Tony L
Administrator
Ok, so this happened:
It’s a not entirely sane Apple II Europlus. As can be seen from the screen it boots to the ‘Apple ][‘ prompt, beeps, and has a flashing cursor, which is all good. The issue is at present it will only respond to ‘ctrl-reset’, no other keys work. It is also only loaded with one RAM bank at present, so 16KB. With the disc board and drive connected it does seek, so there is clearly a lot right about the mainboard. I have a feeling that is all fine and the problem lies in the keyboard controller board. The fact ctrl-break works gives me some faith that the physical keyboard mechanism is ok. I stripped and cleaned it and can see no obvious faults here.
I’m posting at this point as I’m blown away by just how good a picture of the mainboard I could get with an iPhone 13 and a bit of cropping and perspective correction on my iPad! Full resolution here on Flickr. It is more than good enough to do some cross-checking, reading chip codes etc. It makes it so easy to have a record of exactly what is where on this specific example.
I checked the PSU, blown Rifa cap, obviously, but no leaks or bulges beyond that and all voltages are correct. I will obviously fully recap it in time, but not my main priority. I want to get it working first. Fix, then restore!
PS Depending how far in I get I may well end up respraying the case as it is has obviously worn through the paint around the front edge. I’m undecided here, but certainly not a priority.
It’s a not entirely sane Apple II Europlus. As can be seen from the screen it boots to the ‘Apple ][‘ prompt, beeps, and has a flashing cursor, which is all good. The issue is at present it will only respond to ‘ctrl-reset’, no other keys work. It is also only loaded with one RAM bank at present, so 16KB. With the disc board and drive connected it does seek, so there is clearly a lot right about the mainboard. I have a feeling that is all fine and the problem lies in the keyboard controller board. The fact ctrl-break works gives me some faith that the physical keyboard mechanism is ok. I stripped and cleaned it and can see no obvious faults here.
I’m posting at this point as I’m blown away by just how good a picture of the mainboard I could get with an iPhone 13 and a bit of cropping and perspective correction on my iPad! Full resolution here on Flickr. It is more than good enough to do some cross-checking, reading chip codes etc. It makes it so easy to have a record of exactly what is where on this specific example.
I checked the PSU, blown Rifa cap, obviously, but no leaks or bulges beyond that and all voltages are correct. I will obviously fully recap it in time, but not my main priority. I want to get it working first. Fix, then restore!
PS Depending how far in I get I may well end up respraying the case as it is has obviously worn through the paint around the front edge. I’m undecided here, but certainly not a priority.