Brain Board PCBs shipped from vendor

Should have them in about a week. I’ll immediately do a quick checkout to make sure they behave like my proto and get Beta started.

If everything goes smoothly I’ll be shipping by end of March.

I’m really excited about this project, it’s really a wicked neat little personality board for your Apple II – kind of like giving it a lobotomy. I’ll be posting more details about the design once I get closer to shipping.

Brain Board/Wozanium Pack Specs

When running Wozanium Pack Firmware on the BrainBoard, here is the system specs.

Microprocessor Clock Frequency: 1.023 MHz – same as the original Apple 1
Effective Cycle Frequency: 1.0205 versus the original’s 0.960 MHz

VIDEO OUTPUT: Composite positive video – same as original
Format: 40 characters/line. 24 lines; with automatic scrolling – same as original
Character Matrix: 5 x 7 – same as original

RAM MEMORY: 16K located at 0x0 – standard configuration with the original had 4k at 0x0 and another 4k at 0xE000. Several original systems were modified with the bank of memory at 0x0 expanded to 16K

BASIC: 4K at location 0xE000 contains Basic in PROM – With the original, BASIC was loaded into the 4K DRAM bank at location 0xE000 using the Apple Casssette Interface (ACI)

APPLE CASSETTE INTERFACE: built in – ACI was an option on the original

Mind Blowing Update #2

less blur

less blur

After much delay mostly do to distractions with other projects, the software is done with no known open issues and the prototype board is working great. The production PCBs are order and will arrive in about 5 weeks. I thought I could get quick turn PCBs made, but this wasn’t to be, hence the long lead time. Here is timeline for future announcements and release.

1) I hope to have time to put together a video podcast showing a demo of prototype, so everyone can finally see what this is about. I hope to be able to post this sometime next weekend. I’ll also announce target pricing at that time.

2) The rest of the parts for the first production run will be ordered.

3) After taking a day or two to assemble and check one of the production boards for myself, I have two Beta testers lined up and they will get a few weeks to check out the board.

4) A web page will be created with downloadable instruction manual.

5) Assuming all goes well, I hope to be shipping in about 8 weeks.