HELP!!! Apple IIe - doesn't work!

From: Eric Fischer <eric_at_fudge.uchicago.edu>
Date: Tue May 27 10:27:26 1997

more_at_camlaw.rutgers.edu said,

> Opening the iie up I find:
>
> CPU has been replaced (?) with a ZIPCHIP 4 (?)

This is a 4MHz accelerator that replaces the original 1MHz CPU.
If I'm remembering right, you hold down the ESC key while turning
the power on to configure what speed you want to run it at.

> AUX: This is probabl;y the most interesting board. It says Ramworks II
> on it and has a piggyback board attached to it that I think is supposed to
> be a RGB board.

This is an Applied Engineering 80-column/memory expansion card.
There were piggyback RGB cards available for this, so that's
probably right.

> 2: has a Grappler + Parallel Printer INterface

That's strange... printers were traditionally in slot 1.

> 3: Empty

You can't do much with slot 3 when there's an 80-column card in
the Aux slot, because as far as software is concerned the 80-column
card looks like it's in slot 3.

> 7: (This one stumps me) Its a pretty long board and attaches by way of a
> wire to a panel on the back that says "VIDEX" The panel has a toggle
> switch and two RCA ports that say "M" and "A" Is this another Video
> board?

This is probably another 80-column card, but the old II+ style
instead of the newer IIe Aux style. The M and A almost certainly
are the "monitor" and "apple" plugs; you should probably run another
video cable from the computer's video output to the A plug, then
another wire from the M plug to the monitor itself. The toggle
switch will then probably choose which signal actually appears on
the monitor. The newer 80-column cards are memory-mapped, but these
old ones act essentially like serial terminals that happen to share
the Apple's keyboard and monitor.

> When I turn it on......nothing happens!
> The enhanced light comes on (?)

Actually it's just the power light... but when you got the Enhancement
kit (which gave basic lowercase support, added graphics characters to
the character generator, and gave you a few other random features) you
got an "Enhanced" sticker to put over the power light.

> and all I get on the screen is a sqaure pattern of reversed _at_
> sysmbols and such. What is this?

This is what's in video memory when the power comes on, before the
Autostart ROM has the chance to clear the screen and start searching
for disk drives.

> Other than that, the computer beeps once before this appears and the
> drives just blink their lights real quick (no motor spins, etc.)

I'm surprised it beeps but doesn't clear the screen or search for
disks, because the beep means it is making it sufficiently far into the
ROM to start initializing the computer. It could be that one of the
ROM chips has gone bad but the other hasn't. Try hitting the Reset key
and see if that'll give you a Basic ("]") or Monitor ("*") prompt.

If you'd like to just swap the motherboard for one that definitely
works, I have a spare one. Let me know if you could use it.

eric
Received on Tue May 27 1997 - 10:27:26 BST