I use this utility to convert files in Apple monitor format files to AIFF. Once in AIFF format I can download them to a real Apple II using a portable music player (iPod) and the cassette port on a real Apple II. This is the easiest and fastest way I know of, to move files to real Apple II and is an essential part of the cross development process I use for developing Apple II programs.

This version has only been tested on Intel MAC, but it was converted from a Mac PPC program, fixing endian and word length issues, so it may work, as is, on other platforms. I have a similar version for Apple 1, but it hasn’t yet been converted to Intel Mac. Here is the source for the Apple2 monitor to AIFF program.

a2aiff

I had to program a new batch of micro-controllers, so I decided to make a few minor tweaks to the firmware.

Check out the manual that is downloadable from the PS/2 keyboard adapter page.

Next batch of Mimeo boards are now on order. I should be able to pick them up in about 3 weeks. Sorry for the delay, to those that I promised boards in September, but a lot has been going on here at Mimeo headquarters.

This order was delayed, because a couple of weeks ago, I decided to investigate the possibility of using a different supplier, that would be able to work with me a little bit more. Though Advanced Circuits does fantastic work, they are set up to produce boards in a standard way. Whenever I have asked for them to do something a little different, I really haven’t received much help, or have been asked to pay for custom service, which is often more than I can afford.

An example is the Datanetics keyboard PCBs that I had made a couple of years ago. Even though those boards have no solder mask or silkscreen layer, I had to pay standard price. Other “online” PCB fab places have similar policies.

Yesterday, I visited a local place that I placed the order with. They took about an hour to talk to me. They even took me on a complete tour of their facility. I was pretty impressed at the complexity of the process. Anyone familiar with etching PCBs at home, would hardly recognize what is going on in a real production facility. I know I hardly did.

Pricing was competitive. I’m taking a slight hit on a one time set up charge, but I think the personal service will be worth this one time cost.

Stay tuned for an update as we proceed through these uncharted waters.

Well I found some time and pulled the DRAM bus termination resistors from one of my rev 0 replicas, to see what would happen. I expected to find the machine still worked but with some erratic behavior. I planned to take before and after O’scope shots of the DRAM address bus to be able to demonstrate the difference.

What I expected and what I got were quite different. What I got, was a machine that wouldn’t boot and give me a monitor prompt at all. I couldn’t really do before and after O’scope images, because I couldn’t generate an apples to apples comparison without putting the processor into the same tight loop for both test cases. However the display on the video was stable, so it shows that DRAM access was at least mostly working without the termination resistors.

I tried 4K and 36K DRAM configurations, and found no difference in behavior.

While my reproduction isn’t an original Apple preproduction board, I don’t think behavior would have been significantly different on a preproduction Apple II.

Just to speculate a little. There may have been enough board to board variation that some pre-production units worked better than others, but I imagine that on the whole, things didn’t look very promising when the first prototype Apple IIs were built. Imagine the struggle that the early Apple employees had, finding a way to stabilize the computer enough to show at the West Coast Computer Faire, and more importantly get it in shape for revenue shipments.