Apple IIe slot 1 cards and power questions

[AussieAtari]

I have an Apple IIe with an unidentified card in Slot 1, the card has no identifying marks on it, is half length, has a 12 pin male connector at the top and full of Hitachi socketed chips.

 

Is there any way within the OS that I can query the card to find out what the hell it is? The only test I know is for a RAMDisk and it is not one of them as the test failed.

 

This has got me stumped and I would like to know what it's purpose is before I swap it out for a Super Serial Card.

 

 

I might try to take a photo of the card over the weekend and add it to this post.

 

I have another IIe that has a functioning power supply (all pins providing the correct current and the power light on the keyboard (it's a first model IIe) comes on but there appears to be no power to anywhere alse as the PCB LED does not come on, nor the floppy drive nor the video out. Is the PCB fused, I cannot see anything obvious, or are there some chips that are prone to failure that would cause this?

 

I have 5 other IIe's I can rat for parts so swapping chips etc is no problem.

 

Any suggestions/guidance would be appreciated.

[+batari]

I have an Apple IIe with an unidentified card in Slot 1, the card has no identifying marks on it, is half length, has a 12 pin male connector at the top and full of Hitachi socketed chips.

 

Is there any way within the OS that I can query the card to find out what the hell it is? The only test I know is for a RAMDisk and it is not one of them as the test failed.

 

This has got me stumped and I would like to know what it's purpose is before I swap it out for a Super Serial Card.

 

 

I might try to take a photo of the card over the weekend and add it to this post.

 

I have another IIe that has a functioning power supply (all pins providing the correct current and the power light on the keyboard (it's a first model IIe) comes on but there appears to be no power to anywhere alse as the PCB LED does not come on, nor the floppy drive nor the video out. Is the PCB fused, I cannot see anything obvious, or are there some chips that are prone to failure that would cause this?

 

I have 5 other IIe's I can rat for parts so swapping chips etc is no problem.

 

Any suggestions/guidance would be appreciated.

That depends - by "slot 1" do you mean the first slot, i.e. the one that's offset from the others? This is slot 0, and would mean it's probably a RAM card of some kind and I'd leave it alone.

 

If you mean the next slot over, it's most likely a printer card and you can yank it. These usually lived in slot 1.

[AussieAtari]

I'll double check tonight, I reckon it is the closest slot to the PSU but will look as it will be labeled on the PCB.

 

If it is a RAM card it should show up under ProDos utilities as a RAM disk drive in bay 0, drive 1, should it not?

 

I don't think it is a printer card as it is totally the wrong sort of connector.

 

There appears to be a reasonable sized ROM chip in the centre of the card which has a blank label that most probably had printing on it years ago, the joys of thermal printers!

 

I'll try it as a RAM card and take a photo if it is not.

[deadmeow]

The card in the first slot, is in the auxillary slot, and the following 7 slots are 1 through 7. This card should be the extended 80 column card. All you need to do is PRODOS is "CAT, S3,D2"

That will list the extra 64k like a RAM DISK from basic.

 

Slot 0 acts like slot 3, which is why you CATALOG it as slot 3, drive 2, and you can type IN#3 or PR#3 from basic to go into 80 columns. Earlier models of the Apple II traditionally used slot 3 for the 80 column cards before the Apple IIe came along, so things were kept similar for compatibility reasons.

Edited March 9, 2007 by deadmeow

[Prodos8]

If its in the aux slot, and has an external connector. It might be the AppleColor RGB card. That card had the 80-col/64kb ram/RGB all on one board. This will let you hook the computer up to the AppleColor digital RGB monitor.

 

IIRC if you have a card in the aux slot, you cannot use slot #3, as they have addressing conflicts.

[AussieAtari]

Well, It's not the 80 column/64K card as that is in it's usual place in slot 0, and I'm still none the wiser.

 

The card is in slot 1, which is where I want to put a Super Serial Card.

 

Here is the chip set list from the card and a picture, I'm trying to find information on the actual chips now to see if I can get an idea that way.

 

Chipset:

 

Hitachi HN462732G 2A3 R, HD74LS373P 7B1T (2 of these), HD74LS74AP 7L18, HD74LS30P 7L38, HD74LS279P 7G18

Motorola SN74LS08N J8713

Mitsubishi M74LS00N 428DC

Texas Instruments SN74LS00N 428DC

Unknown DM74LSN SI8718 (2 of these)

Edited March 12, 2007 by AussieAtari

[Prodos8]

Its prolly a parallel printer card. It should have come with a ribbon cable that attaches to the card and leads back to a DB25 that screws on the back of the case or possibly just strait out the back to a centronics male end ala ][+ style.

[AussieAtari]

I reckon you're right, can it go in any other slot as I want to place a Super Serial Card in Slot 1?

[Prodos8]

It can go in any of the (empty) back row of slots but slot #1 was default for printers on the A2's IIRC.