Storing your Apple expansion cards in an applesauce box (on the bench in the intro) is a great way to remember which machine those cards go into. :D
@FaintKarmatic Жыл бұрын
My first PC was an APPLE II+ in dec 1981. I wish I new about this card back then. It drove me crazy trying to type out papers with a 40 col display and no lower case (Apple Write had special characters in inverse as it wasn't wysiwyg) I would have to type, print, correct, reprint over and over again. It took longer to format than to type it
@JulienMR Жыл бұрын
Gosh you went so far with this 80 columns card... you lost me many times :) But very interesting! I'm gonna have an Apple 2E soon, these videos will be useful ! Thanks
@dave928 Жыл бұрын
this video is definitely NOT too long. love these deep dives. thanks!
@oldestgamer Жыл бұрын
It was great to meet and talk with you at VCF East this past weekend, your roundtable was also a very good listen. So glad you made it to VCF East 2023!
@MarianoLu Жыл бұрын
Adrian the fact that you have your apple cards in an apple sauce box is just amazing :)
@Midcon77 Жыл бұрын
It's so much fun watching you troubleshoot these things and figuring them out Adrian - keep up the great work!
@levimaaia Жыл бұрын
Awesome video! I really enjoy hearing your thought process out loud. I wish I were better at articulating these sort of things even just to myself when I am troubleshooting.
@BG101UK Жыл бұрын
Self-talk, which I believe this is, is what many people (including myself) tend to use although few actually (consciously) realize they are doing it. I guess it's a way of adding a second confirmation to ones thoughts in vocal form, which tends to stick better in the short-term memory, like reading things. .. Although in my case, such "self-talk" often involves too many colourful metaphors.
@frankowalker4662 Жыл бұрын
Sinclair computers have their character set in the ROM. I have got EPROMS in a ZX81 and a Spectrum so I can play around with different fonts. I've also changed the initilisaton routine on the Spectrum so it beeps and boots into a different colour scheme. LOL.
@BFLmouse Жыл бұрын
The Videx 80 column cards have an interesting hardware bug. The video RAM was mapped into the 2K memory from $C800 to $CFFF that was shared by all the card slots. Each card was required to have a flip-flop that was set by access to the ROM memory mapped for that card slot, and reset by any access to address $CFFF. The output of that flip-flop determined whether or not the expansion ROM on a given card would respond to an address in the $C800 to $CFFF range. To avoid flickering of the display while the CPU was accessing the video memory, the hardware would blank the display for a microsecond every time the CPU accessed the video memory. The problem is that the blanking system did not take into account the state of that flip-flop when blanking the display. This means that the 80 column video display would completely break up any time any other card was accessing the shared memory space on that other card. I first encountered the fault when displaying 80 columns and trying to print something with the Apple Silentype printer, but many other printer cards would do the same thing. As I recall, the fix involved cutting one trace and adding a short bodge wire.
@Walczyk Жыл бұрын
100% this
@aaronrowepalmer Жыл бұрын
This is SO COOL. You are SO SMART, Adrian. I keep watching thinking, "Wow, how does he THINK of these SOLUTIONS?" and, "How does he KNOW to DO THAT?" You always seem to solve the unsolvable! Priceless brain!
@ct6502c Жыл бұрын
LOL the cards being kept in a Tree Top *apple* sauce box is perfect. 😂
@loganjorgensen Жыл бұрын
43:19 That's very unusual, so many PCs tended to just have inverted copies of the whole character table which always seemed incredibly wasteful when the table is so small and limited when that's all you get for graphics. So nice to see what a proper character inverter circuit looks like.🙂
@sfred Жыл бұрын
My Dad's II+ had the same RF modulator. He didn't have a 40 column card but he ran Screenwriter II which ran in graphics mode to make 70 columns and lower case. There was also a mod that I remember doing with him that tied the shift keys to the joystick port (I think) which allowed them to work when typing lower case characters.
