In case this is one of yall's just wanted to say thanks.
Apple 2c in pretty good condition though im sure its been retrobrited WITH the tiny little apple monitor (no stand that I know of no big deal)...
Got it for $170.... which pleases me to no end.
I love the small form factor of the 2c and frankly had forgotten all together that it had an internal drive.. And the monitor is icing on the cake as its a monitor easily moved between my 2c an my 2gs which I am building. Sure its not color and I hear they arent great - but I would have done $170 for the computer alone!!!!
Now I need to hunt out mods for the 2c... Any "must haves" you guys can think of? I suppose it has capacitors that I need to check have have replaced like most other old computers, right?
thanks!
mark
ram, a clock, erm... something I Can't think of right now.. :)
The 2c is pretty limited in mods, especially if you have an older one that lacks the memory expansion header. As noted, a clock, the memory adapter, an updated BIOS, and a mockingboard 4c (which I believe wont fit if you use the memory expansion) are the only things I can think of off hand.
As for caps, I just recently recapped my childhood 2c, which is one of the early "255" versions. None of them were in bad shape as far as leaks or bulges. The only thing I wasn't a fan of was the internal power converter (which as I understand it went through several revisions itself) is basically sealed up in in a tin can, wrapped around by another tin can, with not much in the way of venting. When my 2c was uncased, that tin can got fairly warm to the touch after maybe 30-45 min or so. And most of the original caps in there were all 85c. So I made sure to replace them all with 105c. Mostly for piece of mind. As this is my childhood 2c, I know how many hours were on it. And there were a lot. There is also a rather large cap of unknown value in the adaptor brick itself. As it's ultrasonically welded, I can't bring myself to open it up. I suppose I could at least throw my scope on it to see if the filtering is deteriorating or not.
The mainboard itself has 4 caps. One filter cap near the power plug, one in the middle of the board, and two axials that I believe when I looked at the schematic had something to do with the sound circuit. Not sure why they went with the two axials on the main board. They may be needed there if you install the memory expansion. But mine doesn't have the port. So maybe they were just planning ahead? Either way, there is plenty of room to lay down radials. The drive on the other hand has 6 caps, all axial. And I don't think you can squeeze in radials. There are 3 on the underside for the motor board, and 3 on top for the analog board. If you can fit in radials, it will be a tight fit. I just went a head with axials, despite only being able to get them in 85c. And Nichicon is discontinuing them, so for one of the values I had to fall back to Illinois Capacitor. Although I mainly try to stick to Panisonic or Nichicon.
I was going to recap my 9" monochrome monitor too. But, uh, yeah. They stuffed 10 pounds of stuff into a 5 pound bag. I managed to get most of it out, but even then I was left with like two floating chassis that had wires soldered to each other. It was going to take a lot of work to get it apart just to even inventory the caps. There is a SAMS document out there for the 2c monitor. But it seems to only cover the 240v chassis, which is laid out differently. And actually looks much easier to work on than the 120v chassis. Someone out there also inventoried the parts on the 240v chassis as well, along with detailed pictures of all the parts disassembled. Maybe someday when I have a week off work and can afford to really put some time into it, I'll tear it down and give it a recap. Just not in the cards right now. Plus I recently scored a nice condition color monitor IIc and stand that I currently have it hooked up to. At least that was easy to get out and recap. Despite not having access to a schematic, or cap kit/part list. The IIgs RGB monitor was fairly easy as well, plus console5 sells a cap kit for it.
Congrats! Yeah, 1MB RAM, No-Slot Clock. I would add mouse & joy stick. An Apple issue //c color monitor stand would be nice, but it's easy enough to make one. Some might want the CPM card... not sure why. Certainly an external drive to bring the count up to two. I would say that Appleworks, DazzleDraw, and Fantavision would really look good with a color monitor. There's a guy on fleabay selling a connector for the RGB port that outputs composite video and (more importantly) line level sound.
If only...
Yeah you can get composite video and audio from the monitor port on the back which makes an easy connection to a monitor that supports both. Simple cable to make or buy.
That port was used for two official Apple accessories.
The first, is an RF Modulator, and as you have a monitor, you can ignore that.
The second, was an LCD panel, which now, sells for insane money and will not improve your experience.
IMO more RAM will not help you. A 'no slot' clock upgrade might work, and you can still buy those brand new from retailers in the community, although I am not certain if they fit properly into the minimal space inside the //c.. I wouldn't try expanding the //c, unless you want to update to the 4X ROM. Anything else will barely be used by any software that you plan to run. If you want an Apple II series with expansion, buy a //e and add to your collection.
