Hey everyone...
I have been ignoring my II+ for a while (I have two of them), but got one down to fire up and ensure everything was OK. Obviously, since I am posting here, it isn't OK!
I can boot into DOS 3.3 via FloppyEmu or actual disk drive. No problem.
When I try to boot anything that has graphics in it (let's say, Ultima IV, or ), I get random text on the screen, and the disk drive continues to spin, nothing happens.
I have gone through a few posts that have been made here previously, and tried those tests suggested - I have swapped disk drives, controller cards, reseated the ROMS and swapped 74LS08 at H1. Ran the HGR tests perfectly, checked the controller card info and got the right numbers, etc. Everything seems just fine. And yet...
Here is the annoying part - the EXACT same thing is happening on another II+ I own. If I load a game, the same game will produce the same random letters in the exact same place, same letters blinking on both machines.
I am going to unseat and reseat the RAM chips one by one, but it seems very peculiar that two computers behave the exact same way when something goes wrong.
But any idea what would cause this issue? The fact that DOS 3.3 loads (or some games that have text before they go into graphics) seems weird, but that tells me the drive and controller card are working properly.
Do you have a 16K RAM Card (Language Card) in slot 0? Many games might assume 64K of RAM. And some require a IIe or better.
Hey Jeff...
No, there wasn't a language card or memory expansion in there.
But I did, based on your response, put in an Orange 16K memory expansion (which goes in slot 0, and also plugs into the first RAM chip socket at row E), and it worked now!
You, sir, are a genius. If you are ever in eastern Ontario, Canada, the drinks are on me!! Thank you very much!!
I would suggest you might try running some diagnostics software. You can find some here:
https://mirrors.apple2.org.za/ftp.apple.asimov.net/images/disk_utils/diagnostics/
Apple Cillin and the Apple Dealer Diagnoststics for ][+ are good ones to start with. You should be able to download those disk images to your Micro SD for your FloppyEmu and run them. Try running all the tests and see if it shows anything.
Is there any hardware parts you are using with both computers? If they're failing the same way that may point to the common thing being the culprit. Or it may just be a coincidence.
Hey, thanks, SJ! I will grab some of that software - seems like it would be very handy to keep around.