Has anyone ever thought about relaying out the IIplus, IIe, or even possibly the IIgs mothboard in a new design to fit inside an ITX case, with possible improvements integrated into the motherboard such as the PS connector, USB keyboard and mouse?
This concept has already been done on other popular 8bit computers such as the Atari line.
We already have reproduction motherboards in progress to fit the original Apple II form factor and cases, power supplies and keyboards for those are already available newly manufactured. Uncle Bernie's project I believe is targeted to fit more or less a II form factor but be a new layout with some of the functions normally done in slots in a //e built into the motherboard and the IOU and MMU functionality not necessarily being intended to be compatible pinout wise with the Apple chips. Kinda a cross between a //e and //c or similar to the Laser 128 (which had its own ASIC chips and a slot (which could be split to 2) in some ways.
I've seen pictures of a ][+ clone board that was designed to fit into some kind of PC clone case and used connectors for power supply, keyboard, etc., common to those systems, but as far as I know there isn't an open project you can download KiCAD files or Gerbers from to build such a thing.
It would be pretty interesting. We're close to having working FPGA or CPLD based clones of the formerly unobtanium MMU and IOU Apple custom VLSI ASIC chips and that would open up a lot of possibilities. A totally different layout would give options of using the FPGA or CPLD chips in more native package forms rather than having to put it on a carrier compatible with the DIP-40 package type.
IIgs would be a much harder nut to crack. I don't know of anyone actively working on trying to clone it. However, it would probably be possible. The Mega-2 has a lot of the same functionality in it as the //e or //c MMU+IOU with a few other bits added. I think the Ensoniq sound chip may be cloneable too although probably not a simple thing to do.
This is a prime example of moving forward with new ideas.
https://ataribits.weebly.com/1088xel.html
Mini-ITX would be fine for implementing a //c like system with normal ports built in. However much of the attraction to the Apple II family is the slots, so one of the PC case architectures that allows room for at least 2-3 full size cards would be more desirable by many people.
For the Atari 8 bit machines slots weren't a big deal. The Atari 800 had internal slots besides the cartridge slots, but in those days I don't think most Atari 800 owners even knew about them. I don't remember any of them talking about it or having anything interesting installed in one. I didn't even know about those until years later. And from what I gather those slots didn't have enough signals to be comparable to an Apple II slot. More like the Commodore "user port" on the C64. Most of the Atari owners I knew back in the classic period only had a single floppy drive and basically nothing else, maybe a printer. I don't know if any other Atari models like the XL/XE family had a slot or not.
Interesting. I did some googling. Aparently the 600XL and 800XL had a slot on the back. And Atari made a 1090XL card which gave 5 expansion slots and aparently there were a few cards like an 88 column card and RAM expansion cards available. Like I said, I didn't know anyone that had one. I never really knew anyone who had an Atari 8 bit newer than an original 400 or 800. They just weren't very popular where I grew up. There were only two dealers in town, and one of them went out of business fairly quickly, by 1983 I think. The other was primarily an Apple dealer and they never really pushed Atari stuff at all, or much any of the other brands they sold until well into the PC clone era.
The expansion slots really would have made them a far more versatile system if they had been more widely available back in the day.
If a reengineered a2 motherboard is made with atx in mind, if it is FPGA based, would it be possible to make so it has all the most popular card capabilities built in or added over time where it won't need any cards? Ideas?
That will satisfy some people, if mostly all they want to do is run software. But part of the attraction to the Apple II is tinkering with cards.
FWIW, if you're doing everyting in an FPGA, which has been done for the Apple II before (Alan Freed for example), then it isn't a whole lot different from running something like LinApple on a Raspberry Pi, like with the RetroPi distro.
It's Alex Freed (not Alan) but I'm sure that was just a typo.
I found the sources to his project (FPGApple/DE1_src) on SofwareJanitor's site.
I would really like to try porting it to the Terasic/Altera DE0-CV dev board. (But I also have dozens of other projects I'd like to do too.)
You are correct. Actually I think Alan Freed was a DJ. But Alex Freed is the person I was thinking of.
There are always more projects than time.
Newer projects that don't recycle previous projects, push things forward.
IMG_7885.mov
IMG_7882.jpeg
More info on that? Looks interesting!
This is an attempt to build a computer somewhere in the middle of an Apple ][ and an Apple //e. So its name is Spirit ]/ (a computer with Apple II series in mind). Since the WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) of the Apple // form factor (with disk drives and display) is somewhere near zero, I'm looking for something smaller. The first PCB iteration was half size of the System 2 with only a single slot. But one slot is really not enough.
So my requirements were :
• Small (For example I choosed Pico ATX and single chips for SRAM(128K) and EEPROM).