@stupossibleify Жыл бұрын
I watch your channel not because I ever owned an Apple II (C64 born and bred), but the digital electronics are universal and 80 column was always something I salivated over with the unobtanium that was the BBC Model B
@TomTRobot Жыл бұрын
FWIW Looks like there were *1 'enhanced' versions of the Motorola MC6845 that included the same cursor skew support as the 6545. (E.g. parts marked MC6845P1) - but those particular Motorola parts are much rarer than the 6545... From their datasheet the UM6845 clone also apparently includes the cursor skew. Other clones do, too. Just check the datasheet definition for register R8.
@lukehindman4498 Жыл бұрын
Adrian, this a fantastic video. I love how you dive into the ROM code.
@fredflintstone9609 Жыл бұрын
The look of joy/satisfaction @1:01:30 is worth the preceding hour all by itself. Of course, the whole thing is good, even if long. More Apple 2 content please!
@turibinosanches46923 ай бұрын
Thanks Adrian for the excellent video and it is another lesson, here on how the card and the imaging system work. The tools used during the process are an extra show. I am currently repairing a compatible Videx 80 column card to use it with the CP/M card and system.
@williamsquires3070 Жыл бұрын
For more fun, Adrian, adapt the PC charset to the 80-column card so you can have the same characters (glyphs) from 0x80-0xFF that are funky characters on the PC (some of which are Greek letters).
@KoolBreeze420 Жыл бұрын
The last time I saw one of these Apple computers, I was in grade 1. Actually it might be an older version than this one. It was a very long time ago.
@talideon Жыл бұрын
The BBC Model B's font looks really good in 80-column mode: that might be an option. It's a little different from that is the C64 and Atari 8-bits, but I find the differences work well. This is probably because they had 80-column displays since day one. Ditto for the Amstrad CPC, whose system font also works well in 80-character mode.
@K-o-R Жыл бұрын
It's a clever design, having all vertical lines be 2 pixels wide. You could also see it as being a 4x8 character, and doubling each column when using a "wide characters" mode (it's not - you can see the exact bitmaps used in the back of the manual, but they've obviously used a 4x8 design philosophy to keep it readable in 80-column modes). Looks quite ridiculous in the 20-column modes though, haha.
@NEEC1 Жыл бұрын
That was great. Especially changing the CRT controller registers and ROM font to fit. Nice work.
@als1035 Жыл бұрын
Great video Adrian. I purchased a Wesper Micro Wizard 80 column card for mu Apple ][ Plus a number of years back. it works quite well and has the auto-switch built in. it also came with an external port that hangs of the back of the computer. The 40 column video is fed from the rear jack into the external port and the monitor connects to the switched output. All of these cards are quite rare now and expensive if you can find one.
@AmstradExin Жыл бұрын
Did he read my comment? Hehe. I have quite a few 80 column cards, all work! Adrian's videos helped me testing those !
@theangryvorlon1 Жыл бұрын
For the Sup'R'Terminal card, I sent an email with better pictures and the circuit I traced. for the adapter card, all pins except pin 5 of the 74LS195 pass directly to the socket. Pin 5 from the motherboard goes to Pins 12&13 of the 00 Pin 11 of the 00 connects to 10 on the 00 Pin 8 on the 00 goes to 195 IC pin 5 Pin 9 on the 00 goes to header pin 4 the 00 Pin 10 from the motherboard socket connects to 4&5 of the 00 Pin 6 from the 00 goes to connection A Pin 13 from the motherboard socket connects to 1&2 of the 00 Pin 3 of the 00 goes to header connection C Header connection B goes to ground pin 8 on all ic and motherboard header. pin 16 of all are tied to VCC
@FarrellMcGovern Жыл бұрын
From back in the day...I believe hat blank ROM area on the Videx card, is for a lower case font. If you have an 80 column card and a Z80 card, it became a popular platform for running CP/M, which supports lower case charactors. Which makes sense, since Videx also sold the Enhancer ][, which was an add-in board that gave the Apple ][ uppper *and* lower case. Oh, and one thing, with Videx, the 'i" is pronounced like in "hi".
@TheCaptK Жыл бұрын
Sir, you are a treasure of the internet. Always amazing what you can explain.
