well, I FINALLY got this stuff uploaded, and here it is:
1st off, we have what appears to be a rare Apple II card. I took 2 pics of it: front, and back.
here is the caption I added for the 1st pic:
my (hopefully rare) Apple II card. It is made by Practical Peripherals, and is known as a GraphiCard. The main chip, in the bottom right hand corner reads: GRAPHICARD REV. 1.10 © 1984. In the bottom left, it reads: Copyright 1983 All Rights Reserved. there is a lable at top that reads “54021″, and the nubers on the right side read: “A1002100; SN G15213″. Note: the G15213 is hand written in ink. Also, the cable plugs into what appears to be a disk drive port on the card, but on the other end, has a blue, SCSI-like connector. Wierd. Cable is approx. 6ft long. Oh, and the red box is a set of dip switches, from 1-6.
Next up, I have a rare pic of Apple II's being manufactured:
This is a rare shot. Apple II’s being assembled at the plant. look at all of them. they dont even have case badges yet!! this was gotten out of a magizine, from a story at the time when the Mac 1st came out (around 1984) about the success of the (then young) Apple company.
let me know about the card. the closest I have come is a printer card. Practical Peripherals is famous for it's modems, but they did make a few Apple II cards. here is a pic of said printer card:
sorry the image is so big. I have no time to scale it down.
Enjoy!! -digital 
The blue "SCSI-like" connector goes to your
dot matrix printer. The "disk-drive-like"
connector goes to your GraphiCard. That is a
standard printer connection for first-
generation printers. Will also fir many
newer printers as well.
Your "MicroBuffer ][" looks a lot like my
Orange Micro printer cards that I have in my
collection. Maybe the same suppliers or
assemblers?
so, it IS a printer card. It does look like a video card. ah well. still, how much do you think it is worth? and that last pic isnt mine, I found it in some guy's Apple II collection. I pointed it out, because it is the only other Apple II card I have seen made by PP. Thanks for the ID. -digital
The printer card has almost no value on the market, sorry about that. Keep hunting you'll find that rare item! The picture of the apple II's in the plant are very interesting. Did you scan that from the magazine? Can you scan the whole article?
Agreed! That would be a truly rare item! (The magazine article)
Would make very interesting and valuable reading for us old
computerphiles. Could you PLEEEZE scan the article so we could
all read it? It would be very much appreciated. Thanks.
I have seen that picture in a national geographic Magazine. That i own.
I will try to scan the article, but I cant seem to find the national geographic that I scanned it from. My high school had huge stockpiles of NG dating back to the late 1950's. I think they cleaned it all out this past summer sorry. I will keep searching.
-digital
maybe you could save me the trouble, and upload it. If I remember, it was from a NG in 1984, right after the release of the Mac. NG did a story on the success of Apple at the time, and I think they through the pic of the Apple II assembly in there. it was still a interesting article. I will still keep searching. -digital
The Graphicard was a pretty popular card. I worked for Practical Peripherals in the early 80s in Westlake Village CA.
The Graphicard is a non-buffered parallel interface card, with some Graphics printing options in ROM.
The most popular cards for the Apple II from PPI were the Microbuffers- we sold thousands of those. There were several flavors and in those days RAM was expensive.
Practical Peripherals were well known to have good cards at amazingly cheap prices.
I think the Graphicard was around $79 which was a very aggressive price.
One other good thing about Practical Peripherals was the 5 year warranty which was essentially a "lifetime" warranty because I dont think we kept track of warranty periods- we just replaced cards that came in for replacement.
The national graphic artical was from like 1981?? If i had a scanner i would upload it...
That's the issue you're looking for. Cover article on microchips. There's that shot, and another shot that shows a family in the midwest using their II or II+ with two disk ][ drives attached to it and sitting on top of the computer. No monitor is shown, leading me to believe they're using their TV with it.
-J
I know this is a really old post. I just wanted to help fill in some info on this card so it would be logged here for future reference.
I have one of these cards still in the original box. Here are the details:
Price on box is $160.00
All Details on box:
MICROBUFFERII+
For Apple II, II+, and II/e COMPUTERS!
MicrobufferII+ is an intelligent buffered interface card for the entire apple II series of computers (including Apple II/e and Apple compatible systems), with up to 64k of on-board memory for No-Wait data buffering. The MicrobufferII+ has both serial and parallel output ports that are individually software or hardware selectable, and can be used simultaneously to print the same or different files. On-board software features include 13 text formatting commands, 10 microbuffer II+ control commands, 7 screen dump commands, including a 40 and 80-column Apple II/e and Videx 80-column dump, 7 communication commands, 3 port selected commands, and 9 graphic dump commandsincluding inverse, double size, rotated, side-by-side HGR1-HGR2, mixed text and graphics, and combinations of the above.