• Compatibility with floppy drives (I ❤ how they are sounding).
• Slots. Some hardware Apple II projects exist, but I want floppies and the ability to use some of the cards from my drawers.
• Not necessary 100% compatible.
• Remove on board video to simplify design and HDMI is now possible.
• USB / RF Keyboard
• A2 Joystick
• SSC over USB (FT245) if I have enough space in the CPLD.
Finaly, the current design is 12cm x 12cm. Next design will be 12cm x 14cm
For this actual design, I tried to find the right balance between CPLD pins count, the fewest number of external chips and CPLD size for vhdl coding. So the actual result is not perfect but a quite good compromise in my own opinion.
Until now, Disk ][, A2Pico (SD Card), A2DVI and PRODOS-ROM cards were succesfully tested. Since native video generation is not implemented, some games may not working. I will study the possibility to emulate Blanking Softswitches and maybe vapor bits if I can find enough space in the CPLD.
The current design have 4 slots (3 + 1 since slot 0 is a ghost of slot 2 which I used for the keyboard). Next stage is a 5 slots motherboard with integrated USB keyboard. Final stage will be a //c form factor with some slots inside.
The whole project will be open source as soon as I will be satisfied enough. I will use the next stage board to test more extension boards and then release the project. The design is ready, I just take time to check everything before ordering a first batch.
The James Bond Apple II..
Does that seem like the kind of thing you were looking for?
Very fascinating! I will be anxiously awaiting seeing your open project! I've wanted to learn more about FPGA/CPLD and this would be great to play with.
I'm thinking a far reach here.
An ITX compatible A2 Motherboard, with most advances features already incorporated and the ability to turn off those features in favor of a card, slots available, since the a2 cards simply plug in and do not attach to the case, an itx size should be workable.
I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone try to put an original A2 motherboard in a modern PC case with some sort of bracket adapter. The biggest drawback would be what to do about the ports and expansion card IO, you would need extensions and adapters for everything. The keyboard wiring would have to be totally reengineered.
But it would be nice to have an option out there to build a newly fabricated A2 with a board that improves upon the different iterations from Apple. I like that the IIc has a lot of the accessory ports built in so I don't have to source a bunch of the expansion cards that provide those ports, but at the same time it's a shame not knowing what it would be like to get modern expansion cards, there's a lot of interesting things that people are making nowadays!
An ITX/ATX sized board that brings out the best of each machine would really be something. Built in Serial, Mouse, Joystick, but have them all separated. Composite and HDMI for modern displays. Built in USB converters switchable to any accepted peripherals. Floppy ports, but also flash memory/emu built into the board. Keyboard conversion kit to use original keyboard or adapt modern keyboard of any kind. Expansion slots that work like the originals, but are more customizable from a BIOS. And why not just ship it out with a full 1MB of RAM.
Throw in some sick RGB LEDs and we're golden!
Everything you mentioned has been done on other 8 bit computers, someone in Europe recreated an entire Atari 800XL with a modern conveniences, then was sent a cease order from people who apparently own the rights to that computer.
Hello,
I was curious where you heard that the board makers were sent a cease and desist?
I bought the Atari 800 XL board off Tindie yesterday. They had a few in stock too.
It would be so cool if Apple II equivalents would be available like all the Commodore and Atari boards. There are a few Macintosh boards (SE/30, IIfx and others) out there but not much beyond the Apple I, II boards.
It wasn't an 800xl board but a modern recreation of the 800xl computer as a whole, this is the site..
https://revive-machines.com/index-en.html
As you can see it's quite the accomplishment.
Fvex1x2akAABE3X.jpeg
I was never an Atari guy back in the day but I'd probably buy an RM 800XL if they were available for sale here in the US at a reasonable price.
The Atari emulation on CVT's ESP32 Softcard for the Apple II has been interesting to play with. There is also an Atari 400/800 emulator on the RetroPi which I played with a little a few years ago.
The RM 800XL looks like it would give a more retro authentic experience with a few modern conveniences like USB, HDMI and SD card slots.
Hello,
I wasn't an Atari guy either except for the family 2600 which later gave way to an Intellivision. It's been fun to dive into some of the platforms I never used or owned as a kid. Especially with all the blank PCBs available of different systems.
I've got a NEO128 Commodore 128 pcb waiting while I'm finishing building a few smaller kits I got from reactive micro for my Apple IIs (which is the bulk of my collection). It's been great fun building the AE RamWorks III kit and the Ultrawarp Accelerator kits. Definitely a few others I'd like to try when time and money are more available.
The Atari 800 XL looks fun but I need to track down a broken unit for parts that have no current replacements. Wish someone would put together an Atari Falcon '030 as those are still crazy expensive.
