A2USB: Apple II USB & Mouse Interface Card Emulation

Submitted by MacFly on January 1, 2024 - 10:19am

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What does an Apple II VGA Card, a Z80-CPM SoftCard and an USB-Apple II Mouse Interface Card have in common? Well, almost everything. All three are the same card. Same hardware. Just differing software. The magic of software-defined hardware. It can emulate many things. It just depends on software.

I started a project to add USB support to the Apple II - extending the PICO-based Apple2 VGA cards. The cards are based on excellent work by Mark Aikens, David Kuder and others. The hardware is using the surprisingly powerful and flexible PICO microcontroller. The first and most obvious application of the A2USB project is a complete Apple II Mouse Interface Card emulation, supporting a USB mouse.

Tags: 
#hardware #usb #apple

WHAT TO DO WITH A DEAF/DUMB/DEAD APPLE-1 CPU SECTION

Submitted by UncleBernie on December 18, 2023 - 9:24pm

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Character output activity as seen in PIA pin #17

A few simple checks using an oscilloscope can reduce the number of suspect IC(s) in an Apple-1 to a few, which then can be swapped against (hopefully) good ones. Key is the isolation of subsystems (such as the DRAM) which can interfere with the proper execution of diagnostics in PROM. This approach works best with diagnostics firmware in PROM which does not need any functional RAM in the machine.

Forums: 
Apple I

Getting your Apple II VGA Card up and running: Ralle Palaveev version

Submitted by skate323k137 on November 20, 2023 - 6:25pm

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The Ralle Palaveev VGA card is an extension of the Apple II Vga project by Mark Aikens. A few versions of this project exist, but this post is focusing on the Ralle Palaveev version, which has a lot of capabilities (and the added complexity that goes along with them).

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