The Microbuffer II+ has very low power consu,ption and its memory is easily user expandable to 64k using industry standard 64k Dynamic RAM Chips.
Options include a hardware serial/parallel switch, and a buffer-zap (clear) button. Both come in their own Apple style switch housing.
The Microbuffer II+ is easy to install (in slot 1-7) and is compatible with virtually all Apple II software programs.
Graphic Routines are supported on the following printers:
Epson Printers
NEC 8023A and C
Itoh Prowriter
Anadex Printers
IDS Printers
Okidata 84
okidata 82, 83, 92, 93
Apple Printer
Mannesman Tally
BMC BX-80
I know this is a really old post. I just wanted to help fill in some info on this card so it would be logged here for future reference.
I have one of these cards still in the original box. Here are the details:
Price on box is $160.00
All Details on box:
MICROBUFFERII+
For Apple II, II+, and II/e COMPUTERS!
MicrobufferII+ is an intelligent buffered interface card for the entire apple II series of computers (including Apple II/e and Apple compatible systems), with up to 64k of on-board memory for No-Wait data buffering. The MicrobufferII+ has both serial and parallel output ports that are individually software or hardware selectable, and can be used simultaneously to print the same or different files. On-board software features include 13 text formatting commands, 10 microbuffer II+ control commands, 7 screen dump commands, including a 40 and 80-column Apple II/e and Videx 80-column dump, 7 communication commands, 3 port selected commands, and 9 graphic dump commandsincluding inverse, double size, rotated, side-by-side HGR1-HGR2, mixed text and graphics, and combinations of the above.
The Microbuffer II+ has very low power consu,ption and its memory is easily user expandable to 64k using industry standard 64k Dynamic RAM Chips.
Options include a hardware serial/parallel switch, and a buffer-zap (clear) button. Both come in their own Apple style switch housing.
The Microbuffer II+ is easy to install (in slot 1-7) and is compatible with virtually all Apple II software programs.
Graphic Routines are supported on the following printers:
Epson Printers
NEC 8023A and C
Itoh Prowriter
Anadex Printers
IDS Printers
Okidata 84
okidata 82, 83, 92, 93
Apple Printer
Mannesman Tally
BMC BX-80
I know this is a really old post. I just wanted to help fill in some info on this card so it would be logged here for future reference.
I have one of these cards still in the original box. Here are the details:
Price on box is $160.00
All Details on box:
MICROBUFFERII+
For Apple II, II+, and II/e COMPUTERS!
MicrobufferII+ is an intelligent buffered interface card for the entire apple II series of computers (including Apple II/e and Apple compatible systems), with up to 64k of on-board memory for No-Wait data buffering. The MicrobufferII+ has both serial and parallel output ports that are individually software or hardware selectable, and can be used simultaneously to print the same or different files. On-board software features include 13 text formatting commands, 10 microbuffer II+ control commands, 7 screen dump commands, including a 40 and 80-column Apple II/e and Videx 80-column dump, 7 communication commands, 3 port selected commands, and 9 graphic dump commandsincluding inverse, double size, rotated, side-by-side HGR1-HGR2, mixed text and graphics, and combinations of the above.
The Microbuffer II+ has very low power consu,ption and its memory is easily user expandable to 64k using industry standard 64k Dynamic RAM Chips.
Options include a hardware serial/parallel switch, and a buffer-zap (clear) button. Both come in their own Apple style switch housing.
The Microbuffer II+ is easy to install (in slot 1-7) and is compatible with virtually all Apple II software programs.
Graphic Routines are supported on the following printers:
Epson Printers
NEC 8023A and C
Itoh Prowriter
Anadex Printers
IDS Printers
Okidata 84
okidata 82, 83, 92, 93
Apple Printer
Mannesman Tally
BMC BX-80
Printer card, not rare, but pretty good features.
Got 2. Hang on to it in case you need a spare.
Hello - Hope you are still in on this group as I see you worked for PP back in the day so I have a question about two of these cards please. Basically what is the difference between the cards that say GRAPHICARD on them and the ones that say PRinterface card on them please? I could only find a manual and info on the GRAPHICARD model and nothing on the later! Thanks for any info!!!
The PRinterface card was the bare-bones model. The GraphiCard had the ROM code to do screen dumps and stuff. You can still print graphics with the PRinterface card (depending on what printer you have) but you will need other software to do it like Printographer or Zoom Grafix, etc. You can find that software on the Asimov Apple II Archive and other places.
https://www.apple.asimov.net/images/productivity/graphics/
I have 2 Printerface cards, one with the box and docs. Have never used them, as I have an IIgs and imagewriter II, but I hold them in case I get a printer that works with IIe. I'm curious if anyone dumped the EPROM, as there may be a couple versions in the wild.