For some reason I was looking back through sold items on ebay and came across this apple II plus which the seller says was owned by his uncle who worked for NASA in the 80's and 90's. What caught my eye was the "third" drive case which turns out is a power supply? That's the best I can tell, but I wasn't able to find details through my sup'r'crappy search skills so I though I'd ask here.
I'm posting all image so they don't disapper when the listing does. I've also never seen an internal fan for the IIplus like this. I'm guessing the uncle drove this thing hard and the "switcher" is power supply given there only appears to be power lines coming out. The think that looks like a debugger break switch also caught my eye but I can't see enough of the cards to know what's installed.
Bonus points for anyone that can ID why imgur throws up a warning about "adult" content... that's pretty funny, AFAIK it's just an II+ and accessories. But maybe those accessories are obscene?!?!
Perhaps it's the case colour that their algorithm mistakes for skin colour?
No, it's because their ads might contain porn. If you want the pictures to survive, post them here. Don't put them as links to external sites.
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I think I can only ID two of the cards, and one is just an 80-column card not that I know which one because these don't give a great view of the cards faces....
The 80 column card looks like an ALS SmartTerm. I have one. Really nice card, far better design in a number of ways than the Videx VideoTerm (lke integrated "soft switch"). Unfortunately not quite as widely supported by software as the Videx.
For what it is worth, unless there were other cards in there, I can't see why it was "driven hard" to the point it needed an external power supply, especially with what appears to be a substantial fan.
The ALS 80 column card, 16k RAM card, Disk ][ controller and what looks like some kind of parallel card, maybe an Epson APL... none of those are super power hungry or heat generating.
I ran a lot more cards than that in my ][+ back in the day. Albeit I did kill the original power supply and ended up getting one of the "high output" ones (same thing as AE sold, but I got mine from a different supplier). But I usually had all the slots full.
It looks to me that the external box is hooked to the motherboard of the II Plus effectively replacing the internal one.
I recently had the power supply of one of my Apple //e's blow up. I replaced mine with one from ReactiveMicro that fit inside the original power supply case.
Yes, it appears that Sup'R'Switcher was a commercially sold product. I'm guessing by the name maybe by M&R, who made the Sup'R'Mod RF Modulator and the Sup'R'Terminal 80 column card and a number of other things.
And... after googling it... I find this...
http://www.cvxmelody.net/West%20Coast%20Computer%20Faire%20spotlight%20-%20Apple%20Orchard%20May-June%201982%20(excerpt).pdf
If you look for M&R's ad in there, you find the Sup'R'Switcher in it along with a pic... that looks just like the pics above.
So yeah, it is entirely possible that the original power supply failed, or the original owner just didn't like how hot it got inside the case or something and bought the external supply. Or maybe at one time they had some card in there that took a lot of juice. Who knows, those details are probably lost to history...
But at least we know what it is... learn something new every day.
Oh... and that nice looking fan in the pics... also in the M&R ad in the link... "Sup'R'Fan".
That little toggle switch is an interesting looking mod. The wires from it appear to the soldered to the back of the Disk ][ Controller Card. I'm guessing maybe it is a write protect override or something? I'd have to make a guess at where it is hooked to the card and the schematic to verify that or figure out what it is if that isn't it.
Yeah, around 1982 that fan could be found in Apple ][ machines everywhere! After the //e came out, Kensington's System Saver became a trendier choice.
Before the //e, the Apple ][ series tended to be hot inside. If you needed more power, common wisdom was to use an external power supply. Internal supplies were widely limited to 4A or 5A. AFAIK, only Applied Engineering offered a 6A internal supply...and that one was loaded with extra vents on all sides!
Here are a couple of references to the Sup'R'Switcher from Aaron Filler's book, Apple Thesaurus...
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For whatever reason I don't remember ever seeing a Sup'R'Switcher back in the day. I'm sure I must have seen the ads for it because I read those mags that M&R advertised in. There was a time I might have bought one if it had registered what it was. Maybe they weren't available by then, M&R other than the Sup'R'Mod kind of faded out after 1982 or so. I bought basically the same exact power supply that AE sold, except from a different importer. Literally it has the same stickers and stuff except for the "AE" one. I initially used it in my ][+ but ended up taking the power supply from my //e when I bought it (used) and put it into the ][+ and put the upgrade supply into the //e.
@softwarejanitor, that pdf was great looks like a bit more power than the standard supply. I have never seen that "switcher" and that's an intersting name for a SM PS, gotta wonder how many users understood the name.
@S.Elliott, I'm surprised that internal fan was as common as you mentioned. Was definately slightly before my time, and I like it more than the Kensington one. I know I broke the hooks on my first one, and the two I've currently got are in great shape but an internal fan would have been much nicer even with Kensington's secondary power switch...
Thansk everyone.