@tigheklory Жыл бұрын
I hope you have a great time at VCF East! I wish I could have gone as it's 4.5 hour drive from my house. Man I would really love to see you so some of this cool stuff to the Coleco Adam!
@shiroshine7227 Жыл бұрын
LOVE THIS. I have so many questions being answered about my Franklin 1200. YOUR THE BEST.
@electrohoard Жыл бұрын
Nice video Adrian! Hope you can get the other card working!
@gotj Жыл бұрын
Many (most chinese) cards had the timing of VSYNC wrong (the values that have to be set in registers in the 6845). You had to read the EPROM, fix that (the source code is in the videx manual) erase and burn the EPROM again and voila. Also, some cards had 50Hz VSYNC timing (for Europe/PAL) and others had 60Hz (USA/NTSC).
@shmoostead5419 Жыл бұрын
Great, new content from our favourite retro resto guy. Watching this later 😊
@Teddyboy-EM Жыл бұрын
Drol! I loved that game! :-)
@williamsquires3070 Жыл бұрын
You can also use the annunciator outputs to activate the self-destruct on your Apple ][ powered spaceship.
@Peter_S_ Жыл бұрын
I used one to drive a Radio Shack relay for a pulse-dialing WarGames dialer, before we had touch-tone.
@loganjorgensen Жыл бұрын
A very interesting subject to me, I'm always delving into the nature of graphics and the VDP systems, how they work, how they conflict heh. Sometimes I get annoyed with the retro engineering in practical layout functionality matters but I take pity on them since they were working with some fairly extreme hardware cost restraints in the past where they made the best setups possible that many wouldn't struggle to engineer now.😐 Nice to see some customizable character tables as so many platforms didn't really support that. A few years ago I had some fun with the Colecovision setup making character tables to support other languages and semigraphics. Mainly with image memory size limits a lot more switching between tables for dedicated visual functions I found but still doable.
@loganjorgensen Жыл бұрын
It always seemed to be a cost to timing issue but 80 Column was actually viable in the 40 Column era, it was largely present and just around the corner frankly. Yes you need that default of 40 for less than good AV connections like RF, but if you have a Composite-Out then a sharp monochrome 80 text mode is possible without the separated Chroma & Luma of S-Video/PC Monitor grade AV connection. And that's what happened with most early PCs, a completely separate hardware card for 80 Columns rather than a built in feature on the main motherboard. The soft-switch approach was probably the smoothest transition approach I've seen as others simple had two AV outputs and manual switches to change between 40 & 80.
@maxheadrom3088 Жыл бұрын
I have a x86 card for the Apple IIgs - don't know if it's working, though. Have you ever seen one of those, Adrian? Thanks!
@gotj Жыл бұрын
No need to shrink the font/remove scan lines, all that can be fixed perfectly by playing with the CRTC sync timing register values on the fly. Both vertically and horizontally, the image can be perfectly centered on the screen.
@foogod4237 Жыл бұрын
It's not about centering. The issue he was fixing was that the 80-column output was _taller_ than the 40-column output, so if you adjust your monitor so that 80-column text is not going off the top/bottom of the screen, then when you switch back to 40-column mode, the whole display will be squashed vertically. There's no way to fix this by playing with the sync timing AFAIK (at least not while staying within the NTSC specs).
@elfenmagix8173 Жыл бұрын
Like the MOS 6502 is a "copy" of the Motorola 6800, the MOS 6545 is a "copy" of the Motorola 6845 - in both cases just a few differences to satisfy he courts. A lot of PC Monochrome and CGA Cards use either the 6845 and the 6545 chip, so they are not as rare as one would think, one is to look in a different area to find them. Of course - if you search "6845/6545 chip Apple II for 80 column card" it will be hard to find, but if you search for 6845/6545 for PC CGA / Monochrome card" they will be abundant. Since the 6545 is a MOS Chip, as owned by Commodore, most of the Commodore PET line and the rare Commodore B-Series machines use the 6545.
@talideon Жыл бұрын
The 6502 wasn't a copy of the 6800, though. That would require binary compatibility, so a better comparison would be between the 8080 and Z80, the latter routing around legal issues by using different mnemonics (the one element Intel could've caught Zilog on).
