A-ONE/REPLICA 1 for beginners

i have an A-One, it's a wonderful Replica, and Franz & San have done a Great job on it.
The missing usb is not an issue, the RS232 + ZTerm does the same job.

The build is straight forward, i built it an Hour or so.

See my gallery !!!!

Bye

Paul-

I have a Replica 1, but wish I could afford both!

The Replica 1 community appears a bit more established and active (see the forums at http://www.brielcomputers.com/phpBB2/index.php ), but with Krusader not taking up much of my time any more I am moving to more hardware related play, so I'd love to be able to play on the A-One with breadboard attached. :-)

They both have BASIC and Krusader (which provides an assembler, disassembler and low-level monitor) in ROM, so from a programming perspective there's no real difference.

The video on the A-One looks like it may be better equipped for PAL countries (I'm in Australia) but I haven't heard anything specific.

The Replica-1 is fairly easy to build - most of the soldering involves easy and safe components (resitors, capacitors and IC sockets). The situation with the A-One is surely much the same.

The really amazing thing is that you have a choice!

Ken

The A1-Assembler by San Bergmans is really cool too, which is loaded in the 9000 segmet of the A-One.

Hello Paul,

I read all your postings and saw you are very familiar with the A-One. My question to you. You are using a RS232 to USB converter stick, which one?
And you connected the A-One to your imac. (?)
I hope building a kit is not so difficult, i did some soldering when I was a teenager - building an illegal fm transmittor... hope this is enough experience.

As "european" some speaks for the a-one, but the community around the replica one seems to be more active.

Best regards
Manfred

Hello Ken,

I think your are right the community around the replica one is more established. The reason might also be the excellent book by Tom Owad.
I have the choice; but it is a difficult choice...
Did you connect your replica one to an imac or are you using a monitor?
My wish would be to connect it to a small lcd display; my wish would be to have a more modern version of a apple 1 - no wood case, better acryl and aluminium.
You are from Australia, I was born in Austria but came to Germany as a child.
Best regards

Manfred

Yes, the Replica community is more active because it was the first one out, but, give the A-One a chance to catch up, for who lives in Europe like me, the A-One is perfect, it works on both 50 a 60 Hz.
The build is easy, i had no issues doing it, even if you don't have soldering skills.

I have an iMac Intel, and i use an USB to RS232 converter from Manhatten Computer ...

http://www.manhattan-support.com/driver-usb-rs232.shtml.

It works fine, just if you have the RS built in the Mac.

Cheers

Paul.

Hello Paul,

you may be right the community lives from its members...
Where did you buy the usb converter?; I saw achatz.nl has also a usb converter in his shop.

I only have an imacg5 in front of me; but we will switch to the intel mac when leopard will come out. Which now is in october...
I can connect it also to an imacg3, a mac classic ii or a macplus, which are my old retired computers.

In the 70th we spent a lot of time to solve the "Eight Queens Problem". We wrote programmes to run this on hp41 calculators. It took hours to reach all solutions. But my programme was the fastest. My intention is to do this programming work again, but now on an own-built computer... That might be fun. (Basic, Assembler)
What do you think about that "crazy" idea.

Regards

Manfred

my usb\rs232 converter 3 years old, i bought it from a local computer store here in Italy.

I love programming in basic, but i left il for a few years, then, when a found out about Franz A-one, i got "running" again", i am still a bit rusty, because my last programs i done them in VB6.

I am just starting on assembly now, but time is never enough !!!!!

Cheers

Paul.

I have an A-One too. I have seen in your user profile that you´re from Germany. I live in Germany too. Franz Achatz speaks(writes) in german and could help me solving technical problems i had first with my A-ONE. (A-ONE won´t start sometimes) It was very easyer for me to contact Franz Achatz in german language, because my english is not so good! After all, he repaired my A-ONE and want no money for the repairing. (The crystal ocillator was damaged) The sending of my A-ONE board to the netherlands, repairing and resending spend a time of only one week.

SchwindS

PS: I live in Rheinland-Pfalz and work in Ludwigshafen/Rhein at BASF as Chemical Supervisor. You see we have similarity hobbys and jobs.

Hello SchwindS,

I saw some of your postings and it is a good to know to have someone nearby to discuss problems also in my motherlanguage "deutsch".

Yes, your arguments for a good service nearby counts: netherland is just around the corner and you do not have customs tax as you have when purchasing things from the US.
And replica 1 is out of sale until may - but this is no real argument. I just need some time to think it over.

You are working at BASF; you might have seen my red rings hanging on the flanges: www.safe-ring.com

italianapple (Paul) and you seem to be the european "A-one kernel" ;-)
We keep in contact!

Best regards
Manfred

it would be nice !!! ;-)

I am a bit biased of course. But I would say that it doesn't really matter which one you choose, as long as it is the A-One :-)

No really, the functionality of both replicas is quite similar. Therefore you can probably participate in most of the topics of the replica 1 community even if you own a A-One instead of a Replica 1. So I don't think the existence of the Replica 1 community should have to influence your decision.

I never built either of the boards myself but I think the A-One would be slightly easier to build because it has fewer parts.

Hello San,

...yes I know what I have to do. ;-)
I spent a lot of time on your website the last weeks; which helped me in many ways to enlarge my knowledge about the apple one.
Yesterday I once more read "i Woz", especially the chapters about the Apple 1. It always was his intention to contruct it with a minimum of integrated circuits and to have a very small board.
So I will heat my soldering iron. I hope it works, I have not used it many times since the eighties.

So contacting Franz Achatz is the next step...

Best regards
Manfred

San's site is maybe one of the more complete about the Apple I, i have leart a lot on it.

Cheers,

Paul.

San's site is maybe one of the more complete about the Apple I, i have leart a lot on it.

Cheers,

Paul.