Hi,
I recently got a Apple //e for my collection. It is a European one (with the switch on the downside of the keyboard).
For informtion I looked thru the SAMS Apple //e and I realized that my board is not listed in there.
All boards have the AUX-slot on the left side beneath the PSU. Mine has the AUX-slot directly behind slot 3, so I cannot use this slot anymore when my 80cols/64kb extention card is pluged in. Also slotfinder lists the card as inserted in slot 3.
Do I have any special board or is this normal for european systems?
Photos?
Here you are:
IMG_0688.jpeg
IMG_0691.jpeg
European systems have the AUX slot near the slot 3. You nearly cannot use the "normal" slot3 except you have a board which is very short.
regards
Ralf
It's a normal PAL //e.
If you want to use slot 3 in that machine - and I suggest the best thing to plug into slot 3 in a IIe is a FastChip IIe accelerator from a@Heaven.
It could co-exist with a 64K / 80 col card from a newer IIe Platinum or the 8 mB card from Garrett's Workshop.
Both the Fastchip IIe card and the 8MB card are no wider than the slots they occupy.
https://a2heaven.com/webshop/index.php?rt=product/product&path=72&product_id=147
https://www.tindie.com/products/garrettswrkshp/ram2e-ii-gw4203b-8mb-ram-for-apple-iie/
I've thought about buying a fastchip due to the rotary throttle, as it would be useful to tune the speed during operation so that I can speed up waiting tasks, but operate normally at 1 or 2 Mhz, which is something that I cannot do with my ZIP chip. A //e running that fast is mad. I can't imagine that most software is usable at 16Mhz.
In 1986 I used to compile some components of the UCSD p-System. The text files of SYSTEM.APPLE are about 300kB and written in NMOS assembler. My first attempts to generate a code file with my original IIe (1.023MHz, 2 Disk II drives, later one Disk II and one Teac 640kB) ran more than 8 hours. Then I bought RAM disks and a Transwarp with 3.6MHz to run this job in about 8min. In 1987 I bought my fast accelerator board running the CMOS instruction set @12.5MHz. This was a very nice-to-have story to generate new code: about 2:30min. Means from more than 8 hours down to 2 and a half minutes was factor 200!
Not mad but very useful :-)
The Rotary knob speed adjuster is nice to have, and the nice thing about the FastChip IIe is that you can choose which slots are accelerated and which are not.
This is useful if you have time sensitive hardware like disk controllers or serial cards.
It can also throttle the sound so if you have pokey games you can speed them up when they're not making any sounds.
There's also a fast/slow button which toggles between your sleected fast speed and normal 1 MHz operation.
It also can slow the machine down to like 0.2 MHz if you want to induce pain upon yourself for fun...
I thought it was a great investment. And inexpensive enough to buy two - one for each IIe.
Compilation is one of the specifric reasons that I own accelerators. ;)
I used USCD PASCAL in the late 70s through the late 80s. I have thought about doing some stuff with it again, but the filesystem is awful and there are better PASCAL options for most architectures, including the Apple II. I use Lazarus/FPC these days, on modern HW.