RAM expansion only benefits complex software such as AppleWorks, and unless you plan to write a novel on it, then you will not benefit enough from an extra 18K, particularly for the obscene prices on //c expansion cards. You can buy a //e with RAM expansion for less. Likewise, unless you have a good reason to run CP/M, the Z80 card will be of little use, and you can buy two //e systems and a Z80 card for one, for less than the cost one one //c Z80 card.
The only expansion device that you may want to consider is the UniDIsk 3.5, so that you can access 800K media. This drive only works on the //c, the //e with a LIRON card, and the //gs. The later //gs drives (and Mac drives) do NOT work on the //c (the //gs drives work on the //c+), and using them will likely damage the system, the drive, or both.
The price on them is a bit steep, and they are slower than the later drives, but if you want the most out of a stock //c, an external (second) 5.25 drive, and a UniDIsk 3.5 drive are very useful. The BOMW Floppy Emu is also an excellent upgrade, as it allows you to also mount ProDos Smart Drive 'HDD' volums, should you find a reason to use them.
The ZIP chip should also work in the //c, but again, your best option for a 'fast' ][ series system is the //e with a modern accel card.
The best accessory that you could buy is a joystick.
So on that front, there's a stunningly easy circuit you can make that adapts PC Joysticks with the 15 pin connector to the Apple II 9 pin connector. It's literally the connectors, 2 capacitors and 2 resistors.
PC joysticks are significantly easier to find.
(It's the one here)
I recently made up a batch of them and the cost was around $15 AUD each, including the case.
Hope this helps!
Chesh
As for "mods" for the //c, I haven't done any for mine yet. Just haven't felt the need.
The no-slot clocks look interesting, but I haven't been able to convince myself I need to care about date/time on my //c yet. ;-)
There are memory expansion options (if you can find them, and I don't remember if they work on all //c's, I thought it was later models) but I haven't needed more RAM for my //c.
The only mod that really intrigued me was the Mockingboard 4c sound card by Ian Kim. (Not sure if he is still making/selling those)
Since I have a Mockingboard for my //e, I couldn't quite justify that... But was (is) really tempting...
Another option would be a new ROM. (more on that later)
As for additions, a very tempting addition would be the BMOW Floppy Emu. You can place a bunch of disk images on the SD card and use it as an external floppy. There are ROM considerations with that...
The original ROM supported booting off of the external floppy. Cool feature for some programs that want to run off of the boot disk. That said, some of those programs are hard coded for the internal disk so might boot, but then not work later... (or so I have read) Still, if you are having some drive issues, being able to boot off of the external is a nice option.
But, the Floppy Emu also supports SmartPort emulation, so you can use it for 800k images OR hard drive files. However, the original ROM doesn't support SmartPort. So, if you want those great features, you need a newer ROM and won't have the "boot off of the external" option.
Another thing you will probably want is a serial cable and a USB/serial port for your computer so you can use ADTPro to transfer disk images.
Note: Windows 10 is very picky with it's USB serial device support. I couldn't get ADTPro to work with either of the 2 adapters I have. Both adapters to show up and work for Windows, but ADTPro doesn't like them. They are older, so it might be a 32bit driver/64 bit app thing.. It's java, so ...
I ended up using an old Dell Netbook with XP and running an older version of ADTPro that runs on that.
You probably won't be making floppy disks with ADTPro all the time, so it's not that bad.
That said, there is a really neat Apple II Game Server Online that you can't use. ;-( It uses audio to transfer games to the tape port, that the //c doesn't have. So you will likely be using ADTPro...
(I am considering installing ADTPro on a raspberry pi and running it headless to make it easier...)
You could also look for a mouse to use the few things that the Apple uses the mouse for... If I could ever get one super cheap, I might. But they aren't super cheap. ;-)
And as for the color monitor, personally I love the green screen with the //c. Might be nostalgia as that is the way I remember them. And to be fair, I have color on my //e. But I find myself using the //c with it's green screen and no Mockingboard sound more than the //e.
Enjoy!
For me the basic ones would be the VGA adapter and a Wdrive. The first allows connecting a VGA monitor (LCD) using the video port, and allows to change from color, amber, green or scanlines.The Wdrive is an SD floppy emulator that supports smartport and woz format files.Other than that a memory expansion from A2Heaven, that has a battery, clock and memory expansion, and also works as a ram drive that won't lose the data when turned off, so it can load real fast a floopy image.Sources:
http://kboohk.com/
https://a2heaven.com/