted remote shell stuff.