New Zealand Vintage Computer Forums

G'day everyone,

New to your group - just joined as I've cleaned out my basement and found an old Apple II clone I last used about 20 years ago. I know I'll never use it again so I should move it on to a better home, and if it's worth a few dollars to someone then so much the better (that'd justify me hanging on to it all these years!).

It was working when I last turned it off and mothballed it away (it had been our daily-use computer for years until then), but now I've uncovered it years later and it doesn't work any more.

I'm no Apple expert, but the base unit is I think a clone of some early-ish variety of Apple II - the m'board is labelled VECTORIO, and I recall from when we were using it that the startup screen used to show JABBAL-64 or something similar, whatever that meant.
The VDU is labelled KAGA.
There are also two disc drives but no idea if they still work, and sorry but there're no discs or manuals at all, darn it.
There are several plug-in cards in the m'board, complete with external ribbon cables - maybe one's a disc drive card and I do recall that one's an 80-col card, but don't know about the others.

Anyway the whole thing's pretty clean & tidy inside and out, but........ it doesn't actually work! The PSU light and the K/B power-light do come on OK, and VDU gives the odd green flash when you wiggle the Brightness knob, but otherwise there's nothing on the VDU, with it connected to either the 40 or 80 col output of the base unit. Might just be corroded card or cable connectors, but who knows......

Anyway then, what does anyone think, is it worth anything to anyone, or otherwise does anyone want to take it away and save it from the tip?

Thanks for reading,
and best regards,
Graham Hilder,
Paekakariki.
Email graham.joan@paradise.net.nz
Phone 04-905-8328

Photos would be good, so we know which clone we're dealing with.

OK. So No display... Questions then.

Did the magic smoke come out of the PSU? (Capacitor failure)
Is there any indication of power inside? (LED's on the board, etc)
Does it beep?
Any disk drive activity?

Sent a quick email. He's a short journey from my house, and I'd hate to see it go to the tip!
(Although I can't offer much, so anyone who wants to throw $$$ in can get the jump on me)

Edit: also fyi, apparently Apple sued them

I'd love to take it, although I am starting to get the evils from the wife regarding the growing number of perroplas containers.

At least some photos or updates on it's progress would be good.

Do you know which one this is? The major taiwanese clones came with many different badges on the front.

Sadly, many of the clones end up just being parts donors for the real thing. (CPU's, memory and generic 74LSxxx TTL chips, etc)

Hopefully he comes back on and shares some more detail

I took a stab at it possibly being a VECTORIO Personal Computer from Formula - it was the only reference online I could see - it seems Apple hit them up for copyright infringement of their Apple II for that machine along with a bunch of other companies at the time. It was the only reference to it I could find. One company was ballsy enough to sell a machine with a logo of an Orange and a II after it (that made me chuckle a bit).

Edit: also found this which is kind of interesting: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searc ... dKgmNVGKwJ and https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searc ... g__VDc4YkJ

Thanks everybody who's posted replies here, or emailed - I'm really happy to see the interest as I'd hate to see a bit of history go west. This posting is just an acknowledgement to you all in the meantime, but I have noted all the queries and suggestions and I'll get on to them and report back properly when I get the chance to look into it again. Meanwhile though, a couple of easy ones I can answer straight away - yep I'll be glad to take and post some photos; and yep I'm quite happy to pack it up for sending if needed; and no, no smoke or smells from the PSU, just a nice red LED that comes on a few seconds after mains switch-on.
Thanks again everyone,
best regards,
Graham H, Paekak.

Hello Graham, good to see you on the forums.

Yes, Apple II clones are a family of interesting computers in their own right. They range from virtually straight copies of the Apple II+ (including near identical cases) to all kinds of exotica including ones with a Z80 chip built in for CP/M and cases which look like an IBM AT!

Hello again everyone,

Well I've taken some photos of this old machine so you can see what it all looks like. I can easily transfer them from my camera to my PC desktop but then how do I go about posting them on the forum here? Is there some easy facility such as dragging them from desktop to my draft post then submitting the whole thing in one go? Or otherwise, what's the arrangement for submitting photos please, and are there limits on how many megs per photo and per post? (The pics are the usual one or two megs each so I might need to cut 'em down?)

Thanks all,
GH

Hello, me again, with some written info at this stage to answer some queries -

- Firstly, there're no labels on the case to say what make and model it is - not on the front, back, base or top.
- Cables emerging from the rear slots of the case are 2 for disc drives, 1for a printer, 1 for the VDU (from the 80-col card?), plus one D25 for I don't know what (a modem maybe?).
- On the main board inside are a 6502 uP and 64k of RAM (8 x 4164 chips).
- PSU voltages all seem OK - meter showed them as +5, -5.2, +12.5 and -13.
- Disc drives are unlabelled apart from a Ser Nr sticker on each, and they show no sign of life when base unit powered up. (Mind you I've got no floppies to load in the drives.)
- I also found a joystick, and a 40/80 col switchbox with cables to VDU and to computer.

Any queries for more info, just let us know and I'll be glad to reply.
Thanks again,
GH

Hi Graham,

Unfortunately you can't upload photos directly to the forums. Are you able to upload them to an image service like photobucket, Flickr, dropbox or the like. Once you've done that, get the URL then post the link between the two tags that appear when you hit the Img button. That's how the other photos you see in the forum are displayed.

Sundox seems to be a clone that I come across a few times ,they made a few flavours including a duel CPU model all in very apple looking packaging.

The badges can sometimes fall off! the space bars tend to do the same with sundox.

Re posting photos, thanks Tez, I'll give that a go tomorrow.
Best rgds,
GH

Righto, I've joined up to Photobucket and loaded the photos to that, so now I'll have a go at posting the link here -

.

There it is then. I'm new to Photobucket so hope it all works......
My photos aren't exactly razor-sharp so if any better ones needed, just ask, and I'll pay special attention to re-taking any particular areas wanted.

Regards,
GH

Doesn't look like the link appeared in my post above. This is it though:

http://s1374.photobucket.com/user/Graham31/library/

Hope this shows up OK. Rgds, GH

I can see the images.

It looks a lot like one of my clones.



Note I've lost the keycap for the caps lock.

I've always thought it was Redstone brand, which had lost it's label. At least that's what I gleaned from the guy who gave it to me. Mind you, he wasn't that sure himself.

BTW, the reason the IMG tag didn't work in your earlier post is that tag needs the full URL to an image file, not just a folder. . However, just putting a link like you did in the later post is fine if you have a lot of images to show.