New Zealand Vintage Computer Forums

gavo wrote:

Gibsaw wrote:Well funnily enough, it's not like it really did anything. In reality, it ended up only setting a single change in the character generator... (# becomes £)

Mine was also modded to operate the "colour/mono" switch that was otherwise located on the mobo

That's a really good mod although I'm inclined to keep a mod like that separate myself. (separate switch, mounted in a cleanly removable way.)

Can't understand why, but it would also bug me to remove the original functionality despite it's irrelevance to my needs.
(It's an emotional thing. Don't quite understand it myself.)

Gibsaw wrote:Eventually they did... and I drove to Dargaville and bought this lot. http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing.aspx?id=348098404

I was interested in the colour monitor (and bid on it when it was listed separately), but I have this kind of love/hate thing going on with getting a colour monitor for my IIe so didnt really make much of an effort. Back in the day I never had a colour monitor and so now, for some reason, I'm not convinced I should get one - odd.

Gibsaw wrote:Sooooo, yeah.. I now have the two major items (**) on my wishlist... aaaaand like lizardboy said... It probably won't stop there.. Probably going to acquire... a "europlus" and a IIc...

I want a IIc+ Now that would be cool!

Gibsaw wrote:Still kicking myself for not buying the 8MHz "zip chip" on ebay for US$100. I thought "yeah, right" when they said it was rare... and I was soooooooo wrong.

Again, I have a (maybe) funny view on that. Back when the II was still a viable machine, lots of mod's came out to speed it up, give it more RAM, give it more storage space etc - which I kinda think was good back when it was still a serious tool (and at the time I really wanted that kind of stuff - although I couldnt afford it), but now, I kinda like running at 1Mhz and having 128k of RAM and a couple of 140k drives - it just feels more comfortable to me. I am however a wierdo, so dont take too much of what I say too seriously

Gibsaw wrote:That's a really good mod although I'm inclined to keep a mod like that separate myself. (separate switch, mounted in a cleanly removable way.)
Can't understand why, but it would also bug me to remove the original functionality despite it's irrelevance to my needs.
(It's an emotional thing. Don't quite understand it myself.)

I totally understand!

I have received my latest toy... An Apple II+.

48k of raw POWER!!!! (No "language card" yet.)

Good one. I have an Apple II Europlus. All those RAM sockets

How much did it cost to get from the US BTW? I'm assuming being a stock US model, you need the PAL card to show colour?

tezza wrote:Good one. I have an Apple II Europlus. All those RAM sockets

How much did it cost to get from the US BTW? I'm assuming being a stock US model, you need the PAL card to show colour?

It cost in the ballpark of US$200 to get it here.. I haven't actually tried it on a NTSC colour screen yet, but no. It shouldn't require anything to display colour. Colour is integral to their original NTSC setup. It's PAL colour they didn't know how to do with the onboard setup in the II+.

...of course they built the PAL colour card into PAL IIe's and then abandoned it later with the platinum and just did NTSC colour on PAL timings and called it "International NTSC". A hideous kludge that ends up meaning neither of the two apple colour monitors I have work with anything but a platinum.

$200 US is not too bad. Use a stepdown transformer or have you put a 240V PSU in there?

Yes, the whole PAL/NTSC thing is very confusing as far as the Apples IIs go. I know my Europlus shows colour when plugged into my PAL Apple IIe monitor. It doesn't when plugged into a normal color composite screen though. I do have a PAL card, which I should try one day. I'm assuming that will allow it to display colour on a standard TV via the composite video input.

tezza wrote:$200 US is not too bad. Use a stepdown transformer or have you put a 240V PSU in there?

Yes, the whole PAL/NTSC thing is very confusing as far as the Apples IIs go. I know my Europlus shows colour when plugged into my PAL Apple IIe monitor. It doesn't when plugged into a normal color composite screen though. I do have a PAL card, which I should try one day. I'm assuming that will allow it to display colour on a standard TV via the composite video input.

mmm. That's odd. Everything I've read says the europlus is mono without the PAL card. It would be interesting to see how it behaves on an "International NTSC" monitor. (or is that the PAL IIe monitor that you're referring to?)

The monitor the Europlus does give colour with, is the one I use for my Apple IIe Platinum.

It says this on the back..

AppleColor Composite Monitor IIe
Apple Computer Inc.
Cupertino, California
Model No. A2M6021X
Serial No. S 028333
240V
50-60 Hz
1A

P/N 825-1354-A

I know there was at least one varient of this monitor, possibly more.

tezza wrote:The monitor the Europlus does give colour with, is the one I use for my Apple IIe Platinum. Model No. A2M6021X

Yep... The main variant is the obvious. A2M6021 (no "X") which will be the regular NTSC timings I would imagine.

I have two of the A2M6021X and it's HUGELY interesting that most people are actually wrong about the europlus. They changed it's timings to PAL (evidently) but never fixed the NTSC colour encoding situation. So they probably just SAID "it's monochrome", when it's actually the first iteration of what they would later refer to as "NTSC International".

I'm stoked to find that out. It's actually really interesting.

Just to double check I dragged out the Europlus and fired up Apple Panic with the screen above. Yep, full colour!

Before it would go, I had to track down and replace a faulty 4116 RAM chip though. The computer hadn't been switched on for about 6 months. These II+ machines are notorious for chip rot even if they are just stored away doing nothing!