Managed to sweep up a trio of cards on eBay, including the Z80 card I was holding out for. Got a good price on it, would have paid that much just for the Z80 card alone.
So it's a Z80 card, a Disk II card and.. a mystery card! The D27160 is an EPROM but beyond that I have no idea. There is a two pin connector on the card that resembles the Apple II speaker connector - is it a sound card?
Do you have those cards sitting on bubble wrap? ESD??
upper card: Z80 clone card for cpm
lower left card: disk II drive clone card
lower right: seems to be a kind of software protection dongle card....
( picture from solderside requested for confirmation.... )
alternate chances:
kind of crackshot clone
or interface to lightpen
Lower right is a clone WILDCARD, thats's for sure.
RE the bubble wrap, not my choice, was the sellers image. In my experience it's probably fine but not the best!
RE Wildcard - interesting! Useless in 2017... but interesting. I'll have some more photos once it's shipped to me.
Thanks all for the fast turnaround with info.
Put the mystery card in Slot 5 or Slot 7 and type PR#5 (or 7) and see what you get on the screen.
Also, try bridging the contact momentarily to see if it is indeed a copy card.
Yep. It's a wild card. Looks just like mine. The momentary push button goes on the two pin post on the upper right.
I've had a chance to try out the Wildcard today, added a momentary switch and tried the following in my //e Enhanced. Configuration is Slot 1, SSC. Slot 2, SSC. Slot 3/0 80 column and memory (it's a PAL //e), Slot 6 Disk II card.
In Slot 7, loaded Print Shop from diskette then pushed momentary button. Apple reset beep, followed by a warm boot (so two beeps). Print Shop boots again, pushing the button has no further effect.
In Slot 5, same as above. Very occasionally a solid cursor is seen in the top left between the first beep and the warm reset. Print Shop boots again, pushing the button has no further effect.
In Slot 5, wrote a four-line Hello World BASIC program (no DOS) and ran it. Push momentary button, dumped to the Monitor * with a reset beep noise. Press Return, get memory listing from arbitrary place. Return to BASIC, program is lost. Rewrite the BASIC program. Pushing the button has no further effect.
Repeated the previous experiment, got dumped to Monitor and with a 6502 error message, seemed arbitrary.
In Slot 5, loaded MECC Computer Inspector from a warm boot, immediately following above experiment. Got a boot error 40 message! "Error Number: 40. Boot error. Please check your diskette and disk drive".
In Slot 5, cold boot of MECC Computer Inspector, loaded this time. Pressing the button dumps me to the monitor. Some very strange characters seen on bottom of the screen amongst memory values.
In Slot 5, warm boot, another boot error message. Full text. "Error Number: 40. Boot error. Please check your diskette and disk drive".
In Slot 5, cold boot of MECC Computer Inspector. Error Number 40 boot error message ?! Can now no longer boot MECC Computer Inspector with the card in Slot 5, even after a cold reset.
Removed card, MECC Computer Inspector boots fine.
In Slot 7, power on, Apple //e appears with beep, but disk drive does not spin.
Removed card, disk now boots fine.
Removed SSC cards and placed Wildcard into Slot 1. Disk boots, but dumped to monitor with error message right away. Same with Slot 2.
In Slot 4, tried to boot Print Shop again, and it boots. Same symptoms as above, pressing the button resets with a brief solid cursor in top left. The button has no effect after reboot.
In Slot 4, CRTL Reset on Print Shop boot to drop to [. Then CTRL Apple Reset to reboot with new disk. Not sure if I hit a wrong key or what happened, but memory contents started to scroll up the screen, like a memory dump. This eventually ended with a buzzer noise from the speaker and a screen full of inverted @ symbols. CTRL Reset returned me briefly to the previous screen. The memory listing had the format: 953C-00 (80).
In Slot 4, warm reset into Apple //e Diagnostics disk. It boots. CTRL Apple Reset, dumps me to 6502 error message (noticing this pattern a lot when trying warm resets).
In Slot 4, loaded Prodos users diskette, it boots. Slot assignments show Slot 4 as empty.
My favourite theory at the moment is that the EPROM has been damaged, the window is slightly exposed by a peeling sticker. The fact that it can't be recognised by the Prodos diskette seems to indicate this. The other symptoms I've had could simply be the logic circuits interacting with the rest of the machine when hitting the button (and sometimes not).
Hello CWJ_Wilko,
like in most cases it's usefull to first "RTFM",
it can be downloaded from:
http://mirrors.apple2.org.za/Apple%20II%20Documentation%20Project/Interface%20Cards/Debugging/CPS%20Wildcard/Manuals/
reading that manual you might recognize the need a special disk that might be downloaded from:
http://mirrors.apple2.org.za/Apple%20II%20Documentation%20Project/Interface%20Cards/Debugging/CPS%20Wildcard/Disk%20Images/
and in case that the content of the ROM is really damaged you may download it from:
http://mirrors.apple2.org.za/Apple%20II%20Documentation%20Project/Interface%20Cards/Debugging/CPS%20Wildcard/ROM%20Images/
sincerely
speedyG
Speedy, isn't it true that in most cases it's not necessary to get upset at things like this and then retaliate when you're not attacked first?
?
Hello insanitor,
first of all i've replied along the last years always in moderate kind to CWJ_Wilko,
second I'm rather sure that he'll take it as it is - a small bit ironic reply....
probably it would have been better to add ( LOL) after that sentence.....
and otherwise - if it would have been really upset reaction my reply would have
been far shorter without that links......
sincerely
speedyG
No offence taken from my end Speedy
However in this case, I did actually read the manual, and proceeded with my tests. The diskette is used later on in the process, but I still should see the Wildcard menu appear after pushing the button.
Just to make sure, I went word-for-word from Page 7, I entered the HELLO program verbatim (even though it's just an example) and pushed the button. Instead of halting the system I am dumped into the Monitor with a 6502 error code. Contents of the CPU were: 047A- A=8 X=00 Y=A0 P=B5 S=E4.
The manual says to push Return after the system halt, but this just takes me through the memory line by line.
Is it possible that this card was only designed for Apple ][ and ][+ systems? The manual says that the card specifically looks for the 16kb Language Card in Slot 0. As I said above I have a //e Enhanced with an 80column/64kb card in the PAL Slot3/Aux slots.
Yes, the Wildcard only works properly in an Apple II or II+.
Hmmm.. in that case, is there any way for me to do any tests with this card? I've had a few people ask me if I would be interested in selling, but would rather give them something that works. Does the fact that the //e resets with a button push indicate anything positive at all?
... Or is it just the perfect time for me to buy an Apple ][ Plus?
Hello CWJ_Wiko,
like most clones are only clones of the simple Wildcard
at the other hand there is the Wildcard II - it works with the //e (128kB]!
sincerely
SpeedyG