I remember in the late 90s that so much of our hobbyist gear was crazy cheap. I truly wish I had been able to save the collection I had at the time but I had no where to put it!
Now old hardware is crazy expensive for some reason which is why I like the blank motherboard and expansion card PCBs. I try to grab them whenever I see a new one before stock disappears. An Apple IIc+ or IIGS motherboard pcb with some recent additions for storage (SDcard) and video (HDMI) would be cool. Even a 1:1 copy of the boards would be awesome for replacement boards given all the damage from leaky batteries and popping caps.
Where I lived it was mostly trs80 and Commodore, except for schools, litterly no one owned an Apple 2 and very few owned other less expensive 8 bitters, once the made in Taiwan 8mhz clone came along, they all vanished quickly with the c64 holding on by its fingernails till early 90s.
Those who didn't want to buy another computer for their kid or teeny due to expense simply bought an NES.
I owned almost all of them more or less, even a trs80 coco ...
In post #24, 'Atfphoto' wrote:
" The Atari 800 XL looks fun but I need to track down a broken unit for parts that have no current replacements. Wish someone would put together an Atari Falcon '030 as those are still crazy expensive. "
Uncle Bernie comments:
All the custom chips for the Atari 8-bit line (and more !) are still available from:
https://www.best-electronics-ca.com/
Their web site is a bit outdated (it's really that old) and their ordering rules and procedures are a bit weird, i.e. you can only buy one POKEY at a time, but it's essentially a one man show, so be patient and do as they say. I ordered lots of stuff from them (was able to refurbish my old Atari joysticks to as-new-condition with their spare parts) and intend to build something with the MARIA chip once I have time to return to the Atari stuff (at the moment I'm on a Apple only 'diet').
There is nothing in the Atari 800XL or 600XL that can't be repaired when tapping into their parts stock. Except for the keyboards maybe - avoid those with the membrane foil contacts. For the Atari XE series there is no such choice, it's always membrane, but I think Best had replacement membranes, too, of new manufacture (at least I think I bought one of those membranes from them, but not sure, my basement tends to make things disappear).
Here is the relation of this post to our Apple II topic at hand:
Compare this convenient situation with the Atari custom chips to the "unobtainium" situation with ALL the original Apple custom chips. This is no other way (other than cannibalizing original Apple machines) to replace them other than reverse engineering and making CPLD / FPGA based substitutes. Which various people around the world have done with various degrees of success. I'm just one of the players in this field, with my own MMU / IOU / IWM substitutes. There are many other players. What makes my work different is that I try to implement these with older, 5V capable PLDs, and I still do use LSTTL where it makes sense. This means more ICs for an Apple II +,c,e functional "Replica", but it's less problematic for hobbyists and closer to the original electronics, so it's also more likely to have less trouble with plugging in vintage, 5V and TTL based slot cards.
- Uncle Bernie
In post #22, 'Khaibitgfx' wrote:
" It wasn't an 800xl board but a modern recreation of the 800xl computer as a whole, this is the site..
https://revive-machines.com/index-en.html
As you can see it's quite the accomplishment. "
Uncle Bernie comments:
This is not the first FPGA based Atari 8-bit replica, there has been a version around since many years which could be mounted in a small (ITX ?) industry standard enclosure. Alas, I don't recall the name and manufacturer of this thing. I never was interested in it as I have more than a dozen original Atari 8-bit in my collection, and I doubted the fidelity of this implementation as to the lesser known quirks in the various ANTIC, GTIA and POKEY custom chips.
There are some great software based Atari 8-bit emulators out there, which can run under Linux, but I think none of them is 100% perfect yet. Same situation as with the various Apple II family emulators we have. Close, but not perfect yet. There still are fine points which need to be fixed, such as the infamous "vapor lock" technique (Atari does this with a vertical blank interrupt that has been designed in from the beginning).
I have no doubt that the developers of these software only emulators are already working on these remaining issues and at some point in the future, these emulators eventually will be perfect. Except that you can't plug in any Apple II slot card ... and you don't get the same experience as with a piece of real hardware. But for gaming, exploring, writing software ... a software based emulator is just right, and costs no money (if open source / public domain).