@mikafoxx2717 Жыл бұрын
@@talideonyou're right the 6502 wasn't, but the 6501 was directly compatible.. they had to get rid of that one though.
@TeslaTales59 Жыл бұрын
I remember the 40 and later having 80 columns! Cool video.
@PaCav-et3kt11 ай бұрын
well done. Some later clone models had 80 column on the motherboard
@robgeib1723 Жыл бұрын
Nice video! Going beyond a fix this week. That font tinkering was at the heart of Woz/Jobs start up era of Apple. You seamed to have a lot of fun on this one. Do you like these mixed hardware/software videos or the barn stored restores like the TRS-80 or Field Commodore? I like both but enjoy these slightly more. Either way keep up the videos. :D
@BG101UK Жыл бұрын
The sync issues you mentioned later in the video (around 55:30) are certainly an issue with the cheaper USB capture devices. These are supposed to work with VCRs etc.? I haven't got round to hooking my example up to a VCR yet but will do so and see how that works out. My idea was to capture the outputs of the VIC=20, the CBM64 and a home-made 8-bit 6502-based computer (a friend's design and build, from the ground up). The CC couldn't achieve stable horizontal lock with any of these, with a slight drift causing it to lose colour, come out of lock and "flip" every so often.
@stevecriddle Жыл бұрын
I don't know if it was deliberate, but I love the choice of box for the accessory cards.
@tbirdapalooza Жыл бұрын
I work in Corvallis- Videx still exists and as far as I know, is the same company that existed in the ‘80s. Could well have been bought and sold since those days, however.
@johnDingoFoxVelocity Жыл бұрын
You need to find a Franklin 1000 series very popular pc from the early 80s black faceplate dual floppy drives nice old school retro machine
@Dan-in-Virginia Жыл бұрын
I once used a program on the Atari 8-bit to display an 80 column terminal emulator on a TV. Worked, but kinda sucked.
@nrnoble Жыл бұрын
Thanks for the video!! ... Following the Apple II+, the Apple original IIe actually didn't have 80 columns builtin per se, it had an specific 80 column slot. Most people bought it with Apple's 80 column card. But, it was possible to buy an Apple IIe without the 80 column card. If I recall correctly, 3rd party cards could be put into the slot, such as an 80 column card with extra memory... Woz's original design led to Apple making 100's of millions during the 1980s before it was surpassed by the Mac. If not for the Apple II's profits in the 80s, there would be no Mac. :)
@Antiwindowscatalog Жыл бұрын
Tempting to try to fix both the 80 column font and the 40 column font not only to get them to match, but to fix rainbow text on colour CRTs.
@andreasbaumann6943 Жыл бұрын
Super interesting information, handy for understanding my 80-Videx-like card in an Apple ][ clone, an IMC-2001. So far I didn't have any information about it. It looks like a simple version with 4k RAM and 3 ROMs (I have highlighed and blinking text), but I plan to read out those ROMS for preservation.
@johnsnook2358 Жыл бұрын
Thanks Adrian, that was fun. :OD
@sbrazenor2 Жыл бұрын
Wow! This video posted around the time I saw you walking around VCF East. Magic! (At least Apple would call it that.) 🤣
@rickkephartactual7706Ай бұрын
Many moons ago I had a Franklin Ace 1000 with that Franklin 80 column card (and a bunch of other expansion card (CPM & such) I throughly enjoyed that computer. I learned a lot on it, I wish I had kept it. I've looked online to replace it but they have either been unavailable or priced way too high for me.
@UpLateGeek Жыл бұрын
What a coincidence, Epictronics also uploaded a video about an Apple II at almost the same time as you! I watched his earlier, and he noticed an issue with a jittery image, although it wasn't as jittery as yours was when you first tried it. It was more like a pixel width, and I thought it could've been a jitter in the sync signal coming from the IOU chip to the VID hybrid. But now that I've watched your video and thought about it, it could be the actual pixel data coming out of the SPI shift register. It's clocked with the main 14.24982MHz system clock, and the video circuit is going to be running at the 15.734KHz horizontal refresh rate, so there would probably be a phase difference between the two clocks, which could account for jitter in timing between vertical refreshes. That would be an inherent problem, since the only way to fix that would be to create a PLL between the video sync and the 14.24982MHz system clock, triggered by the VID7M signal that feeds the clock inhibit of the SPI shift register. It might be possible to modify the TMG PAL that seems to be responsible for generating some of the timing signals from the 14.24982MHz clock, but you'd have to be careful since it looks like it also generates the PRAS and PCAS signals that run the memory timing.
