Sam Latella

Hi,

What modifcations can you do on a standard Apple IIc? I just purchase an
Apple IIc and am still amazed by how portable it is even after 20 years. I
tested the machine with a 55 inch LED TV and WOW! I am reallly going to
enjoy watching my kids play educational games from the Apple II era on a
modern 55 inch Samsung TV. I gues the knew meets the old!

So, back to modifying the IIc. I've read somewhere that you can mod it to
work with 3.5 inch drives is this easy to do? I've got basic experience
replacing chips, installling cards, and hard drives. Soldering is not my
forte at all.

Besides getting a Zipchip. I'm more interested in a cheap alternative of
getting a 3.5 inch drive to work with the IIc.

Any other mods I've missed for the IIc. Would like to hear them.

It's to bad Apple never went the route of the IIc for the IIgs it would have
been a winner, and very neat portable alternative for the Apple II line.
For now I'll stick to having fun on the IIc with the kids.

Thank-you for your time,
Sam

Sean Fahey

Your //c might already be compatible with the UniDisk 3.5 drive.

At the BASIC prompt, type: PRINT PEEK (64447)

If it returns 0, 3 or 4 then you have a compatible machine. If it says '255' then you have the original ROM and can't use one.

It may be cheaper and easier to buy an Apple IIc Plus which has a built-in 3.5 drive and runs at 4MHz (or faster when overclocked) than to acquire a ZipChip and external UniDisk 3.5 drive.

Warren Ernst

On Oct 28, 6:04*am, Sean Fahey <a2...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Your //c might already be compatible with the UniDisk 3.5 drive.
>
> At the BASIC prompt, type: PRINT PEEK (64447)
>
> If it returns 0, 3 or 4 then you have a compatible machine. If it says '255' then you have the original ROM and can't use one.
>
> It may be cheaper and easier to buy an Apple IIc Plus which has a built-in 3.5 drive and runs at 4MHz (or faster when overclocked) than to acquire aZipChip and external UniDisk 3.5 drive.

FYI, the majority of kids games / educational games work just fine at
the stock 1mhz, and most of the 8-bit kids games come on 5.25" disks.

-Warr

sporadic

I recently picked up a couple of IIc+ off eBay, and you really need the external 5.25" drive to be useful. Unless you're looking to run AppleWorks, in which case the built-in 800K 3.5" floppy and 4MHz would be better than the original IIc.

And as Sean pointed out, it might be cheaper to just get a IIc+ than to retrofit a IIc with 3.5" and a ZipChip (a rare item).

Jimmy

Bill Garber

"sporadic" <sporadically@gmail.com> wrote in message news:32669017.475.1319819159350.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forum...
> I recently picked up a couple of IIc+ off eBay, and you really
> need the external 5.25" drive to be useful. Unless you're
> looking to run AppleWorks, in which case the built-in 800K
> 3.5" floppy and 4MHz would be better than the original IIc.
>
> And as Sean pointed out, it might be cheaper to just get a IIc+
> than to retrofit a IIc with 3.5" and a ZipChip (a rare item).
>
> Jimmy

That 3.5" Unidisk drive is fairly rare itself, not quite as
rare as the ZipChip, but also goes for quite a hefty amount
when one does come up.

Bill

Steven Hirsch

On 10/28/2011 12:25 PM, sporadic wrote:

> And as Sean pointed out, it might be cheaper to just get a IIc+ than to
> retrofit a IIc with 3.5" and a ZipChip (a rare item).

And, for even more computing pizazz you can hotrod many IIc+ machines to
double the clock speed (or more?). Word of warning: Do not make removal and
replacement of the can oscillator your first soldering experience :-). It's
not rocket science, but you'll be working with a double-sided board that
requires a bit of finesse.

Steve

Michael Black

On Fri, 28 Oct 2011, Steven Hirsch wrote:

> On 10/28/2011 12:25 PM, sporadic wrote:
>
>> And as Sean pointed out, it might be cheaper to just get a IIc+ than to
>> retrofit a IIc with 3.5" and a ZipChip (a rare item).
>
> And, for even more computing pizazz you can hotrod many IIc+ machines to
> double the clock speed (or more?). Word of warning: Do not make removal and
> replacement of the can oscillator your first soldering experience :-). It's
> not rocket science, but you'll be working with a double-sided board that
> requires a bit of finesse.
>
That doesn't impact on other things in the IIC? (I have no idea.)

I got my OSI Superboard 30 years ago next month, I couldn't afford an
Apple II at the time. And I don't recall it being that much time after I
had it that I modified it so it would run at twice the original clock
speed, so it was running at 2MHz. Right away I could see the snap in the
system, it wsa only twice the speed and pretty slow speed to begin with,
but that really was a noticeable change.