Now, consider the hardware based emulations. Will the developer of the FPGA code continue to release upgrades until it is perfect ? Especially if it is closed source ? There are no guarantees and whoever invested money into these FPGA based replica computers has that investment at stake. And I think that even making the FPGA HDL "open source" would not guarantee that somebody would pick that up and iron out the bugs. This is from experience - even in the professional realm of the semiconductor industry, HDL code tends to be poorly documented, and prone to 'explode in the face of the next guy who tampers with it'. "Open Source" Verilog and VHDL you can find on places like "opencores.org" mostly are of dubious quality and robustness, may look like (abandoned ?) electrical engineering student projects, and generally need a lot of work to be turned into something useful in a professional, real-world application. I tried a few of those in the past decades and got the impression they were intentionally made "open source" such that some more competent eyes could look at the code and fix the bugs. "It almost works in most applications" - or something along these words - does not a viable solution make. (Just to be fair to those contributors who made their stuff 'open source': even closed source HDL bought and licensed for a 'king's ransom' from the owners of that IP often sucks to a point that it's useless to be put into a new IC - there are specialized small businesses who take money to 'massage' that IP into something which is fit to be put into a new semiconductor product).
So what this 'revive-machines' outfit did is no great accomplishment, other than making a 'slavish' copy of the enclosure design (I can't rule out they refurbished original enclosures, though) for which third parties now claim the 'DESIGN RIGHTS'. And hereby got themselves in trouble. They probably copied the firmware in ROM, too. A clear copyright violation and not as easily dodged as with the design of the enclosure.
Now, the issue with the firmware-in-ROM copyright affects all makers of replica computers. I think I have a technical solution for the 'Replica 2e' which does not violate Apple's copyright - I just use original ROMs taken out of an original Apple IIc. And the character generator ROM is no issue either as long as only the font Apple themselves have appropriated from the original Signetics 2513 character generator goes - but I can't use the special characters Apple developed for the Apple IIc, such as the famous "Open Apple" and "Closed Apple" symbols, or even the "running man' symbol. All these are proprietary characters / glyphs designed and copyrighted by Apple. So I just will leave them out of the character generator. Which, BTW, works different than the one Apple used, so even the Signetics 2513 character set has different hex codes in my version, and I can show I took them from Signetics, and not from Apple.
The hardware patents of the Apple II and Disk II as such have long expired, anyone can make knock-off hardware based on these circuits.
So, as long as you have original Apple IIc ROMs to put into the 'Replica 2e' (or similar machines made by others) and as long as you don't call that thing "Apple", there is no Copyright nor Patent nor Trademark violation.
And I think that despite it may be 'legally clean' (but who knows in the age of kangaroo courts and bought-and-paid-for judges and juries) it never will become a commercial product. It will stay a hobby project from a hobbyist that can be built by other hobbyists, if they so desire.
I don't think that anyone would try to commercialize any such replica computer anyways. It's such as small market niche that no reasonable profit can ever be made. With "reasonable profit" I mean that producing and selling these replicas, fully assembled out-of-the-box, should support a real small business, with real employees, real accountants, real liability insurance, and real lawyers. Heck, even the Chinese could not pull that off and ever eek out one dime of profit, despite they have far less "red tape" and bureaucracy to deal with. This, Ladies and Gentlemen, is the reason why we can't buy commercially made replicas of vintage computers ready-to-run as we desire.
This makes me wonder which type of market research and which business plan was behind that botched 'revive-machines' venture. Most likely, there was none. At least none where they did their "homework" as to the IP rights of third parties.
Comments invited ! I'm open for any constructive discussion with readers who want to disprove my arguments above. I might change my point of view, which may mean change of my plans with the 'Replica 2e'.
- Uncle Bernie
From my understanding the Atari computers were very popular in Poland, where some amazing projects in relation to this computer have originated.
Another interesting venture is this...device upgrade.
https://forums.atari.io/topic/7577-vbxe-is-this-upgrade-for-you/
Completely new video capabilities while retaining the original, is such a thing possible on the IIGS?
This is another example of pushing retro to new heights.
https://www.amigaclub.be/projects/amiga1200plus
Belgium based.
The European hacker community that developed the VBXE and the SIDE2 for the Atari 800 series, also designed an FPGA emulation platform for multiple 8- and 16-bit computers called the MiST, more than 12 years ago.
I'm not into consoles, however quite Interesting.
https://www.retrorgb.com/mister.html
I'm super excited about this coming soon:
https://www.adafruit.com/product/6200
Lady Ada has been tinkering with a Mac OS flashed to it the past week. It's based on a project to port the Macintosh to the Raspberry Pi, but this board gives the ability for some convenient features.
Is that a software based emulation board?
To me this is garbage...the mini atari 400
https://atari.com/products/atari-400-mini-1?srsltid=AfmBOoqwh2cREUM-rHQ92vRiCg9kAM48u2VslNslkWCNWm76JZ6GNab2
Where as the RM item previously mentioned here is a work of art.
Imagine an Apple II similar to this RM thing, with slots....