@LordChariot Жыл бұрын
It was great meeting you today at VCF East. We spoke about the Franklin's reset button. It occurs to me that the Ace 1000/1200 motherboard was supposed to be 100% Apple ][+ compatible (aside from the color card). As a curiosity, I wonder what would happen if you burned original Apple][+ ROMs and put them in the Ace? I'm not sure if the ROMs are the same chip model, but you could use the equivalent EPROMs that are compatible. I kinda remember one of my customers did this. It would be fun to try. I am sure this same customer bought the non-color card versions and just put in a transistor and resistor to re-enable the Apple ][ color circuitry.
@squirlmy Жыл бұрын
The legal aspects are interesting. Apple vs Franklin in 1984 was the first to determine computer code is copyrightable, in this case specifically the BIOS firmware, but it was the first case to cover any computer code. Franklin's lawyers argued it should only cover human -readable text, and lost While IBM threatened other companies about the PC BIOS before that, they always settled. Their lawyers might have been afraid of complications if such a case didn't go 100% their way. So, I'm not entirely sure about the entire Apple ROM, but certainly some of it will be exactly identical. There might not be much point in re-burning it, you might just get some different logos and other incidental changes and that's it!
@ToTheGAMES Жыл бұрын
I like the inside out shirt 😊
@kepamurray1845 Жыл бұрын
The GQ4x series is a good programmer. Been using mine for over a decade. I had built the earlier Willem PCB3 parallel programmer and only stopped using it when I got my first computer without a parallel port. You can write your own device files for the GQ programmer if you need to.
@MoosesValley Жыл бұрын
In mid-1983, I wanted to upgrade my Apple ][+ clone. The second hand 80 column card I was looking at also provided colour graphics and upgraded my machine from 48 KB to 64 KB. This second hand card was for sale for $80 AUD (IIRC).. With the card, I could plug my Apple + into a colour TV and see the colour in games. No more monochrome. An d I could also run games that required a 64 KB Apple ][ = such as Rescue Raiders.
@OldAussieAds Жыл бұрын
Anyone who's comparing Apple II to other 8-bit computers of the day can easily see how the Apple II was the choice in business and schools. With slot expansions, especially the 80 column card, it was great for useful application software like word processors and spreadsheets. No, it's games generally weren't as good as the Commodore 64 (in many cases, the difference was pretty big). But the Apple II made a better games machine than the C64 made a business machine. That all said, I collect Commodore computers now because I love their quirks and love their games. But if I needed to go back to the early 80s as an adult, I'd be buying an Apple II 100% of the time.
@WilliamHostman Жыл бұрын
Corvallis being "Not too far south" of Portland... about 83 miles. about 90-120 minutes drive during daylight (lunch rush at Salem spills out onto I5...).. (Night, it's closer to 1 hour and 10...).
@mikesilva3868 Жыл бұрын
Watching this now 😊
@CygnusTM Жыл бұрын
The brief EPROM discussion has me thinking. If you were going to buy just one EPROM programmer, would you get a GQ 4x4 or a T48 (TL866II+)?
@timballam3675 Жыл бұрын
Would be useful as need to get one in the next month or so.
@knghtbrd Жыл бұрын
I'm probably making a variant of this phat font for the IIe/IIc. Because yes, that looks much easier to read.