Now it's really hard to double the speed of a current CPU, and I'm not
sure one would really notice the change.

Michael

Steven Hirsch

On 10/28/2011 04:22 PM, Michael Black wrote:
> On Fri, 28 Oct 2011, Steven Hirsch wrote:
>
>> On 10/28/2011 12:25 PM, sporadic wrote:
>>
>>> And as Sean pointed out, it might be cheaper to just get a IIc+ than to
>>> retrofit a IIc with 3.5" and a ZipChip (a rare item).
>>
>> And, for even more computing pizazz you can hotrod many IIc+ machines to
>> double the clock speed (or more?). Word of warning: Do not make removal and
>> replacement of the can oscillator your first soldering experience :-). It's
>> not rocket science, but you'll be working with a double-sided board that
>> requires a bit of finesse.
>>
> That doesn't impact on other things in the IIC? (I have no idea.)

I'm referring to IIc+ and, no, it does not. The IIc+ has essentially an
embedded ZipChip 4000 (4Mhz.). Increasing the core CPU clock has no effect on
anything else, since it's throttled back to 1.x Mhz. for timing-sensitive
diskette routines, etc.

> I got my OSI Superboard 30 years ago next month, I couldn't afford an Apple II
> at the time. And I don't recall it being that much time after I had it that I
> modified it so it would run at twice the original clock speed, so it was
> running at 2MHz. Right away I could see the snap in the system, it wsa only
> twice the speed and pretty slow speed to begin with, but that really was a
> noticeable change.

It will be quite noticeable on a IIc+.

> Now it's really hard to double the speed of a current CPU, and I'm not sure
> one would really notice the change.

Even if you did, the next release of $OPERATING_SYSTEM would be yet more
bloated and offset the potential advantage :-).

Steve

Kevin Dady

On Oct 28, 6:47*am, powe...@macgui.com (Sam Latella) wrote:
> Hi,
>
> What modifcations can you do on a standard Apple IIc? *I just purchase an
> Apple IIc and am still amazed by how portable it is even after 20 years. *I
> tested the machine with a 55 inch LED TV and WOW! *I am reallly going to
> enjoy watching my kids play educational games from the Apple II era on a
> modern 55 inch Samsung TV. *I gues the knew meets the old!
>
> So, back to modifying the IIc. *I've read somewhere that you can mod itto
> work with 3.5 inch drives is this easy to do? *I've got basic experience
> replacing chips, installling cards, and hard drives. *Soldering is not my
> forte at all.
>
> Besides getting a Zipchip. *I'm more interested in a cheap alternative of
> getting a 3.5 inch drive to work with the IIc.
>
> Any other mods I've missed for the IIc. *Would like to hear them.
>
> It's to bad Apple never went the route of the IIc for the IIgs it would have
> been a winner, and very neat portable alternative for the Apple II line.
> For now I'll stick to having fun on the IIc with the kids.
>
> Thank-you for your time,
> Sam

Not to be a buzzkill and this is just my opinion but the 800k 3.5 inch
disk is a pain in the ass and personally not worth the trouble. Its a
variable speed format that only apple used, so its not like you can
just pop a disk in your PC and copy files over to it, heck even my
powermac 9600 is a little weird making prodos disks.

The majority of apple II software is in 5.25 format so if the software
allows it the best you might be able to do is make a "mix tape" of
stuff.

Finally you can hardly find HD 1.4mb disks now let alone DD disks so
your going to have to order them, at that point once you get disks
ordered and shipped, a computer that can actually read the silly
things in apple format, and fuss with making a mix disk you might as
well just get a box of 5.25 DD disks and use as normal, or use
something like apple game server for the programs that load fully in
ram ... killing the need for floppies anyway.

Grats on your IIC, I have one as well and its a fun computer just as
all apple 2's without needing a bunch of space, which is nice though I
wish it had a slot sometimes

Egan Ford

> Finally you can hardly find HD 1.4mb disks now let alone DD disks so
> your going to have to order them, at that point once you get disks
> ordered and shipped, a computer that can actually read the silly
> things in apple format, and fuss with making a mix disk you might as
> well just get a box of 5.25 DD disks and use as normal, or use
> something like apple game server for the programs that load fully in
> ram ... killing the need for floppies anyway.

You can cover the hole on a HD disk and use as a DD disk. I do it all
the time without any issues.

That said, I completely agree with your assessment.

I'll also add that if I want to play II games on the big screen with
minimum fuss, then I'll use an emulator.