Hello to all AF members,
in general we all understand the term UFO as "Unidentified Flying Objects"...
in this thread i´d propose to use the term here as "Unidentified Freak Objects".....
A lot of us have within their collection of Apple II cards the one or other card that joined the collection
from a visit at fleamarket or trading with other Applecollector.
Some of that cards remain in our collections without any kind of manual, Documentation or related software
collecting dust due to the fact that this vital information is missing.
The purpose of this thread is to introduce that cards here with large precise picture from componentside and solderingside
and some added information to explain content of the picture and hunting for the missing information:
1. Which company made the card ?
2. What´s the cards purpose?
3. get a copy of the manual by email or link to the missing manual
4. Is there any documentation availiable ?
5. Get image of a disk with related software or get a link to such image
6. If the card contains an eprom get image of the eprom-content
I guess the most who will publish card here will appreciate - if this thread is not used for guessing around or
commenting pictures or the content - but instead only adding real information or links related to one of the
numbered questions from above and getting the owner of the card really ahead in his search for reliable
information to his card.
And hopefully this thread will not end up with newbies presenting here cards that have been allready explained
within the Apple Documentation Center or at asimov ! This thread should really only contain cards not listed in that sources !
And of course it´s important, if a reply is added that it refers to the card it´s giving information to !
to start the thread i have selected here 2 UFO´s out of my collection:
here are the pictures of the first "UFO" card:
It seems that this card has been made from ROFIN-SINAR Technologies a former swiss company related to use
of Laser within measurement technologies and probably a controlling unit for controlling Laser unit or the
spectrographic analysis unit...... at least the letters ROFIN below the cardplug connector might indicate the card to be manufactered by the mentioned company.
and here is the the second "UFO"
I hope this thread will also help other members here to collect information to UFO cards in their collection.
sincerely
speedyG
Might I suggest that we can put in this thread pictures of cards that are very rare but whose information is already known for reference purposes? Like my Apple ii MIDI card. It's pretty rare and it seems that the circuit layout is similar to other cards that were made for the same purpose. If we list the chips on the card, you then can make an educated guess as to the card's identity or probable purpose. It may not be necessary to find out who was the manufacturer of these cards. I think you have a chip on one of your "UFO" cards that is a Quad OP Amp. That is a very common chip and it's purpose should be well known to any electronics technician. Anyway, it's just an idea. It's your thread.
I say this because we might be forced to accept the possibility that identifying the actual manufacturer might not be possible but finding the purpose of the card is.
See, my card would have no software, no manual, and it would be hard to guess what it's purpose is without information that is known about similar cards. For my card, I have the manual, box and I know the software that worked with it and the software that is supposed to work with it. But also the manual and software is not on the Amisov website and there is no mention of it on google. The ONLY way someone else with a card similar to mine can be helped is to compare it with my card.
As far as I know, I am the ONLY person with such a card from a specific manufacturer.
Hello insanitor,
i don´t mind putting such card up here... it comes along at least with 4 of the questions, missing manual, missing documantation, missing software
and probabaly missing eprom - allthough i doubt that a MIDI card contains an eprom.....
so searching here with the pictures of the card for some source of the missing parts is o.K.
I just want to avoid by my notice above that newbies start up publishing here their 15th "copy cat" 80 col card from a taiwan backstreet shop
or starting guesses like: oh maybe it´s a shark.... oh no - to me it looks more like a horse.... oh no - i´m sure it´s a donkey.....discussions
that don´t get the owner of the UFO card a single step ahead and just lead up to NIRVANA.....
speedyG