@brentboswell1294 Жыл бұрын
Adrian-the //e didn't have 80 column support built in (at least the //e's that I'm familiar with everything up to the original Enhanced model). You had three choices from Apple for an 80 column card (that goes into the "AUX" slot): the 80 column card, which just had extra video RAM, the Extended 80 column card (which also doubled the main RAM, via bank switching, and gave the machine double hi-res graphics), and the RGB Extended 80 column card (for use with the Apple RGB monitor). Several third-party choices were also available, most of which had more expansion RAM than the Extended 80 column card. The reason that the Apple //e retained slot #3 is so that Apple ][ and ][ Plus users could use their old 80 column boards (although I never saw anyone who did that in real life 😂). If you populated the AUX slot, then slot #3 was off-limits. As far as I know, the //c was the first Apple ][ with built-in 80 column support. Maybe later //e's had built-in 80 column support? (Like the late production ones with the numeric keypad and platinum case color?).
@Peter_S_ Жыл бұрын
The support is built into the //e hardware even if the RAM was on a card for versatility. The support consists of the ability to double the shift register dot clock and mux between the main and aux RAM banks to load the shift register, as well as having a character generator which runs fast enough to handle the double speed dot clock, not to mention the softswitch hardware to control things, and the 80 column firmware to handle the display. Yes, support is built in to the //e ASICs.
@squirlmy Жыл бұрын
I'm not exactly clear what you're referring to. It was fairly common (by 1984) to have a "dual purpose" 128kb memory and 80column card in IIe. I therefore never had reason to try built-in 80 column mode. Your mention of "support for shift registers" is confusing to me. By support, do you mean there was some sort of hardware adjustment necessary to activate this? Are you talking specifically about 80 column functionality?
@brentboswell1294 Жыл бұрын
@@Peter_S_ still, from the user's point of view, no. If you bought a bare Apple //e, to get it to display 80 columns, you had to add a card to it. I think, though, that the only people who ever bought bare //e's were school districts 😉 When you went into a computer store in the 1980's (especially an Apple dealer), you bought a package deal that cost less than the sum of the components if you bought the parts piecemeal. I helped my parents get the best deal on our //e as a 12 year old kid.
@Peter_S_ Жыл бұрын
@@brentboswell1294 🙄
@AussieBloke6502 Жыл бұрын
@@squirlmy , Peter's explanation covers some of the low-level operations, but essentially you are both talking about the same thing. Every Apple //e motherboard had most of the circuitry needed for 80 columns built into it, but it still needed some extra RAM in the AUX slot to be able to use it. The basic //e 80-column board is therefore nothing but a 1K RAM card, and the Extended 80 column board is nothing but a 64K RAM card (giving the system a total 128K RAM).
@Pest789 Жыл бұрын
14:16 As a ~14 year old, I screwed up doing this and our family Apple ][+ had to take a trip to a repair shop to fix my mistake and finish the installation.
@jantonkens9820 Жыл бұрын
Those videos bring me back to 8 bit time and then my first XT system. Good memories 👍👍🏳️🌈🦆
@remisclassiccomputers341 Жыл бұрын
great vid, my Apple IIe doesnt got built in 80 col. I think IIe came with the card as standard later on... However the IIc got 80 col built in.
@davidwilliams4845 Жыл бұрын
The original Apple II booted to Integer BASIC not the monitor. The Apple II Plus had Applesoft BASIC in ROM instead on Integer BASIC, and the autostart ROM, which would try to boot from a floppy instead of just starting BASIC. If you didn't have a floppy controller, it would just go to BASIC. You could buy a kit of ROMs to upgrade your II to a II+. You could run the "other" BASIC on your II or II+ loaded from disc into regular RAM, or if you had a language card, you could load the "other" set of ROMS from disc into the language card to have the other BASIC environment with a full complement of RAM. That was part of the reason it was called a language card. The other reason was that it enabled you to run UCSD Pascal.
@Peter_S_ Жыл бұрын
Incorrect. It started in the monitor. When the Disk ][ came out, the standard way to boot the system was to turn it on and then type '6 CTRL-P' return from the * prompt which is the same as PR#6 from basic. Want proof?, it's as close as the ROM disassembly. $FF59 is the start of the RESET code and $FF69 is where the * prompt is specified. Getting into BASIC took typing CTRL-B or E000G. If BASIC had already been started, you could also return to BASIC with a CTRL-C or an E003G.
