On Thu, 27 Sep 2001, Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
>
> I have a card with the only markings on it being Adaptive Peripherals.
> It's quite interesting.
>
> Onboard are several (6) 24 pin RCA packages marked CDM6116, which I
> believe are ROMs. The rest is TTL.
>
> It leads out to an external box with a centronics interface on it, a
> switch and LED, and two phono jacks. The switch in one direction seems
> to activate it, as when I turn on the computer with the switch in that
> position the LED lights and the system is frozen. The switch in the other
> position results in a normal boot. If I flip the switch while the system
> is on then it locks up. If I switch it back and then do a reset, the
> system resumes.
>
> Before I attached a monitor to it, it seemed to make the computer do
> something different. The normal "beep" when I turned the system on was
> replaced with a "boop". I finally hooked a monitor up but now the card
> does not seem to do anything. I hope I didn't fry it as when I was
> carrying it upstairs I plugged the dangling printer cable from the
> parallel card into the centronics interface in the external box to keep it
> from swinging around. When I first powered it on it was shorting
> something as the power supply was cycling on/off. I turned it off
> quickly and unplugged the cable, then turned it on to hear the "boop"
> sound. So it seemed to be doing something weird until I plugged the
> monitor in to see what the heck was going on.
>
> It's in slot 4, so I checked the memory area at $C400 but there is nothing
> there.
>
> It also has a two AAA batteries on the back which I've taken out. They
> don't seem to affect the operation. I'm going to put two fresh batteries
> on to see what different it makes.
>
> I'm thinking this was an alternate ROM card, maybe for development or
> cracking games, although it seems to elaborate for the latter.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
>
IIRC, Adaptive Peripherals produced a line of 'enhanced learning devices'
for the IIgs and the IIe, specifically peripherals for disabled children.
The devices
were sold exclusively to education channels. If it's the same thing I'm
thinking of, I've got one (I'll check tonight when I get home) - may have
the drivers for a few of the devices they made buried somewhere. I don't
have any actual peripherals though. The centronics plug was their
standard device interface, the jacks connected to special audio devices
for the hearing impaired. The system is freezing (again, IIRC) when you
flip the switch because the card is trying to talk to whatever device you
may have plugged in. Kinda cool, really. The toggle switch allowed you
to safely swap devices without powering
down.
You may be able to find more info here:
http://www.makoa.org/computers.htm
I didn't follow the links too deeply.
And here:
http://www.brus-dso.odedodea.edu/special/softlist.html#anchor_Adaptive%20Device%20Vendors
Mike
Received on Thu Sep 27 2001 - 12:20:06 BST