In post #34, 'Khaibitgfx' wrote:
" To me this is garbage ... the mini atari 400 "" Imagine an Apple II similar to this this RM thing, with slots ..."
Uncle Bernie comments:
Pleeeease ... this is an Apple II forum, and not an Atari forum, and I think for the purpose of this thread, which should be a discussion on the feature set of an upcoming Apple II 'replica' computer, there are too many references to Atari already. I'm myself somewhat guilty for having added to that, but could not avoid to help those seeking Atari spare parts.
I do agree with 'Khaibitfox' that the so-called 'mini atari' is garbage, as its keyboard does not work (it's just a nonfunctional mock-up, just for looks) and I don't see how a real Atari game cartridge could be plugged into this thing. So it's a waste of money IMHO, be warned. If you are interested in Atari, get a vintage one and refurbish it. With the spare parts available from 'Best Electronics', see my post #26, you can fix it. Note that PAL Ataris can easily be changed back to NTSC, where you then get two artifact colors much like the early Apple II before Apple added the phase bit to get four artifact colors. The PAL 600XL/800XL do have DIN connector video outputs, so they are more desirable, even more so if converted to NTSC.
But back to the Apple II replica(s) in the works.
As I mentioned, various developers are working on Apple II replicas or substitutes for the "unobtainium" custom chips. I think that 'frozen signal' who started his MMU project in April 2023 (two years ago) has made some progress although in the last months there was not much posted about it. I saw one empty motherboard PCB posted here on Applefritter which was designed for 'frozen signal's MMU and IOU substitutes, but did not see a finished one yet.
I myself have fully functional and robustly working MMU and IOU substitutes I use in my 'Replica 2e' project but unlike 'frozen signal's work I did not try to implement them in only one CPLD or FPGA on a DIL-40 carrier PCB.
I'm currently working on the 'IWMless' which is a IWM substitute on a DIL-28 carrier, though. Still having trouble with the motor timers despite I programmed a PIC microcontroller to deliver CPU cycle exact motor turn off delays, and I wrote software to be able to measure it cycle exact, on a real Apple II, so at the moment it eludes me why it still does not work smoothly with TOTAL REPLAY. There must be a difference in the motor timer functionality of my substitute vs. the real IWM which causes occasional hangs / crashes of TOTAL REPLAY. All the PRODOS SmartPort functions accessing HDDs emulated by the BMOW floppy emu work fine, though. I even can launch TOTAL REPLAY from PRODOS, and it launches fine and runs for a while until it hangs / crashes. I'm not 100% sure it's the motor timers, it also could be a problem with my wreck of an Apple IIc, though, but I'm almost sure the IIc is not guilty.
The important takeaway from this is that if I succeed with the 'IWMless' and can make it working robustly, this opens the possibility that the "Replica 2e" which currently only works in Apple II, Apple II+, Apple IIe modes, could also support Apple IIc mode. But then I'd need to add more hardware, such as the 6551 ACIAs, and I'd also need to add the mouse functions found in the IIc version of the IOU, which I did not explore yet. But from the programming manuals published by Apple, these mouse functions are based on quite trivial hardware. I'm currently trying to make an Atari ST mouse work with the Apple IIc, just to have a test platform to investigate the mouse hardware inside the original IOU. Original Apple II mice are just too rare and I am not going to pay the moon prices asked for them on Ebay. The circuits inside Apple II and Atari mice are almost the same, just wired differently to the connector.
This of course rises the question on how important y'all deem the Apple II mouse to be. As far as I'm concerned I hate mice (they ruined a joint in my right thumb) and I only use trackballs (Logitech "Marble Mouse") since then. Alas, these are USB and can't be interfaced to the Apple IIc.
So, what do you think about Apple II mice ? Are they really needed ? I never saw anyone using a mouse with an Apple IIc.
Comments invited !
- Uncle Bernie
I never had a //c but I had a //e with Apple's Mouse card and I had several different Laser 128 variants which I used an Apple mouse with. While the number of Apple II apps that used a mouse was relatively limited it was not zero. There were some nice ones.
It's been really fun using a mouse with graphic programs and certain adventure games on my IIc.
What I would dream for this Replica is ports for 2 Joystick ports for two-player games and a separate mouse port. And since some of us are adapting USB mice and joysticks to the original DB9 ports, why not have some USB ports built in for automatic conversion?
Hello,
The first mouse I owned was the Apple II mouse & card for GEOS 128k. It was the mouse or trying to use the joystick option.
Definitely a nice option to have for some software.