@davidwilliams4845 Жыл бұрын
Was there a revision of Apple II that booted to Integer BASIC, because I definitely remember that detail. Perhaps the autostart ROM was included in the II for a time before the II+ came out? Either that or my memory is worse than I thought!
@Peter_S_ Жыл бұрын
@@davidwilliams4845 Yes, the AutoStart ROM was available to support the brand new floppy disk controller, before the ][+. If you put the AutoStart F8 ROM into a machine with Integer BASIC and no Disk ][ card, it will drop right into Integer BASIC at power-up as you remember. For a couple years I had Applesoft on a ROM card and the Autostart F8 installed on the motherboard with the original Integer ROMs. Later I put the original F8 ROM on the ROM card and soldered the F8 jumper pads closed which allowed you to boot up any software, flip the ROM card switch, and drop into the monitor with a reset.
@gotj Жыл бұрын
@@davidwilliams4845 The original Apple II didn't even boot, you had to press reset to enter the monitor, then Ctrl-B (IIRC) to enter integer basic. A couple years later came the autostart ROM, and with that it went straight into basic (or try to boot from a disk II if there was one)
@Electronics-Rocks Жыл бұрын
That superterm uses dynamic ram and taking refresh from the motherboard bodge / buffer board. This is why more logic on this board. This board probably has more memory so more features!
@Peter_S_ Жыл бұрын
uhhh.. nope. It uses 2114 SRAM as shown in this video. It does replace the character ROM with RAM, but it also uses a more minimal character generator circuit which only takes 5 bits from the ROM on each scanline as was done with the original Signetics 2513 chips, forcing uninterrupted blank space on the left and right of each character.
@12av67 Жыл бұрын
Where can i find software for my Apple II E and my TRS 80 model 3
@gotj Жыл бұрын
I wrote a program to modify and play with all those registers on the fly. I still have it in a floppy somewhere.
@sittingstill3578 Жыл бұрын
Cool, I’ve actually been to the Tree Top plant during harvest. It’s really neat seeing trailers of apples getting processed into juice and apple sauce.
@bradnelson3595 Жыл бұрын
Is this the real Adrian? Send us a sign.
@johnsimon8457 Жыл бұрын
You want a GPU that does 8k? Back in my day we had to install a GPU to get 80 columns! As a kid, I had a hand-me-down //c and it wasn’t until later that I’d received what amounted to the penultimate form of the Apple II, second only to the (relative) monster that is the IIgs. With a name like Sup’R’Terminal it sounds like it’s a business being run out of a garage, which, given the volumes sold in nineteen-dickety-seventy-nine was likely hand soldered, making it effectively small batch pro-homebrew hardware, like the people building optical drive emulators for old consoles today.
@johnsimon8457 Жыл бұрын
Ah - it makes sense why i got garbled text switching from 80 to 40 column modes on the //c, it was never apparent to me how much of an after the fact hack 80 cols was, especially how later Apple productivity software relied on it
@stevethepocket Жыл бұрын
An interesting thing about the 80-column font being generated by this card is that it's a full 8 pixels wide rather than 7 like the default 40-column one. I wonder if Apple's 80-column cards were like that too, or if this is a Franklin thing-and in either case, what the purpose was. I would expect the slightly-wider pixels you get from having fewer of them would improve readability slightly at this scale.
@Peter_S_ Жыл бұрын
These were from the days before square pixels were a thing. To go even deeper into your observation, the fonts here are actually 9 pixels wide and they repeat the 1st column to make the 9th column of pixels. The built-in Apple 80 column text which also works with graphics is different because it's all based on timing able to generate NTSC color and it uses a slower dot clock, thus the more coarse characters. When you have an external CRT Controller chip on a card like the 6545 or 6845 and a monochrome display, you can bet the video is similar to but not exactly the same as NTSC.
@samuelcolvin4994 Жыл бұрын
My brain pronounced "Sup-R-Terminal" as "'S'up ur terminal!" Like an insult 🤣🤣🤣🤣
@williammentink Жыл бұрын
TreeTop Apple Sauce box, makes one wonder what might be in that box in Adrian's basement. Lol.
