[vcf-midatlantic] Help identifying Apple II board

[Gregg Levine]

Hello!
It's been a while. I remember watching as such a card was installed
into the one we owned, and from there, the cable was placed into the
socket where its RAM chip was swapped out of. Typically the routines
to do so are embedded into DOS3.3 and related releases directly, and
are not normally encoded into a ROM chip. You would find them on disk
controller cards say, and even the odd serial card though.
-----
Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com
"This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."

On Tue, Feb 22, 2022 at 9:50 PM W. Bryan Caudle via vcf-midatlantic
<vcf-midatlantic at lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
>
> Great catch, thank you for clarifying Gregg, I had not intended to imply BASIC (or other languages for that matter) were resident in the ROM itself.  The ROM on the language card has the auto start routines and other enhancements that permit booting the 16 sector DOS 3.3 disks which actually contain the language interpreters/compilers which functioned as you described.
>
> My main objective was to point out that the card in question does not appear to be the language card, but rather it is simply the 16k expansion.
>
> While I did not find the exact card that Bob posted either, this one is suspiciously similar:
>
> https://www.ebay.com/itm/264723255394<https://www.ebay.com/itm/264723255394?_trkparms=amclksrc%3DITM%26aid%3D111001%26algo%3DREC.SEED%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20160908105057%26meid%3D4ac9d6b3420a4938a4f74f5e7b0149d3%26pid%3D100675%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D15%26sd%3D363729588876%26itm%3D264723255394%26pmt%3D0%26noa%3D1%26pg%3D2380057&_trksid=p2380057.c100675.m4236&_trkparms=pageci%3A2ac89487-9452-11ec-8d01-c25d18ef5476%7Cparentrq%3A2474ebdd17f0a45dcb87cd4ffff7fcf0%7Ciid%3A1>
>
>
>
>
> On Feb 22, 2022, at 8:49 PM, Gregg Levine <gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hello!
> Um, misnomer here. The language as such was a binary file that was
> loaded onto that card, when booting an appropriately configured DOS3.3
> Master disk on an appropriately configured Apple 2Plus. Such
> configurations presuppose that the computer left the builders wearing
> 48K of memory and expected 16K on that card who went into the Zero
> slot.
> -----
> Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com
> "This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."
>
> On Tue, Feb 22, 2022 at 3:51 PM W. Bryan Caudle via vcf-midatlantic
> <vcf-midatlantic at lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
>
> I agree with your assumption, 16K ram expansion to take a 48K II/II+ to 64k.  Given the rest of the board is just TTL support logic and bus transceivers, and there is no ROM present, I don't think it can be called the "language card" which traditionally provided both the 16K and full featured BASIC.  That RAM chip in the bottom right (with the apple logo) is likely from the Apple II mainboard itself, which is removed to make a place for the ribbon cable to connect.  That socket on the expansion board was likely empty from the factory.  That chip could move back to the mainboard, removing the ribbon cable, and that would return the machine to its (likely) original stock 48k configuration.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic-bounces at lists.vcfed.org> On Behalf Of Bob Shuster via vcf-midatlantic
> Sent: Tuesday, February 22, 2022 2:25 PM
> To: vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic at lists.vcfed.org>
> Cc: Bob Shuster <bob at theshusters.com>
> Subject: [vcf-midatlantic] Help identifying Apple II board
>
> I found a card installed in one of my Apple II computers and I can find nothing about it online.  The only labels are a brand name - I think - “Elite” - and “YKH Interface” near the card edge.  It has a connector that plugs into one of the RAM sockets on the main board, so I assume it to be a RAM expansion, particularly since it’s populated by 8x16K RAM chips.
>
> Pictures available at
>
> https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1tkRch5-lrEj65uZsJqKgxVGH-id4crRz?usp=sharing
>
> Anyone?  I don't have an OS to run on these Apple IIs, just what they boot up to from the ROMs.
>
> Bob Shuster
>