... so I will start the work to investigate the mouse functions in the IOU of the Apple IIc. But I can't do this as long as my Apple IIc runs tests with the 'IWMless', for which there was a breakthrough since yesterday, I think I found the problem causing TOTAL REPLAY to crash/hang/refuse to boot. See this thread to know more:
https://www.applefritter.com/content/iwm-reverse-engineering
As for the mice, the original 'mouse port' on the Apple IIc uses some trick circuits involving opto couplers which - I guess - also have some firmware side support for these 'tricks'. So it is more straightforward to turn another 'dumb' mouse having only the switches and chopper wheels into a substitute for the original Apple mouse.
Here is what 'Wavedude101' wrote in his post #37:
" What I would dream for this Replica is ports for 2 Joystick ports for two-player games and a separate mouse port. And since some of us are adapting USB mice and joysticks to the original DB9 ports, why not have some USB ports built in for automatic conversion ? "
Uncle Bernie's take on this is that the 'Replica 2e' indeed must have full two player joystick and paddle support, although the current lab rat does not have the required hardware yet - just a connector with the required signals. This is because I want to keep the game port part of the lab rat flexible, so I can plug in various potential solutions without disturbing the main unit.
The thread for the 'Replica 2e' project is here:
https://www.applefritter.com/content/uncle-bernies-replica-2e-ww-prototype-apple-iie-replica
It has not been updated since a year or so, because my work on reverse engineering the IWM and designing the YAAK keyboard and some Apple-1 related work kept me busy. But it's not dead, it's making progress. I've redesigned the MMU and IOU substitutes to be implemented with more abundant PLDs and started to wire wrap a new slot card to substitute the current one. This new slot card also has a DISK II controller on it . . . the one with the 'IWMless' is yet another such slot card, but I did not put the Liron and MMU / IOU functions on it yet. Still exploring the design space and which partitioning approach to apply for the logic.
But USB support is not planned currently, neither for the keyboard (I will use YAAK, but also support a PS/2 keyboard) nor for joysticks or mice. IMHO everything 'USB'-ish is too modern for the functional replica of a late 1970s home computer, and it somehow impurifies the concept. The deeper reason for this is that any support for USB involves a quite sophisticated software stack to implement the protocol, and this, if written in "C" = the stuff we can find as "open source" on the internet, can easily yield 12-16kBytes of binary (or more) and then you need to add the conversion functions to Apple II game port signals (or the Apple II keyboard connector) on top of that. There are not all too many choices of microcontrollers who support USB and have the speed and memory up to the task, so many adopt a form of Raspberry Pi, and when throwing so much overkill on the problem, why not just ditch the whole 'Replica 2e' hardware and just run a good Apple II emulator under Linux on the same Raspberry Pi ? A provocative question, I know, but it must be asked. As far as I'm concerned I don't want any of such 21st Century hi-tech gadgets hooked up to any of my vintage computers or replicas thereof. It's a matter of conceptional purity. Which for me is the way. If I just want a game platform to run vintage Apple II games, I run Linapple under Linux on a modern notebook, and I use a USB joystick of course. No 'Replica 2e' hardware needed.
I see the whole hacker and maker scene building replicas of vintage microcomputers from the point of view of the educational aspect, these allow people from all venues of life to learn the basics of digital design and building digital gadgets using long obsolete ICs which are still available, but 5V, and not too fast and finicky and not too complex, too. Building such a replica is an excellent way to learn how digital systems were designed and built back in the 1970s, the dawn of the microprocessor revolution. The technology was simple enough back then that even a layperson could enter and explore this realm with some chance of good experiences, lessons learned, and some degree of success (building stuff that works, and understanding how it works).
I don't think that 21st Century electronics offer any such opportunity to anyone. It's just too complex and it won't work unless a multilayer PCB is used which was designed by a true professional who knows how to tame these fast signals and to prevent ground bounce, power supply issues, and signal ringing. Oh, and not to forget automated assembly of these small SMD components which cannot be hand soldered. There is a reason why even today, leading colleges and universities let their students design and build simple digital systems based on LSTTL ICs plugged into solderless breadboards. Once the basics are learned, the advanced courses will teach HDL based design for FPGAs. But for this, they use professionally designed platforms, often the evaluation boards from the FPGA manufacturer, and for a reason. If designed by students, these evaluation boards simple won't work robustly enough to be of any use.
This is also the reason why I avoid more modern CPLDs/FPGAs for any of my vintage computer work. I have the know-how how to design a 4-6 layer impedance controlled and propagation delay equalized PCB for these beasts, along with the required on-board switchmode power supplies and their power up / power down sequencers (to avoid blowing up the expensive FPGA), but I think this then ain't no hobby anymore. If you do that you should get paid real money, and lots of it, because only few people in the world can do that demanding design job right (the implication is that there are many bad designs / boards using modern electronic components out there . . . especially the Chinese don't seem to care if the stuff they sell does work robustly or does work at all, they want to take your money, that's the primary objective they have, and you suffer the crappy products like consumer electronics, household appliances, and cars which are plagued by dubious electronics gemlins even the stealership can't fix, and won't try to fix after the warranty for that P.O.S. car has expired - they just change black boxes and bill you moon prices, and more often than not the problem will still be there !).