@gklinger Жыл бұрын
Fascinating.
@Christianpreaching Жыл бұрын
If you and live in Florida I need to bring my TRS-80 there for you to fix
@rabidbigdog Жыл бұрын
This Adrian Black impersator is pretty good!
@ClausB252 Жыл бұрын
Credit where it's due: Atari did the fat font (2 pixel wide vertical lines) first in 1978 or 79 for the 800's 40 column mode.
@adriansdigitalbasement Жыл бұрын
November 1979 was when the 400/800 came out -- but the two pixel wide font first appeared in 1976 in the Kee Games arcade game Quiz Show. This was part of Atari at the time -- and Atari then took the font to use in all their own arcade games. They then ported it to the 8-bit computers, especially as these would be viewed on low-res color TVs. Commodore took their 1977 PET font and doubled it for better readability on the C64 now it had color 40 column text. At this time everyone was borrowing from everyone, like 400/800 font had plenty of PETSCII (1977) inspiration for the graphics symbols, etc.
@ClausB252 Жыл бұрын
@@adriansdigitalbasement I say 1978 because that's when the 800 was developed. Thanks for the nod to Kee Games.
@Quickened1 Жыл бұрын
A clue to that 6545 failing was when you first fired it up in 40 column mode, the characters were super jittery, and then cleared up when you went to 80 column, then it failed shortly thereafter. Perhaps there was some sort of physical defect on the die, overloading it? Just saying maybe the clues are in how it was functioning just before it toasted the 80 column mode...
@Dalsro308 Жыл бұрын
Adrian the problem with the minipro and reading then 2716 is that it cant supply enough current to the VPP pin, if you manually add 5v to the VPP. Since its driven by a normal current limited its not enough. The same problem occurs with the retrochip tester that have some other option now to read 2716. There is a big difference between brand of the 2716. Intel seems to be more power hungry on the VPP
@AlexanderKurtz Жыл бұрын
👍👍👍👍
@johnsonlam Жыл бұрын
Hi Adrian, will you try to contact Mike Chi (maker of RetroTink) and ask him for a fix?
@parrottm76262 Жыл бұрын
The 'fixed itself' daemon has swatted your video card!
@pauledwards2817 Жыл бұрын
Gosh 450ns memory. How thing changed so quickly in the 80s
@jeromethiel4323 Жыл бұрын
"I used an 80 column card on an Apple ][, just to watch it die." -Johnny Cash
@piratestation69 Жыл бұрын
I have never been able to get the retrotink 5x to work correctly on my apple ii plus or e. The 2x pro works fine. Go figure.
@nickwallette6201 Жыл бұрын
I really don't understand why nobody made brackets for the back of the case? It just seems so janky to have internal connectors that require cables to hang out of empty holes in the back.
@Mueller3D Жыл бұрын
Some cards came with brackets to clamp to the slots. However, these would limit the cabling you could run through the slots, so usually you'd just want to pass the raw cable through the slots if you had several cables to run.
@williefleete Жыл бұрын
Double ‘aught is a NAND gate
@chinesemusic8019 Жыл бұрын
Why don't you just write to the CRTC registers manually using the MONITOR CALL-151 with values instead of burning another EPROM?
@Nikolasz1173 Жыл бұрын
Can it run Crysis?
@ryanianm Жыл бұрын
Woah, this whole time I thought I was hearing "RetroTank" not tink.. I've been living a lie.
@neillthornton1149 Жыл бұрын
More Synertek chips!
@vanhetgoor Жыл бұрын
It was possible to connect two monitors, one for to 40 character display and another for the 80 columns display, it was even possible to have text in one screen and graphic in the other. Back then I worked with a Chinese reproduction of the Apple computer and I never had problems with switching. Those Chinese manufacturers are so clever, they always copied the most advanced technology.
@gonzogriff Жыл бұрын
Wtf videx is(or was) in my college town?? Neat
@jeremyerwin2779 Жыл бұрын
The shift key modification permanently voids the Apple II warranty? Sounds dubious.