Doesn't the 'e' in Apple IIe stand for enhanced?
Well today I got very confused (nothing new here) in a phone conversation with a good friend. He says he got an Apple IIe enhanced. I told him that mentioning it's enhanced doesn't make sense since the e already stands for enhanced. To make a long story short, I found out about the IIenhanced enhanced. Does anyone know the story behind this double enhanced situation? What was Apple thinking?
I mostly use a IIc so I am not into the IIe hardware scene much, although this will change soon.
It was a minor refresh to somewhat bring it up to spec with the //c. It included the newer 65C02 processor, and an updated character rom that included Mouse Text. Both were features of the //c. There may be more to it, but I believe that was the main changes.
One very helpful enhancement in the "Enhanced IIe roms" (and later IIc rom revisions) are improved bad RAM chip detection and identification routines while in diagnostics - for me, down to ID the specific bad chip (chips in case of a IIc).
The earlier IIe have socketed RAM, as do the II/II+, but later IIe have the RAM soldered in, so "brute force" easter egging tricks like "just swap out all 8 chips" means desoldering all of them to replace them or to put an IC socket in.. Granted the newer DRAM chips used in the IIe and IIc models are more reliable than the II/II+ DRAM chips, but when/if they do fail, sockets are really nice.
For me, the improved memory diagnostics to ID failed RAM chip position was worth the IIe enhancement kit (3rd party) and IIc ROM upgrades.