I think that the electronics / vintage computer hobby should be kept simple, affordable, and accessible / doable / hand solderable for anyone, so keep the level of technology used low enough to reach that goal.
Comments invited !
- Uncle Bernie
The knowledge and skills to develop high-speed, multilayer PCBs is more accessible now than at any time in history. It takes work and dedication, but there is a wealth of freely available materials. The vloggers Robert Feranec and Shahriar Shahramian have produced a lot of videos that provide a gentle introduction to the subject.
Fair enough! The USB thing was a stretch, I know. It's just more and more increasingly hard to find vintage hardware peripherals like the original mouse, and most often they don't work without a bit of troubleshooting and tinkering. I'll be getting a USB adapter for my IIc soon with a goal to fabricate a replica mouse from modern hardware. I'm also working on an arcade style joystick and button combo controller but modeled in the matching "snow white" design aesthetic!
So what about video output? I suggested before that an HDMI out would be great for modern monitors, but this of course would again go against the philosophy of making a true replica. Even more rare and tedious is finding a working A2 CRT monitor, so I wonder if a standard VGA port would be a nice addition.
(I'm also working on a custom designed IIc monitor similar to the LCD screen offered originally back in the day, but with a small TFT screen I had laying around!)
A number of things worth noting. Most people who've been around here a while already know all of this, but for those new to the conversation:
Few vintage Apple II games support more than one joystick.
The 2nd joystick on all but the IIgs only has 1 button usable. There is a workaround for that on older machines, but that's even less supported.
Many vintage games require both joystick buttons.
There are already ways to use a modern USB mouse including some wireless ones with the Apple Mouse Card or the //c with an adapter.
There is a firmware for the A2USB/A2VGA (RPi Pico based) hardware which can emulate an Apple Mouse Card that supports a USB style mouse.
There are adapters out there to handle Atari style joysticks (with caveats depending on the game).
There are adapters out there to use some console system game controllers.
There are modern built joysticks which use currently available parts.
There are cards for the slotted Apple II models to output to VGA and/or HDMI which are based on the RPi Pico
Someone is working on an adapter to generate HDMI from the //c video port, also using an RPi Pico
Anyone building a new Apple II replica system can leverage a lot of the work I reference above because most of them are open projects.
In post #42, 'softwarejanitor' wrote:
" Anyone building a new Apple II replica system can leverage a lot of the work I reference above because most of them are open projects. "
Uncle Bernie comments:
Exactly. I did not know about all these projects you listed, but I knew enough that I'm not inclined to put all these functions on my own 'Replica 2e' motherboard. It would only drive costs up and the finish line farther into the future. What is important, though, is to support the same interfaces as the original Apple II series does. With the same connectors, if possible at all (the 19 pin ones of the Apple IIc may be tricky to get, but I did not look too hard for them yet), and the same signals, once the same ports / connectors are there, all these nice open project gadgets could be plugged right in. There is no advantage to have them integrated on the motherboard. Only the disadvantages I mentioned (costs / time).
One particular thing I'm pondering about is related to older games which do only have keyboard support - I think it would be helpful if the keyboard controller would have some means to convert joystick commands into keystrokes. Every game being different, that must be programmable. It would greatly help with playing these games.
In post #41, 'Wavedude101' wrote:
" So what about video output? I suggested before that an HDMI out would be great for modern monitors, but this of course would again go against the philosophy of making a true replica. Even more rare and tedious is finding a working A2 CRT monitor, so I wonder if a standard VGA port would be a nice addition. "
Uncle Bernie comments:
Even for video professionals (my team designed one of the last chip sets for CRT based TV chassis in the mid-end 1990s, all soon thereafter being rendered obsolete by the flat screen TVs) , implementing HDMI is a daunting task that would consume a lot of work. I don't think I could do this in my own remaining lifetime. We are talking about many, many man-years (unless an existing solution could be leveraged).
The problem, as I see it, is not creating the HDMI port and signals - there are many cheap ICs out there which can do that, including those used in the Raspberry Pi. The problem is that the Apple II video signal is slightly off standard and on top of that uses color artifacting to generate colors, combined with often very clever programming tricks to generate color effects which should not exist (for the Apple II). All this works fine with analog NTSC decoders found in 1980-1990s CRT based color TVs/monitors, but already causes problems with some CRT based TVs/monitors having digital NTSC decoders. It's not only that you never get the same color effects, in some cases the picture is just horrible / useless. This is not just a problem for Apple II - almost all home computers and video game consoles of the 1970s-2000s had the problem. To avoid, we put a "game mode" switch into our chip set which would bypass the sophisticated digital filters and digital color decoders for a very crude digital DSP engine which mimicked an analog TV. This was a customer request - if game consoles would not work, the product would not sell. But this feature was lost in time and all too many modern flast screen TVs don't work all that well with the legacy (and non standard conforming) video. To convert such a rotten NTSC-ish (but not quite right) signal to HDMI, you would need to implement essentially the same 'game mode' DSP engine, use multiple frame buffers, and all this is far beyond hobbyist level electronics. Even I could not do it in an useful amount of time, as I did not develop that 'game mode' color decoder myself. Note that with enough time and dedication it could be done even by a hobbyist, though. Maybe somebody did it already, who knows. Recently, I did some experiments with various rotten NTSC-ish signals given to modern flat screen TVs and the results were .... sobering. Most even refused to try to show a picture except the "no signal" message. This has delayed my work on an Apple-1 color graphics card by a lot. Which even has a more rotten NTSC-ish signal than the Apple II or contemporary game consoles. Fully intentional, not a bug, so it can't be fixed. Works fine with analog CRT based color monitors / TVs, though. But nothing that could be peddled to the general public. Too many flat screen TVs would refuse to work with it. Of course, I know why it is so, and I know how to fix it. I'd just need to add the 'long cycles' of the Apple II for which Woz got U.S.-Pat. 4,278,972 titled "Digitally-controlled color signal generation means for use with display". This, Ladies and Gentlemen, is the key patent for the Apple II. Its main inventive feature is a "delayed" count employed in the horizontal synchronization counter to compensate for color subcarrier phase reversals between lines. Accoding to the patent, "this permits vertically aligned color graphics without substantially altering the standard horizontal synchronization frequency", and this is the key innovative trick to make vertical colored lines in Apple II hires graphics which are straight possible. Others did it without this patented trick, but then it gets more tricky to interleave the accesses of the video scanner and the CPU to the common RAM. And since the Apple-1 clock generator would need some trace cuts, flight wires added, and one or two gates added, it's more 'surgery' than I wanted. But it seems to be inevitable if we want Apple II style color graphics on an Apple-1. There is a reason why Woz got that patent. It's really a cool trick.
But enough of that. I just wanted to show you that all these cute 1970-ish color graphic schemes come with plenty of pitfalls when trying to still use them after almost half a century, and with 21st Century flat screen TVs designed by young engineers from overseas whose parents where not even born back then. So who is to blame for all these complications ?
All we can do is to be aware of them.
("Hic sunt dracones" - "There be dragons")
- Uncle Bernie
Bernie,
You might be interested in trying out one of the modern A2VGA or A2DVI cards which provide HDMI output from Apple II. These are built using a RPi Pico which actually sniffs the address and data buses and re-constitutes it's own copies of display memory to synthesize its output. They work remarkably well, and actually offers the potential software ways of providing other video formats. For example it would be possible to do video modes similar to those offered on newer 8 bit designs like the Atari 400/800 and C64 or even PC clones up to some of the VGA modes. Even things like block/character graphics and colored text similar to the IBM PC. Mainly things are limited by the amount of memory available in an Apple II.
For a replica //e, I think providing NTSC and the signals for the AUX connector and Slot 7 that are normally used for things like traditional PAL or RGB cards is sufficient. If people want VGA or HDMI output the aforementioned options already exist. At some point perhaps it would be possible for someone to integrate HDMI generation from the signals normally used for RGB output and integrate that on the motherboard if there is an open project they can build on top of. I don't think you need to worry about doing that kind of thing in a first iteration of a project.
A lot of my suggestions have been to use what's already being done with modern adapters and expansion cards, I just think it would be nice to consolidate the most used expansion options into the new board. I agree it should be iterated in due time, mostly just dreaming! What a marvel it would be for a project like this to have so many hands in from the community to make the perfect A2.
In the right hands anything is possible, the biggest question being, is it worth the effort.
I saw the Spirit ]/ blog post by kris92. It seems like it fits a lot of what this whole thread is about. It's a pretty fascinating project. It would be interesting to see what someone could do with it possibly even expanding it to be a full //e level clone. Using an FPGA it opens up a lot of possibilities for people to do some really interesting things with this.
The Commodore version of what this thread represents..
https://hackaday.com/2021/08/18/commander-x16-a-dreamy-8-bit-computer-comes-closer-to-reality/